Part II, in which I wrap up the story of Joe’s Garage – Frank Zappa’s 1979 3LP masterpiece.
Joe’s Garage, Acts 2 & 3
Act 1 of Joe’s Garage showed FRANK ZAPPA at his most adolescent. (See the first part of this review.)Dirty words and all, this one record release was basically a showcase for the more casual listener. It has lots of funny bits, real solid hooks and catchy songs that you couldn’t help but want to sing along with, though you might wince at singing something like “Catholic girls / with the tiny little moustache… With a tongue like a cow / she could make you go ‘wow’!” The subject matter – young Joe and his induction to the world of rock ’n’ roll – could be one of those After School Specials from the ’70s if it weren’t for the salty language and references to venereal diseases and the like.
Fast forward only a couple of months from early September ’79 and Zappa releases Joe’s Garage, Acts II & III, a 2-record set that continues where Act I left off. Instead of featuring songs that advanced the plot of Joe’s Garage, this lengthy, melancholy set focused on extended excursions into FZ’s guitar soloing. Which is to say, this is the one for those who are primarily interested in how Frank could develop a solo, from a possibly stark beginning to a meaty middle and on to its satisfying conclusion. “Watermelon in Easter Hay” is a great example, a 9-minute instrumental that displays one of the man’s greatest gifts. There are songs you can sing along to, like “Stick It Out,” but the man and the band’s musicality is what’s mostly to be enjoyed here. The plot is secondary, and though you do get to find out what happens to Joe, it is best explained in the libretto that expands on the themes of free will, free speech, the drawbacks of big government and the evils of Big Brother that the author dared explore.
It must have been daunting to the execs at Zappa’s new record label (they gave him his own imprint, called Zappa Records, at PolyGram earlier that year): did they really want to put out a three-record set that could very well lose money as the artist’s first release on their dollar? Well, I’m not sure how it originally went down when Zappa presented the work to the label suits, but we do know that the album was split into two releases (keeping it greasy so it’d go down easy?). The first record served as a good beginning and the second, 2LP set wrapped up the story. Sadly, the Acts II & III release suffered on its own (if you didn’t buy the first one you were highly unlikely to buy this – and you certainly would have no idea WTF was going on), but when, in 1987, the three records were first put together in one set, the whole shebang made a lot more sense. Thematically, musically, plotwise, it turned out that Joe’s Garage wasn’t nearly as indecipherable as The Who’s Tommy after all. (It actually took a poke at Tommy with the line “see the chrome, feel the chrome, touch the chrome, heal the chrome” [from “Stick It Out”]!)
Joe’s Garage, Acts 1, 2 & 3, finally, puts all of what made Frank Zappa so amazing (his guitar playing, witty lyric writing, clever song arranging) into one enormous but approachable package. The sound of the records is gorgeous, the songs on the records are among FZ’s finest and the physical format, in all its double-gatefold glory, is like the icing on a very tasty cock… err, CAKE!
4.5/5 (Zappa Records ZR3861-1, 2016)
Joe’s Garage, Act I
n guitar, Peter Wolf and Tommy Mars on keys, and various others on the rest. Zappa himself plays guitar, does some of the singing, and plays the role of narrator in the character of The Central Scrutinizer. It’s a role uniquely suited to FZ, as he later became the rock world’s mouthpiece and champion of free speech in the ’80s. (You may remember he testified in front of Congress during the days of Tipper Gore’s PMRC and their modern day witch hunt to persecute and prosecute musicians whose art used “bad language” that was surely going to mess up the minds of our impressionable youths.) Somehow ol’ Frank knew where America was headed and tried to head us off at the pass with his tale of how IT’S NOT THE GOVERNMENT’S BUSINESS TO DECIDE WHAT IT THINKS IS “BAD” FOR ITS CONSTITUENTS.
We heard “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” on the radio yesterday and so today I pulled out the album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road to give it a listen. The 1973 classic by ELTON JOHN still remains his greatest accomplishment, and in 2014 – a year late in celebrating the album’s 40th anniversary – the two-record set was reissued as both a deluxe CD box set and an amazingly great sounding 2LP set. I picked up both at the time but this vinyl edition is one you ought to hunt down. Issued on special yellow vinyl for the first 1700 copies (peculiar amount, don’t you think?), GYBR is pressed on 180-gram vinyl in the EU and benefits from a beautiful mastering job courtesy of legend Doug Sax and Robert Hadley at The Mastering Lab. The instruments come through nice and clear, without hiss and high-end sizzle (as you might hear on percussion such as shakers or high hats) and with solid bass (for the era – they didn’t mix it as loud back then as we do now). The album cover is as it was for the original US pressing, in a triple gatefold configuration with all the song lyrics, cool illustrations for each song and pictures of the band members. You can still find this pressing in stores or online, though I imagine the colored vinyl is out of stock, and if you’re as big a fan of this album as I am, you should pick it up.
Now on to my big observation. Back in the ’70s, for double albums, they pressed the sets with sides one and four on the first record and sides two and three on the second, so if you had a record changer you could stack the records and have the sides play in the correct order. (For you younger folk, record one/side one plays first, then record two/side two drops and plays next; you then take the records off the spindle and flip them over together, put them back on and then record two/side three plays, followed by record one/side four. Brilliant, huh?) Sometime in the ’80s they started putting sides one/two and three/four together, as record changer use had fallen by the wayside and it wouldn’t make sense to split the sides the way they used to. Nowadays those old two record sets are novel because of their side pairings. But I got to thinking: I wonder if sides one and four are my favorites from GYBR because they were paired together on the same record and I was too lazy back then to shuttle the records to and fro to play them in the right order, meaning the songs on sides two and three were played less often because they were on the other record, or if I prefer sides one and four because they have the best songs on them. I mean, “Dirty Little Girl,” “Grey Seal,” “The Ballad of Danny Bailey” and the title track are all great songs and they all appear on sides two and three. But the aforementioned “Funeral for a Friend,” as well as “Bennie and the Jets,” “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting,” “Roy Rogers” and “Harmony” are all on sides one or four…
Some have called it the greatest live album, ever. Some think it’s completely overrated. And then some of us just plain think it’s pretty awesome. Originally, THE WHO’s Live at Leeds was issued in 1970 as a short, single record. A supremely truncated representation of the band’s heralded live shows of the time, it nevertheless was widely considered to be a great live record. Well, now – 46 years later! – you can have the entire concert on vinyl, and it’s a pretty sweet package.
Half-speed mastering is another thing. Some believe it is the salvation of vinyl, some think it’s a gimmick, and then some of us realize there are times when it appears to be a boon and others when it may very well be a bust. Those against it believe the high frequencies benefit from the process but the lows are lessened. (Basically, half speed mastering means the tape is played at half speed and the master is made at half speed, which supposedly lets more information make it into the groove. When you play the resulting record at the proper speed, you are arguably getting more out of your speakers. But even that’s not necessarily so, since your speakers may muddy up the sound from having more information thrown at them!) (I’m so glad I’m not as snobby a hifi enthusiast as some think I am! It’s tiring!) For what it’s worth, you can learn more about Universal’s half speed mastering at their 
NuDisc 