Sometimes you know a show is going to be special a few minutes into it… When Dweezil and crew took the stage and cranked into “Eye of the Tiger” - I knew it was going to be good.
I had never been to the Lincoln Theatre and was surprised at how tiny it was. It reminded me a lot of the old Cat’s Cradle in Chapel Hill. The show was sold out and soon the place was packed with a mix of old Zappa fans, young kids and several people their with their son/daughter, mother/father.
The music was loud, and I should have had some plugs with me, but it wasn’t obnoxiously so. The mix was great, no one was overbearing and Dweezil had an awesome tone throughout the whole show. They played a great mix of Frank’s tunes. Dweezil joked at the end that they could keep doing this awhile as they “had plenty of material to choose from”. The played some old stuff, they played some classics and several times near the end they seriously jammed, Dweezil throwing his hands up in the air to tell them to ‘keep it going’ which the band did with ease. Dweezil has some awesome musicians backing him up. Frank’s music is challenging and everyone on stage gave an amazing performance.
Dweezil really shone. He was one of the happiest looking musicians I’ve ever seen on stage. Frequently he would be pulling off these amazing riffs while casually looking over at one of the other musicians with this huge shit eatting grin on his face. He just seemed to be soaking up the energy of his father’s music from his bandmates and the crowd. The crowd was feeding off it as well and at one point a pair of panties even made it up onstage!
They played for almost 3 hours only taking a few breaks to tune or fix something. After the show it was nice to see Dweezil out on stage, talking to fans and signing autographs. Usually after most shows I go to the band scurries off to the bus never to be seen again.
Dweezil mentioned that he hopes to keep this show on the road, sharing Frank’s music with old fans and especially introducing new fans to the music.
I hope he comes back to Raleigh again. I’ll be there.
Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is THE BEST… ~ “Packard Goose” (Joe’s Garage)
For more info - including a few good blog posts about the Raleigh show - check out the official Zappa Plays Zappa site.
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The Zappa Plays Zappa, Raleigh, NC by Jim , unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Wow…. I would have loved to see that. I’ve been a Zappa fan for many years.