Beat The Boots III
Available only from Amazon for now, Beat The Boots III, a six disc continuation of the original Beat The Boot series, is confusing the heck out of just about everybody. Official? ZFT endorsed? Zappa.com is not helping much as it’s currently down. Andrew says: “Back in 2003, Gail said we “can expect a new batch” of Beat The Boots. And here they finally are.”
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May 21st, 2009 at 5:31 pm » Quote
Reasonably priced but no doubt the quality leaves something to be desired. Probably of interest to completists but otherwise no commercial potential!
Call me cynical but I suspect these are recordings the ZFT couldn’t do much about cleaning up so they figured they’d put them out as official bootlegs in mp3 format with minimal costs.
May 21st, 2009 at 6:59 pm » Quote
It looks, at times, that they just chopped up some selections from the second box, the presence of “I’m the Meany” is a dead give away… there also seems to be an orchestral volume with selections from the “World’s Greatest Sinner” soundtrack, no doubt taken off the film (with dialogue and sound effects).
I wonder which disc has “Joe’s Menage”?
May 21st, 2009 at 8:20 pm » Quote
A quote from Paul Sempschi:
Good one, hehe
May 21st, 2009 at 8:29 pm » Quote
They’re also on Napster:
http://tinyurl.com/q7kv6u
May 21st, 2009 at 11:01 pm » Quote
Someone did a nice breakdown of the releases on the zappa.com forum. Most of it is from the Mystery Box. The ‘84 stuff is from Big Mother Is Watching You, and the orchestral pieces are largely from Return of the Son of Serious Music.
May 22nd, 2009 at 1:53 am » Quote
The Beat the Boots set had a point when they were released but now that all this stuff is available for free download in better quality and the bootleggers of this stuff are beaten what is the point.. that is if it is official.
At least with the original Beat The Boots you got the box and some fetish value… as mp3s it is just a rip off of inferior quality material.
May 22nd, 2009 at 6:06 am » Quote
I just think its sad that some kid who just heard about zappa for the first time is gonna go on AmazonMp3 and be exposed to poor quality bootleg recordings. Wouldn’t it make much more sense to have the official releases with high quality sound on the internet nowadays? Buy music is online is no longer a tiny market soley for fetishists, its becoming the way music is purchased today. They need to start taking it seriously and get the catalog out there.
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:46 am » Quote
I agree, Chuck, FZ was making a point about bootlegging in general when he released Beat The Boots in the first place. But a site like Zappateers does a far better job now, I think, of cutting the legs off bootleggers by sharing Zappa field recordings among Zappa enthusiasts (most of whom have bought his catalogue many times over) than to re-release these obviously poor quality recordings on Amazon. And, it is sad, metafunj, that someone new to FZ is going to go to Amazon and download these poor quality bootleg recordings thinking they are getting something unique (which, btw, most Zappa fetishists or completists already have). Who is ultimately responsible for this obvious cash grab for an inferior product?
Wouldn’t it be a sad case, indeed, if the ZFT were the very bootleggers now that Zappateers sought to cut the legs off of? Should the Trust really be releasing excellent quality material instead of worrying about bootlegs that every Zappa collector already has already?
Tell me it isn’t so…
May 22nd, 2009 at 3:24 pm » Quote
Well, this one is just like Urbangraffito’s huge collection or mixes… NOOO – these are better: this mixes have some concept in them, these mixes do not wnat to seem like an “official” thing, accessible, listenable. Hehe, what if UG will make a very similar compilation, by chance?….
May 22nd, 2009 at 6:01 pm » Quote
is balint doing an impersonation of someone?
May 23rd, 2009 at 12:39 am » Quote
If Zappa Records put together a compilation called Tweezer Glint, fully realized and researched, with booklet and liner notes, with fully remastered audio quality, would you purchase it even though piecemeal you could get it all elsewhere at lesser quality?
I know I would.
May 23rd, 2009 at 2:16 pm » Quote
I would be interested if it was xenochrasized solos in their original form like Ocham’s Razor.
I don’t really think I would buy it if it was a lot of YCDTOSA material without studio edits.
May 23rd, 2009 at 8:29 pm » Quote
beer