So, I went and saw ZPZ on saturday night in Atlantic city and decided to share my thoughts on the whole thing with you fine folks here at .info. I know a bunch of you guys are Zappa fans like I am. Anyways, I saw them at the House of Blues in the beautiful and ever so scenic Atlantic City. The show was interesting and amazing at the same time. Among the songs I can remember they played Black Napkins, San Berdino, Yo Mama, G-Spot Tornado, Dupree\'s Paradise, Willie the Pimp, How Could I be such a fool? I ain\'t got no heart, Pygmy Twilight, The Illinoios Enema Bandit, Cosmik Debris, Dumb All Over... there were a bunch more...
Overall a very cool show. Dweezil is certainly fucking talented. It was interesting to hear him emulate his dad on some of the solos, and it was also very interesting to hear him go in different directions than Frank did. They also had Frank up on a big screen behind them for some songs, playing guitar and singing along with the band. There were a couple of really cool moments where the footage was of Frank doing a solo and trading licks with whoever was onstage (I am pretty sure it was Vai at the time, either that or Ray White, it seemed to be the same show from the Dub Room Special, the 80\'s part). So Frank would solo and then trade the licks with Dweezil, kind of a father son tag team of guitar shreddin\'.
Ray White was singing too, which really made the show. I don\'t want to say he stole the show, because he certainly was not upstaging anybody, but he definitely seemed to have the most energy. That was the strange thing about the show to me, the energy level of the whole group seemed really odd. Dweezil certainly looked happy but did not seem to be has energetic as Frank. Of course I never actually saw a Zappa show, but I have a number of DVDs. In these Frank and his band usually are pretty high energy jumping around and come across almost as much as actors (or dancers or something) as well as musicians.
Before the show started they had on the big screen a thing for the show, a bunch of clips put together without sound and a banner across it that said "Zappa Plays Zappa, ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES" This immediately brought back memories of Project/Object, as it seemed to be an obvious shot at them. In comparison of the two groups The musicianship is hard to pin down on either side, of course ZPZ had Dweezil and Ray White, but overall both bands consist of extremely talented and dedicated musicians. I will say, however, that Project/Object definitely had a hell of a lot more stage presence, which ZPZ made up for with the nostalgia factor that is Frank\'s kid.
Anyways... I thought I would share that with y\'all. I don\'t know if any of you guys have seen ZPZ or P/O or both and felt the same way or different.
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