YOU CAN'T DO THAT ON STAGE ANYMORE: LIVE COMPILATIONS #1


From 1987 onwards Zappa turned his attention more and more to the large tape vault at the cellars of his house in Los Angeles with all the live recordings and unreleased studio tracks. He had the habit of changing his compositions a little and sometimes drastically for each tour and even during a tour. So the tape vault contained a large collection of different versions or "covers" of his music. Some of it had already appeared in the first half of the eighties: a third of "Tinsel town rebellion", "Baby snakes" and most of "Does humor belong in music" (1985) consisted of such recordings. Now he set off to compile a six double CD series from the tapes called "You can't do that on stage anymore" (YCDTOSA), released during the period 1988-1992. This series, as well as the bootleg albums, show that Zappa didn't write most of his material with a specific album in mind. Some of the bootlegs were "officially" released in limited supply as the "Beat the boots" series of 1991/2 to spoil the bootleg market (see the left menu). The compositions were added to a pool of unreleased compositions, from which from time to time the albums were extracted. Many songs were part of the concert program for some time, before they appeared on album.

The vault, still from "The present day composer refuses to die" (Frank Scheffer).

Most of these CDs contain quite some unreleased material. When you include the solos the "You can't do that on stage anymore" series offers between 30 and 40 minutes of music that you can qualify as new per CD. Zappa always looked for new approaches to his music, giving each release some specific characteristics of its own. The special treat of this massive series here is that this time it is not chronological, but an arbitrary selection of music from all concerts from all periods. It's looking at his entire career from another angle and, as far as I know, never been done this way before by other artists. Next are examples of unreleased pieces from the series.

- Vol. I: "Babette" is a simple vocal harmony love song from 1974. Zappa loved such pieces and normally included one or two in the concert program. They could be either composed by himself or covers, as at the end of vol. IV.
- Vol. II: This volume is entirely devoted to a single concert held at Helsinki, 1974. See the Roxy section for "Approximate".
- Vol. III: The next piece is a rock song from the 1984 tour, called "Ride my face to chicago".
- Vol. IV: In the 1984 version of "The black page" the disco vamp from the Disco section above has been replaced by a raggae type vamp. A then popular fast kind of it, called ska.
- Vol. V: Next is a short jazz composition, the jazz element being effected by the free bass movement, syncopes and the shifting through keys. For disc I of vol. V: see the Weasels section.
- Vol. VI: The last example is a cooperation with L. Shankar on violin. The vamp for the violin solo is in 13/8 with Zappa counting through it at the beginning: "One two - One two three - ONE - TWO - THREE - FOUR".

Babette, theme (midi file)
Ride my face to chicago, theme (midi file)
The black page (1984), opening bars (midi file)
Shall we take ourselves seriously (midi file)
Thirteen, riff (midi file)

Babette, theme (transcription).
Ride my face to chicago, theme (transcription).
The black page (1984), opening bars (transcription).
Shall we take ourselves seriously (transcription).
Thirteen, riff (transcription).

"Honey, do't you want a man like me?" is today available in four versions. I'll take the opening, with two of the three main themes, to indicate the changes upon this song, that Zappa made for the corresponding tours. There are each time four years between the sequent shows. The premiere of this piece is on "Zappa in New York". For the 1980 tour he changed the opening riff such drastically, that only when the lyrics begin you'll realise it's a "Honey, do't you want a man like me?" version. It's available on the recent ZFT "Buffalo" CD, with Zappa surprising himself that he can't remember the words of one particular bar. For the 1984 gigs he returned to the original riff with some variation upon it and a keyboard off beat counter movement (YCDTOSA III). In 1988 a brass section was present to add another little on beat figure. The 1988 version is otherwise basically the same, but here the riff halts during the bars with lyrics except for the bass line (YCDTOSA VI). All versions have pattern breaking bars as the ones with the 32nd notes.

Honey, don't you want a man like me?, opening, 1976 (midi file)
Honey, don't you want a man like me?, opening, 1980 (midi file)
Honey, don't you want a man like me?, opening, 1984 (midi file)
Honey, don't you want a man like me?, opening, 1988 (midi file)

Honey, don't you want a man like me?, opening, 1976-1988 (transcriptions).

The live compilations now cover:

Title	Released	Date of the tracks
- Baby snakes (DVD/CD)	1979/1983	1977
- The dub room special (DVD/CD)	1984	1974/1981
- Does humor belong     in music (CD/DVD)	1985	1984
- YCDTOSA, Vol. I	1988	1969-1984
- YCDTOSA, Vol. II	1988	1974
- YCDTOSA, Vol. III	1989
disc 1		1982-1984
disc 2		1971-1984
- YCDTOSA, Vol. IV	1991	1969-1988
- The best band you never heard     before in your life	1991	1988
- Make a jazz noise here	1991	1988
- YCDTOSA, Vol. V	1992
disc 1		1965-1969
disc 2		1982
- YCDTOSA, Vol. VI	1992	1970-1988
- Playground psychotics	1992	1971
- Ahead of their time	1993	1968
- ZFT: FZ:OZ	2002	1976
- ZFT: Halloween (audio DVD)	2003	1978
- ZFT: Imaginary diseases	2006	1972
- ZFT: Buffalo	2007	1980
- ZFT: Wazoo	2007	1972
- The torture never stops (DVD)	2008	1981