The Yellow Shark [Original recording remastered]

The intro sees Frank play down his rock-star image; "If you feel like throwing underpants onto the stage, put them right over there...", before opening with one of the older pieces presented here - the combined Dog/Meat (comprising the Dog Breath Variation and Uncle Meat), originally two seperate tracks from the 1969 album Uncle Meat.

Outrage at Valdez is a short piece excerpted from the soundtrack Zappa supplied to the Cousteau Society documentary of the same name. In the soundtrack, you only hear a 50 second excerpt of the theme to this track. Here you get the full piece. Scored primarily for woodwind with backing provided by brass, strings and percussion, the overall impression is of a translucent background with a lyrical melody floating over the top of it - one of Franks more melancholy works.

Times Beach II is the second movement of the wind quintet Times Beach written for the Aspen Wind Quintet. They pronounced one of the movements unplayable (a criticism levelled against Stockhausen's Zeitmasse), and the piece is yet to surface in it's full context. Here, we have an abstract 20th century wind quintet, where meter disolves but rhythm remains.

III Revised is the third movement of the string quartet None of the Above, originally commissioned by the Kronos Quartet. The revision involve the addition of a Contrabass part to the normal Quartet forces. Again, an abstract piece.

The Girl in the Maagnesium Dress, originally from the Perfect Stranger LP is a beautiful piece, featuring fiercely similar forces to Boulez's Marteau san Maitre. The performance and editing on this piece is outstanding - so much so that the music director of the Ensemble Modern thought that he was listening to the Synclavier version with the samples updated.

Be-Bop Tango is the complex little number from the Roxy album, although the themes date from earlier. Here we have it score in a kind of Jazz Ensemble setting, with a cocktail-lounge interlude.

Ruth is Sleeping is a work for solo piano that is so difficult that it is normally attempted as a work for two Pianos. Here, we have a stunning example of Frank's piano writing. Memories of the Piano/Drum Duet are here, other works from 200 Motels, and prefiguring the piano cadenzas on N-Lite.

None of the Above is the first movement of the string quartet mentioned above.

Pentagon Afternoon is what Frank described as a 'tone-poem', featuring an imaginary tableau of the Pentagon officials standing round trying to decide whether to press the big button.

Questi Cazzi di Piccione is a piece for String Quintet. Here, the players were having difficulty counting the rests without a conductor so tapped out the beats on their instruments during rehearsal. Frank liked the sound so much, her wrote it into the piece, and the knockings reminded him of the tapping and scraping of pigeons. The title is a common cry from anyone who has experienced pigeon-related "presents".

Times Beach III is the third movement of Times Beach.

Food Gathering... and Welcome to the United States are two spoken word pieces with conducted improvisations from the EM (under the baton of FZ). Here Frank demonstrates his usual relish in presenting us with the anomalies inherent in a bureaucratic society.

Pound for a Brown and Exercise #4 are two early pieces, again first heard on the Uncle Meat album (#4 is Uncle Meat variations), although the themes themselves are much earlier - Pound for a Brown was allegedly written as a String Quartet during Frank's pre-Mothers years.

Get Whitey is another example of the kind of scoring shown in Outrage at Valdez, with delicate sparse accompaniment, and the melody being passed seamlessly between different instrumental combinations, adding rich colour to an already beautiful piece.

G-Spot Tornado makes a fitting finale, with the ensemble once again performing some of the works first realised on Synclavier (this one from Jazz from Hell). The tempo is fast, the melody is infectious, and the applause at the end makes you realise that this is an all-live album (albeit heavily edited!)