Not the song but the fully edited (gladfully the full MTV footage of the evening gig, which cuts off at "Joe's Garage" is also out there) and "ready for release", but of course never released, 1981 Halloween concert at The Palladium in NY... (The one complaint I had with Frank Zappa was that he was even worse than Prince with editing and dubbing perfectly good material and releasing it or just have it thrown into his huge vaults and gather dust...)

Rediscovering this yet again and I have to say that "Dumb All Over" is still as powerfull as it was the first time I heard it from this gig and it has the best "Prince-style guitar solo" (done by Zappa) that Prince never did... I would love to hear Prince do this one, but this is one song, and I can say this with 100% certainty, that Prince would NEVER do... Sad...

Anyone else enjoy this gig (or gigs, it's a mix of the afternoon gig and the MTV shot material of the evening gig...)?

Neversin.

isn't this concert available on zappa.com as a hybrid cd/dvd thingie? i got my mom a copy of it for her birthday a year or two ago. the concert's all in audio, but there are video clips on it as well that you can play on your DVD player. if you haven't heard of it, go check it out.

Anxiety said:

No, that would be quite impossible to have slipped passed my/my dad's Zappa radar...
You're probably thinking about the 1978 Palladium gig "Halloween" DVD-A...
The gigs I'm talking about is where he's in that red suit Prince wears in the "Scandalous" vid, parts of those gigs ("Nigga Biznis", "Cocaine Decisions", Stevie's Spanking") are on the "The Dub Room Special" 2 Vid (or DVD, of all the things ZFT has they release this... I don't get it... Sure it's rare, but give us the the whole gigs what the "The Dub Room Special" is based on... Dubbing gigs we never get to see... Just Weird... Nice upgrade though for my dad's almost dead vids... But even worse the 2 vids are even more complete than the DVD...)

Neversin.
[Edited 11/12/05 18:07pm]

i have to look for this one. i'm a HUGE Zappa fan, but he has so much out there and sometimes he's hit and miss. i never really cared for the Torture never stops, i love the music and the woman screaming in the background, but his vocals and lyrics were terrible. i'm not gonna totally dismiss this track, i've been lukewarm with some of his material before and have come to love it after a hearing it a million times. Some of his songs are like a fungus spores.

sinisterpentatonic said:

I like the song, but if you haven't seen this gig, do yourself a favour and find it fast...

Basically it's Zappa's final edit of the two gigs of that Halloween day...
Parts of it are on "The Dub Room Special", MTV showed a 90 minute version of the evening gig, and than there's Zappa's different cuts:

1. "Dumb All Over" with mixed footage of the afternoon and the evening gig, lasting for about 50 minutes...

2. Version 1 of "You Are What You Is" which last for about 30 minutes with the first 7 or 8 songs of the afternoon gig... (A MUST HAVE! the afternoon gig was just fierce...)

3. Version 2 of "You Are What You Is" with mixed footage of the afternoon and the evening gig, lasting for about 60 minutes...

4. "The Torture Never Stops" 2 hours with mixed footage of the afternoon and the evening gig... (which was supposed to be released back then...)

And, of course, the 2 hour "leaked" MTV footage of the evening gig (it was broadcast but cut off after the credits...)

Neversin.
[Edited 11/12/05 18:29pm]

.
[Edited 11/12/05 18:28pm]

Neversin said:

ah, i gotcha...i'm nowhere near as big a zappa fan as my mom is, though i try to check out zappa.com a couple times a year for new collector's items i can get her for gifts. have they offered anything new lately? "the dub room special"...is that a new item over there?

yeah, i have this on dvd (i have had it on vhs for many years). 1981 was not my favorite era for fz. my least favorite tour was 1984, then is second least favorite is 1981. i didn't like the guitar effects he used on the les paul so much that year. i do love the versions of alien orifice and strictly genteel, however, from that dvd. and, the version of sinister footwear from the late show is superb as well.

what the hell was tommy mars wearing??? dude, bad choice!!

medoc2003 said:

I don't like the way he overused the flanger on his guitar, but strangely enough he edited taht into the gig for the release, the original concert, as performed, didn't have the use of the flanger...


He reminds of some caveman cartoon character I just can't remember which one...

Neversin.
[Edited 11/13/05 8:21am]

Anxiety said:

It pretty new, it's a tape of him sitting in some dubbing room dubbing 2 gigs (one is the awesome 1974 KCET gigs and the other is the 1981 Halloween gigs...) with some pretty weird and trippy claymation stuff in between...
This could be obtained back in the day through his mailorder service and now they released it on DVD (although some minor stuff has been edited out for the DVD release...)

Check out Zappa.com's intro...

Neversin.
[Edited 11/13/05 8:34am]