Frank Zappa - Entire Catalogue Remastered and Reissued

Based on the list of 12, I suppose they lack rights to 200 motels

 

Correct.

Ryko licensed it for a few years to get the CD released, but that expired and it went back out of print.

I doubt that it is a priority for the ZFT at the moment.

 

Me too.

 

When are these out again? July? I want some info NOW!

Hope we are told soon EXACTLY what we are getting. I am not keen on replacing ALL my Rykos, but there are a few that need fixin'! Bring it on, ZFT!

 

C'mon now Mr White Port, you know you will eventually, its an illness

 

I think I'll get all the remastered albums first and then, depending on quality of packaging, get the rest. I'm very eager to see the official list of what has been remastered. Will be very disappointed if Uncle Meat, Hot Rats, Zoot Allures and Sheik Yerbouti isn't in that list.

 

The only thing I want is the Junior Mintz Boogie 45, then I'm done

 

So if these are straight reissues, Uncle Meat should not include the lengthy penalty track, correct?

 

Even if the three penalty tracks are included, the entire LP program should be on one disc and the penalty tracks isolated on the other.

Right now, we don't know the exact configuration of anything, but a single disc Uncle Meat would be quite welcome.

 

Well, the penalty tracks are just audio-only excerpts from the 'Uncle Meat' videocassette. If they're going to include them on a second disc, they might as well just include the whole video as a DVD instead. Either way, though, it's including 1987 material on a 1969 album, and that's just not proper form.

It almost, kind of, slightly, made sense back in 1987 when the CD was first issued, as redbook standards forced the album proper to be spread over two discs anyway, and presumably Frank hoped that people would be impressed enough with the penalty tracks to want to spend a further $50 on buying the videocassette. (assuming they hadn't already)

I can understand the need to keep the CD-only material from 'In New York', 'Man From Utopia' and 'Sleep Dirt', for instance, but there's nothing unique on the UM penalty tracks that can't be permanently discarded once the "making of" documentary video comes back in print.

 

The USA roxy Cd also had a Remix of Cheepnis for some reason whereas the UK/EU Cd did not. It still had the added reverb and thin eq though.

 

It's sad that 200 Motels ost isn't one of the re-issues, it really deserves the same treatment as the others.

 

I swear that Roxy DVD just isn't ever going to happen.

 

The first pressing of the USA CD had the original mix of "Cheepnis" (I have one!).

 

Frank/ZFT never owned the rights to this.

 

I actually never noticed any added reverb on Roxy, but I don't doubt that it's there.

Nor, for that matter, have I ever actually spotted an original BP disc of Roxy without the Cheepnis remix in the wild. Have we ever pinned down why, exactly, Frank chose to remix that cut?

 

BTW, Amazon is listing the Uncle Meat remaster as 2 discs. Now, Amazon has been wrong in the past. Even if this is accurate, I'd love to believe your idea that the second disc is the film. Right now, I just see it as a red flag that the penalty tracks are staying.

 

Guess it seemed like a good idea to him that day. I doubt there was another reason.

 

True. It seems interesting that he'd do that and not do, say, "Village of the Sun." A large chunk of the Wackerman drum overdubs can be rationalized as being prompted by the Thing-Fish project, but I don't think it's clear from whence this remix dates.

 

I thought it was owned by Universal.

 

Wow, I never knew that, I thought only non us ones has the proper mix.

 

OMG, I think you're right.

 

I think it will happen. Here's what Joe Travers said a while back: "Basically the film footage, the negatives were transferred by Frank in the '80s using '80s technology. What we want to do is go back to the original negatives and do it in High Definition and then create a 5.1 mix from the original masters so that we have surround sound as well as Frank's 2 channel stereo mix. Once we get all that together, then we need to cut the program. Edit the program together, camera angles, what shows, what we are going to include from what shows or include all the shows."

All that work takes a lot of time and money. So be patient!

 

Isn't it MGM that own the rights?

 

Yeah, I thought it was MGM too?