Zappa '88: The Last U.S. Show. Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa would have turned 81 this year, had his life not been prematurely ended due to cancer at the age of 52. This fact has not stopped the estate of Mr. Zappa to release a prolific amount of records since. Just before going on holiday another one was announced, "The Last U.S. Show". This appealed to me for a few reasons, which I'll come back to.

FZ was in my life before I had heard a single song by the man ever. His iconic face was hard to escape in publications. His music was however. No radio station played a song as far as I was aware. That made his music not only unheard but also beyond reach for a teenager with little money and hard pressed what to spend his little money on.

This changed in 1979 when I saw the artwork of 'Sheik Yerbouti'. This was such a great and strong picture. It just had to contain a good record. I bought it on the spot and came home with an exuberant and far out there album. The avant garde songs on the album were very far out for my burgeoning tastes, the other half was utterly brilliant and the start of a musical relationship. Not that I could stomach it all. Far from, but collection does contain so many great albums that the others are fully pardonable. They just did not grow on me, not even as an acquired taste.

I saw Zappa twice and the second time, perhaps in 1983, the man just kept on soloing for ever. When, like on this record, this happens a few times, his solos are inventive, different and utterly brilliant. When overdoing it, like on my last Zappa show, it becomes extremely boring. Because they do simply sound sort of the same. So when it became 1988 and his last records were not exactly my favourites, I decided to pass on.

And then came the review in our student dorm's newspapers and I knew I had made a grave mistake in not going. He played a lot of the songs that I would have loved to hear live and had brought a full horn section with him. Somewhere along the line I have bought the double cd 'The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life', but never really played it, I think, Zappa was passé for me in the 00s.

Come 2021 and I'm listening to the last US show from the Nassau Collisseum, plus two other songs from the same tour. The effect is sort of mindblowing. This twelve piece band is so good and so tight. The level of musicianship is utterly fantastic. Better than what the man had done before? Listening to his previous live albums from the 1970s, I have to say yes. Next to the fact that the band plays great, it nearly plays everything in music. The 'Bolero' over a reggae rhythm, show tunes, The Beatles, for real and as a show piece on U.S. TV preachers with altered lyrics, a fantastic cover of 'Stairway To Heaven' with the horns playing a part of Jimmy Page's iconic solo. And everything from Zappa's then 20 plus year career.

After touring Europe the band disintegrated and the second leg of the U.S. tour was cancelled. Robbing thousands of Americans of a final chance to see the man live. We now know how things ended. In the meantime 23 years after those final shows this time document is released from the live recordings made at the time. It only goes to show what a talent was lost to the world. There's no way of knowing what FZ woud have released had been able to live longer. It may well be, that I would not have liked it, like everything he released after 1983. But who can tell?

Fact is that in 2021 I can relive the experience I forfeited on in 1988 and only now really know what I've missed. The reviewers in 'De Volkrant' and 'NRC Handelsblad' were absolute right. Stuff legends are made off.

Wout de Natris