This is De Effenaar, a new concert hall that hosted a performance of Zappa Plays Zappa this evening. In my home town no less!

At 5:30 I ate a little, afterwards I got dressed in my Donald Duck shirt and posted at the Z-forum that, if any members present wanted to say hi, they'd need to look out for a lady in a Donald shirt.
I got on my bicycle at 6:30, and as usual, I begin slightly too late with recalling whether I had anything I needed. Donald tee? Check. Extra vest? Check. Agenda with ZPZ ticket? (opens bag) Check. Camera? Check. Spare batteries? Check. Keys? Check. Ballpoint to jot down the setlist?
Oh fuck. To me the setlist is very important to help me remember the events of the evening, and although I'm pretty good at remembering which tunes were played, I was nervous about forgetting huge sections of concert.
So I decided to shoot a snippet of each and every tune the band played. I'll stick them all together and make a YouTube vid of it, but that will come later.

I entered the hall about ten minutes to 7, and the concert was scheduled at 7:15. A long wait, and what didn't make it easier for me was that it was particularly hot in the theatre.
But fortunately my shirt worked! I met the lovely Unica and entourage.
Also near me was a father and his daughter, a ten-year-old or something. Cute kid. She and two other young girls were invited to stand in front of the fencing, to keep from getting squashed.

Anyway, after a while, the crowded hall (sell-out, and at a thousand people standing it was VERY full) was getting impatient and started applauding loudly whenever a song from the warmup tape had ended. And around 7:30, DZ and gang show up!


This is my first pic of DZ this evening. Unfortunately the light was coming from behind the players, and no lights from the front, making photosnapping very hard. The NO FLASH signs everywhere didn't make me overcome my aversion towards flash photography.


My only good photo of this evening! I stood near the edge and could only see Peter Griffin and Jamie Kime if they went up to the mikes. I was decently at front though, getting annoyed at someone who was definitely not entertained. If you don't like the show, get out of the front seat and leave it to someone who'd love to stand in front of Jamie.

After a short banter with the crowd, DZ announces the first song of the evening: Purple Lagoon.
DZ announces there will be several Roxy songs this evening.
Then, the newbie Ben Thomas got up on stage for the first time for Penguin in Bondage. I was rather sceptic about the ZPZ performance, with the wonderful keyboardplayer Aaron Arntz out of the team and Ray White's departure, but Thomas has a fantastic heavy voice, he gave a consistent and great performance!
Up next, Wind Up Working In A Gas Station! A delicious song that always cheers me up. And yes, I stuck up my thumb. Like most people.

Next on the playlist: Magic Fingers! A delightful rendition, with an unusually highpitched Joe Travers on the "Do you really want to hurt me?" lines, and a heavy voiced Scheila Gonzales with the "You know I do..."

The final monologue, "There are a lot of reasons why I'd drag a girl such as yourself to a motel room and..." was dealt between the various players. Nice to hear Peter Griffin's voice, and totally epic to hear DZ say "while I did a weewee in your hair..."

[Edited on 23-5-09 by BBP]

The band began rolling after this, with Inca Roads. Of my previous ZPZ concerts, the very best solo was not by Steve Vai, but by Dweezil Zappa. He truly moved me in Brussels with his Inca Roads.
Unfortunately this time he was having problems with his SG. He stated this during the encore, which I filmed. My Inca vid shows him tuning the guitar. I liked the performance nonetheless and I hope the Brussels solo surfaces sometime.
Inca had a fantastic solo all the same: Scheila was rocking her sax fantastically, creating a great response! She also played the flute later on in the song. She was also singing, playing keyboards and playing percussion. Whoa. Respect!

Dweezil then announced they were playing something of Lumpy Gravy. Lumpy's my favourite Zappa album! So I shot the entire song: Duodenum. I'll upload it onto YouTube as soon as I can.
I also recorded the next song, another favourite: Peaches En Regalia! I was surprised to hear that, I assumed they'd scratched that off the setlist with Aaron's departure. But there it was, fun as ever! You'll find it on YouTube soon!


Next came the Roxy threesome! They'd also played two of them during the 06 tours and I'd heard them live with the fantastic Napoleon Murphy Brock singing Village Of The Sun.
Ben Thomas must've had a lot on his shoulders, but he and Scheila gave a wonderful performance on Village!
After that, another 06er and another BB-fave: Echidna's Arf (Of You), a funky and bizarre tune I can never get tired of!
This was followed by (I assume) Don't You Ever Wash That Thing? It was another nicety with much improv.

Some more banter with the audience. The father of the cute kid described in the first post, was yelling Ship Ahoy! several times, much to the embarrassment of his daughter. DZ finally responded to it this time round, which didn't stop the man from yelling Ship Ahoy.

Then DZ announced there'd be some Joe's Garage. YAY! He switched from his SG to his other guitar.
And then the band played Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up. I sang along, and it was another good performance, although I'm not too keen on the tune.
And then, the ever wonderful Outside Now, a very emotional rendition by Ben.
Dweezil then took off his guitar, switched to the SG, then changed his mind and grabbed the other guitar again. He explained that his mind was way out of there, something to do with the chicken he had for dinner. But hopefully the next song would wake him.
It sure woke me! It was Bamboozled By Love! I like that song, and unfortunately my CD copy of TTR is scratched at this very song. So I really sucked myself into it and sang along loudly (which I did all the evening anyway, even with Echidna).
Halfway the song, the band suddenly picked a much faster rock tempo! It sounded terrific!

Then I kinda lost track. The band was improvising much, starting with a great percussion solo, a Jamie solo over PackardGoose, a Pete Griffin solo, a very awkward African style Ben Thomas vocal pièce de résistance with call n response audience participation, and something reminiscent of King Kong with a Scheila sax solo in which she played, oh yawn, the Pink Panther theme. She also played that twice in her Amsterdam 06 solo, and once in the Brussels 06 solo. The rest of her bit truly kicked ass though. You'll have to wait for my YouTube vid to get some clarification for this section, as I completely lost track of my Zappas. I'm real bad at naming instrumentals.

Some more banter, which I captured on vid, and DZ announced Trouble Every Day! This song had IMO Dweezil's best solo of the evening. This night he didn't really seem to be enjoying himself, although many of the other players were really on a roll. Scheila was fantastic, Joe and Billy Hulting were awesome, Jamie set me on fire during PackardGoose, Pete always sets me on fire anyway, but Dweezil seemed really to be out of the game. Trouble was his best effort of the evening, but still no match for any of the tearjerking solos he managed in Brussels.

Up next: Token Of My Extreme, the closer of the 06 shows, and the closer for this one.


(I wanted to shoot a vid, but I didn't spin the mode disk far enough. It accidentally made a Firework Photo instead of a film, so the shutter time was really long. It has this bizarre but beautiful result!)

And then: ENCORE! DZ grabbed his SG and mentioned it had been behaving badly all evening. He tuned it, and while doing that, he played a few chords of My Mother Is A Space Cadet.

Then three more crowd pleasers:
Cosmik Debris, juicy, rocking, and with much sing-along! Another favourite, I never mind hearing this again!

Zomby Woof had another nice Dweezil solo, and great singing by Ben!

And Willie The Pimp, Dweezil was finally rolling into it, a great song and a very good performance. And then the show was over.

But fortunately some band members stuck around! I stood near Unica, so Pete Griffin and Jamie Kime came over to say hi.
And there was another Dweezil moshpit, like during the Brussels concert. I have 2 DZ sigs already, so this time I went over for a handshake.

OK EVERYBODY LET's MOSH!!

It was a lot of squeezing, and what didn't help matters was that Dweezil moved from the side where I was standing, to the other side of the stage. I got squashed some more, and the advance I'd made in the waiting was completely lost. But eventually I got closer, I finally mentioned to get a good shot of The Dweez:


And then I finally got over to him! If you look closely at his hands, you can see he's holding a bag of guitar picks he was handing out. I got one! Pic comes later!

...but I still don't have a handshake. Oh well.

Great report Bonny!!

:bouncy:

whoa, must have been a cool night!:bouncy:

It was very hot in there, I assure you. I was sweating before the show even started!

I now have some 20 mins worth of footage uploaded! You can view it at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPELpwI7sOg
Phase 1 of the setlist snippets

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keVDaEBFYYw&feature=chann...
Phase 2 of snippets

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXL_iw4bie0&feature=chann...
Lumpy Gravy Theme AKA Duodenum, and Peaches En Regalia!

[Edited on 24-5-09 by BBP]

I compiled all the ZPZ Effenaar vids I could find here:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=F6CE2C9491854E04

I really love the Playlist function!

Great review Bon!

Bigger pictures here

Album ZPZ Effenaar Eindhoven