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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Here comes Greggery, 30 Nov 2010
This review is from: Studio Tan (Audio CD)
Well, I guess this is one that's going to divide the fans, as is apparent from the other reviews. It's also not the place I would recommend to start out for newcomers to Uncle Frank's oeuvre. I think it's an insanely fantastic masterpiece, but then I like Stravinsky, Bartok, and all those heavy duty composers that even the classical heads aren't so sure about, so who's going to care what I think? Still, at this point in his career this was probably Zappa's most earnest attempt to do rigorously atonal, polysynchronous, terpsichorean mayhem, and those with a taste for the truly strange will recognise it for the warped genius it epitomises. But, make no mistake, this is rock'n'roll in only the most rarefied sense. Which is not to say that there are not some great little solos peppered about here and there, both from Frank's excruciated guitar and from George Duke's smooth and luscious keys, but this album is primarily and secondarily about envelope wrenching composition. The fact that Zappa chose to embed the whimsical satire of The Adventures of Greggery Peccary inside such an outrageously ambitious compositional behemoth is further testimony to the limitless elasticity of the Project/Object concept, and the robust veracity of his methodological axiom, `anything, anytime, anywhere, for no particular reason'. If you're OK with Yellow Shark, Perfect Stranger, LSO and the Marx Brothers, then yer gonna love this, otherwise there are about forty seven other Zappa albums you're going to want to hear before getting around to this one. Oh, one more thing, this is one of the few Zappa albums you can play in front of the kids without fear of inducing any of the less subtle forms of delinquency.
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8 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
small, but perfectly formed..., 9 Dec 2001
This review is from: Studio Tan (Audio CD)
A wee cracker, which like most of FZ's releases, produces more snippits of conceptual continuity the more times you listen to it. Gregary Peccary, probably the weakest of the 4 tracks still makes me laugh out loud at least twice. Revised Music.... when that sublime solo kicks in... my god (it's actually a guitar solo that Frank transcribed to be played by the rest of the band at a later date, true Xenochrony at work. Lemme Take You To The Beach? Absolutely hilarious, frantic, heartfelt, touching even? RDNZL- a tour de force, solos galore, uplifting, rounding off a neat wee package.
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1 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Half good, half goof, 21 Jan 2008
This review is from: Studio Tan (Audio CD)
There are two interesting and worthy jazz instrumentals which push their boundaries just a fraction. Those are worth the price of the album on their own. There is a surf-pop pastiche which is actually quite listenable and thankfully nice and short. Then there is the utter waste of effort and 20 precious minutes of your time that is The Adventures of Greggery Peccary, which is even worse than the excesses of that abominable Nanook.
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