Frank Zappa - 20 years of Frank Zappa.rtf

20 Years of Frank Zappa (12 LP-Box / 12 CD-Box)

·         Various live

·         Various studio

·         Various radio & TV

·         Interview

Boxed set of The Basic Primer: Z-A, The Soundtracks, The Cucamonga Era, Gas Mask, Hotel Dixie, The Grand Wazoo Orchestra, Show & Tell, The Night of the Iron Sausage, Warts & All I, Warts & All II, Soup & Old Clothes and Advanced Study: World Pop Domination

Length: ~514 min
Sound quality: Various
LP box label: Mud Shark MZ4801-4812
CD box label: RXZ Records 313A-324A

Musicians: Various

This is another one of those deluxe retrospective boxes: a 12-album set with a 16-page booklet. The classic recycled sentence is "1000 pressed; 565 seized in one raid; other legal problems netted a further 100 copies". Another recycled sentence, that I've never been able to quite figure out, is "25 sets with 11.5"x11.5" B&W covers front and back". It was released in April 1981. The records were in black & white paper covers. Since then, it has been re-issued twice on vinyl. Some copies have been pressed on grey vinyl, and there is a non-boxed issue known as the "silver set". In the 90s, an Italian (what else?) CD re-issue showed up, on 12 CDs, with two booklets and bonus tracks on The Cucamonga Era.

These are the 12 records:

1. The Basic Primer: Z-A
2. The Soundtracks
3. The Cucamonga Era (CD has bonus tracks)
4. Gas Mask
5. Hotel Dixie
6. The Grand Wazoo Orchestra
7. Show & Tell
8. The Night of the Iron Sausage
9. Warts & All I
10. Warts & All II
11. Soup & Old Clothes
12. Advanced Study: World Pop Domination

All the records have been sold separately and have been given autonomous entries. Their locations and dates are taken from available sources but could very well be quite wrong.

It should be noted that the titles "The Cucamonga Era", "Show & Tell", "Soup & Old Clothes" and "Hotel Dixie" (in that order) are real Zappa titles in that he planned to use them in his own 12-record set The History & Collected Improvisations of Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention. Those plans were never realized, and the box should not be confused with the 10-LP boot box so named. "Soup & Old Clothes", of course, was later used for a solo in the Shut Up & Play Yer Guitar set. Warts & All was an album that never came out from around 1980 (and later the working title for the Lost Episodes). "Night of the Iron Sausage" was a track title on the unreleased double-album version of Zoot Allures, and possibly a working title for the whole album.