BABY SNAKES
| BABY SNAKES |
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A movie about people who do stuff that is not normal
Distributed by Eagle Vision
5:1 Dolby digital surround sound-produced by Dweezil Zappa
Executive producer-Gail Zappa
PERSONNEL
Terry Bozzio
Roy Estrada
Adrian Belew
Ed Mann
Patrick o’Hearn
Tommy Mars
Peter Wolf
Frank Zappa
CHAPTER LISTING
1- Baby snakes rehearsal
2- "This is the show they never see"
3- Baby snakes
4- Bruce Bickford/"Disco out freakage"
5- The poodle lecture
6-"She said"/City of tiny lights
7- New York’s finest crazy persons
8- "The way the air smells"
9- Pound-bass&kybds solo
10- "In you"rap/Dedication
11- Managua/police car/drum solo
12- Disco boy
13- "Give people somewhere to xscape thru"
14- King kong/Roy’s halloween gas mask
15- Bobby Brown goes down
16- Conehead/"All you need to know"
17- I’m so cute/"Entertainment all the way"
18- Titties ‘n’beer/"Audience participation/Black page #2 & the dance
contest
19- Jones crusher
20- Broken hearts are for assholes
21- Punky’s whips
22- "Thank-you"/Dinah moe humm
23- Camarillo brillo/Muffin man
24- San Ber’dino
25- Black napkins
26- New York's finest#2 & credits
27- "Good night"
At 2hours and 44 mins,this dvd is truly a monster, and well worth the very
reasonable £12.99 price tag. The packaging is well thought out and the liner
notes come in the style of an FBI case file, and also include the famous no-d
glasses,
The actual concert footage featured on this dvd only accounts for about 35-40
mins of the running time of the film, and is shot in New York on Halloween 1979.
Nothing there that hard core Zappa fans won’t have seen before, but the versions
of "The poodle lectures" and the "Audience participation"
are very entertaining though. What makes this film special is the inclusion
of Bruce Bickford’s claymation. When you consider that these were shot frame
by frame on very primitive camera equipment by todays standards, you begin to
realize just how amazing the "amazing Mr. Bickford" really is. Set
to zappa’s sprawling soundscapes, these little clay masterpieces are worth the
£13 on their own, but when added to the other ingredients in this film they
all add up to something quite special. One of the reviews quotes this film in
the liner notes as" the ultimate carnival of the eyes"and that’s a
pretty good description.
One of my only down points of the dvd is the inclusion of Roy Estrada and his
"Little rubber girl". For me it is too long and soon gets on your
nerves as it brings nothing to the overall enjoyment of the film. But there
is some good backstage footage of the band that shows an insight into the dynamics
of a Zappa band whilst on the road,as does the inclusion of the rehearsal sessions,which
brings home how much of a perfectionist Zappa really was.Talk about a hard task
master: "if it ain’t perfect it gets done again!!, Then when it is perfect
it could still be better."
This dvd constantly shifts from live footage to outtakes and rehearsals, then
to Bickfords claymations and back again to interviews however without losing
it’s fluidity. It’s a perfect example of Zappa’s theory of conceptual continuity
in one huge two and three quarter hour package. It has a wide release so there’s
no trouble getting hold of a copy.
On it’s release this film won the 1st prize at the "Iinternational
Festival of Musical Films" held in Paris in March 1981.
Overall I’d say that Babysnakes is a must for any Zappa fan and I score this
dvd 8 out of 10.
Review by Matty Hanson (vivien_o_blivion)
