Hey!!! No Trance-Fusion thread? I suppose everyone here had already heard it as a bootleg, but still, Bob Ludwig and GZ’s liner notes could generate discussion.
Well here you go! Got the album? Love it? Hate it? Mixed feelings?
15 thoughts on “Got Trance-Fusion?”
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call me what you will…
without hearing TF, I think I will tend to agree with Bill. I come from the same background and appreciation of all things early MOI. Still, I looked forward to the chance to buy this disc from a local independent retailer (I want them to stay in business selling all types of stuff) and, yes, from the ZFT (I want them to know there might just be a market for this stuff, if they’d just get there shit together).
I went to the store on 24 oktober to buy it, only to find the release date had once again “slipped”. I haven’t been back, and I’m not in any hurry. maybe someday…
…chicken? perhaps.
there? their.
Being a young’n getting into Zappa strictly after the fact, I really have never followed the whole ‘lacking humanity’ thing in Zappa’s music. It’s always been filled with laughter, which is one of the most human things there is.
But Trance-Fusion is a littel dissappointing to me. I don’t own Shut Up or Guitar, but I agree with the person who said they’d prefer to hear them ‘in context’. It’s why ‘Chunga’s Revenge’ is clearly one of the standouts on the album. I just think we need some Composed stuff to balance out the stream of thought improvised stuff.
FeralCats, well these are on the spot compositions. and you gotta get SUNPYG. that is a must. i for one really do enjoy TF. as for GZ liner notes….there is some of it i don’t understand. the elevator story for one. any one able to explain?
Thanks, KUR, for being a tender, caring, responsive website!
You’re most welcome, Person Of The Bird Persuasion. However, as soft and tender inside your comment makes me feel, you do realize that with my creating this thread at your request, you are now obligated to sign up at the forums for Kill Ugly Radio’s World Tour — do you? :)
I have had TF for a week now. After waiting over 13 years, I must say this is a big dissapointment. I wonder how much Gail meddled with it?
Any Inca Roads solo is usually worth a listen, and there are two or three other goodies, but most of them don’t work well out of context…as others have stated.
Regarding the liner notes, If Gail runs her business like she writes, it’s a wonder anything ever gets done.
Sorry folks, but this just hammers home the cold reminder that FZ has been dead a long time and The Vault is more folklore than fact.
I can’t believe all this negativity. “Maybe I’ll buy it one of these days,” “sounds like Gail messed with it,” “I miss the original Mothers.” Good fucking grief, guys–this is over an hour of primo Zappa guitar solos, edited together by the maestro himself. The only thing Gail and Dweezil did was to take Frank’s two-track mixdown to a superb engineer, as noted in the booklet, who (probably at great expense to the ZFT) remastered it to sound really great. Get some better loudspeakers, get your ear canals unwaxed, whatever it is you guys need, but listen to this thing with open ears. It’s a masterpiece. And the cover is a beautiful statement of Frank’s legacy. It’s as if Gail is saying she still sees him everywhere, even in dolphins playing together. The dolphins in the shape of Frank’s trademark moustache are like the music inside: a one-of-a-kind event, multiple spontaneous creations molded into a new, artistic whole. If you don’t get it, then maybe you should stick with K-Fed.
Yeah, critisizing one album makes out minds go straight to hell.
Some of the cuts on here are really primo stuff- ‘Ask Dr. Stupid, Trance-Fusion, Bowling on Charon, Butter and Cannons’..these and more sound like ‘spontaneous compositions’. But there are others which simply would have benefitted from being in their actual context, like ‘A Cold Dark Matter’ (Which is one of my favorites.)
Re: KUR World Tour, I’m in once I figure out this futuristic computer stuff.
The cover of T-F is great and makes me hear the CD better (similarly — don’t albums on Impulse like Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders kind of sound orange and black?) The only way I see this CD as a disappointment is that, unlike SUNPYG and Guitar, it is only one disc. When will Joe Travers freak out, take out a loan, and finance the digitally remastered ” ‘Any Downers 1975’ Variation Variations”, then start crapping out a quarterly FZ guitar solo compilation, each disc culled from performances of a single song from a single tour. Sheer madness, non?
>>> What is Ylem? It’s on the back of the CD.
Answered my own question, I think. Ain’t Google great?
In “Ylem” (1972) he [Karlheinz Stockhausen]instructs 19 musicians to establish telepathic communication with each other while performing this 26-minute happening.
No store in Halifax NS is stocking this gem. Think I’ll pick it up with Corsage, Xmassage, will make for strangely dissonant evening. A fun thing to do actually, jarr different eras/sounds of Zappa together.
Anyhow, anyone willing to do a write up comparing the bootleg mix with the official release?
I always figured the dolphins were in a clusterfuck (CC clusterfuck in “My Head”).
P-Rip: Gail DOES run her business like she writes liner notes. That’s why it took 13 years to get this album released!
I son’t have Trance-Fusion yet, but I saw it and I must say, the picture of Frank on the back is wonderful.