By recording everything he did and storing it in ‘The Vault’ under his home in Los Angeles, Frank Zappa anticipated the modern age. At a time when the BBC were taping over comedy classics that can never be seen again, Zappa’s preservation of his own material – and let’s face it, there’s a lot of it – looks almost visionary now.
It means that the Zappa Family Trust, run by his son Ahmet, always has something fresh for fans to devour more than 30 years after the artist’s death. Sometimes there are never-heard-before live albums of NYC Halloween shows from 1977 and 1981, or forays to Zagreb and Ljubljana in 1975 that could be deemed nonessential. Then there’s Cheaper Than Cheep, which feels like striking oil.
