Shut Up and play your guitar 1,2,3

Shut Up and play your guitar 1,2 &3

There's no need to be a guitar player to appreciate this album, although it certainly doesn't hurt in one's appreciation of just how unorthodox FZ's style was. But the whole point of this set is NOT to showcase how good a guitar player Zappa was, but of how good a musical mind he had. One of Frank's favorite things to do was improvising solos; it was an interesting challenge to him, to spontaneously come up with musical events worth listening to. Lest you think this set is self-indulgent, be aware that Zappa was very critical of his abilities. He considered most of the solos he played to be failures; what you hear on these discs is a collection of the ones which he thought were worth sharing with the world. In fact this was originally a mail-order release and was eventually licensed to CBS for sale in stores due to overwhelming demand. It seems even Frank didn't know how good he was. So how to approach an album like this? We know we're not listening for guitar gonzo show-offy pyrotechnics. We're listening for musical ideas. It's improvised and there is sensitive interplay between FZ and his rhythm sections, but it isn't jazz. It's sort of weird avant-rock, in a very unique style. Nothing else sounds quite like it. It's like beautiful electric improvisations from Mars.
Each CD is almost precisely 35 minutes long, and while I'm not a CD space nazi (people who insist that every second available on a CD should be filled), these albums could've been released on 2 CDs (which would've provided for extended play, but hey, not really that big a deal). Zappa typically plays with a clean tone which is entirely appropriate for his precise, intricate performances. However, his guitar sound is occasionally too similar to other performances with only subtle differences despite his use of different guitars. It can get to be a bit much listening to this straight through (actually a good argument for keeping each original album separate, along with preserving the original presentation of this music of course). You definitely have to be in the right mood to hear this stuff (which I would venture is actually the case for all of Zappa's music).