Roxy: The Movie Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

Roxy: The Movie Blu-ray Movie Review

Don't you ever watch that thing?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 31, 2015

The phrases “Salt Lake City” and “jazz rock virtuosi” probably don’t occur at the same time to many of you, but as a kid (and burgeoning musician) growing up in Utah’s biggest burg, there were at least a few looming shadows that were pretty daunting for me. Several of those were cast by the Fowler Brothers, unbelievably gifted brass, wind and bass players who were already Utah legends by the time I was a teen, and due to their participation in the Mothers of Invention, at least one reason why Frank Zappa records were such regular items among the probably self appointed musical cognoscenti in Salt Lake back in the 1970s. (Another fantastic Salt Lake City “alum” of this era was the monster keyboardist Stu Goldberg, who went on to work in the Mahavishnu Orchestra and other John McLaughlin outfits. Stu had a band with the Fowlers called Air Pocket which put out some albums in the 1970s.) Zappa’s work was iconoclastic enough to provoke umbrage from a certain critical element who couldn’t handle his often provocative eclecticism, but anyone who has really paid attention to Zappa’s recorded output is already well aware of the man’s overwhelming genius. In fact, speaking of Salt Lake City, my University of Utah jazz theory professor was discussing Zappa one day in class and said simply, “Have you seen his manuscript [i.e., Zappa’s handwritten music scores]? That guy is a master,” a conclusion my teacher reached not just because of the musical content (which is often astounding), but also due to the precision of Zappa’s notational abilities. (There’s just one small but telling example of those abilities here.)

Roxy and Elsewhere, the two LP (remember those?) set that was for a long time the “official” record (no pun intended) of Zappa’s 1973 concerts at the Roxy Theater in Los Angeles, was in fact a “hot ticket” item during my youth in Salt Lake City, and several of my music geek friends and I would sit around and listen, trying (usually in vain) to figure out the meter and/or changes of such challenging instrumentals as “Echidna’s Arf” or “Be-Bop Tango”. There was a prevalent rumor going around the town in those days that the Roxy concerts might end up on television (the scuttlebutt was actually that Zappa would be appearing on the good old Public Broadcasting System, no less), but that video element never materialized—and with good reason.

Zappa had always been a prescient multimedia-ite (as evidenced by the spectacularly outré and wonderfully brilliant 200 Motels), and his initial conception for the Roxy concerts was in fact to film them, ostensibly for television. But as Zappa’s own sonorous voice intones at the beginning of this video, “Something terrible has happened,” and that fiasco is what kept Roxy from ever seeing the video light of day until now. While the interesting liner notes on this release don’t get into too much technical detail, some kind of “internal malfunction” in the recording devices resulted in an inability to synchronize the soundtrack with the actual film footage. (There’s a bit of a disparity in the “explanation” given in the liner notes, which avers that the problem didn’t come to light until all four shows were “in the can”, and therefore it was too late for the problem to be fixed. If that was so, how was Zappa able to know this before the first show even began, warning the audience that there was going to be a bit of a delay until this “something terrible” got fixed?)

Be that as it may, Roxy shows why this iteration of the Mothers is so highly prized by Zappa fans, and why this particular set of concerts (which were given over the course of three nights in December 1973) has attained near legendary status. Even “simple” tunes like the blues number the band starts things out with genially tweak established formats (there’s no traditional 12 bar structure here). Some of the more complex numbers offer a battery of percussion (two trap sets manned by Chester Thompson and Ralph Humphrey, not to mention the glut of other percussion instruments under the graceful thumb—and other fingers—of the inimitable Ruth Underwood), and of course Zappa comes close to evoking Edgard Varèsian musique concrète strata at various times. The band seems to be having, well, a hell of a time, with several members mugging it up for the camera crew who are often completely on display up on the stage next to the musicians. Interestingly, several band members (including Zappa) smoke throughout the concert, and bassist Tom Fowler plays the entire set with a cigar clenched between his teeth.

The set list for the concert is:

1/2. "Something Terrible Has Happened"/Cosmik Debris
3. Penguin in Bondage
4. T'Mershi Duween
5/6. Dog/Meat (THe Dog Breath Variations/Uncle Meat)
7. RDNZL
8. Inca Roads
9. Echidna's Arf (Of You)
10. Don't You Ever Wash That Thing?
11. Cheepnis-Percussion
12. Cheepnis
13. I'm the Slime
14. Big Swifty
15. Be-Bop Tango (Of the Old Jazzmen's Church)
16. Don't Eat the Yellow Snow
17. Father O'Blivion

Roxy: The Movie Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Roxy: The Movie is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Grand Rights, Universal Music Group and Eagle Vision, an imprint of Eagle Rock Entertainment, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Editor John Albarian (who also provided the really interesting liner notes) has performed a Herculean task here, whittling down four performances into a largely seamless whole, while also reintegrating the imagery with the actual soundtrack, something that took him scores of hours to do since the "track drift" was not at a constant speed and needed to be continually adjusted. Roxy was filmed in 16mm, with (as Albarian discusses) mostly just three cameras, two stationary and one handheld, with occasional shots from a fourth that was placed far upstage. The imagery here is often captured on the fly and suffers from focus pulling problems as well as certain framing issues (shots will veer off of the subject onto inanimate objects like the floor, for example). There are also issues with alignment at times, leading to a slight fringing quality, especially in some of the close-ups of Frank taken from stage left. Sharpness is frankly only so-so throughout the presentation, but exacerbating this problem is the fact that it appears that at least some filtering has been applied to the release, leaving a deficit of grain and detail even in some of those close-up shots. Crush is also a recurrent issue, with the band's dark clothing often merging completely with the darkened upstage or wings areas. There's also occasional damage in the form of scratches and other mars (see the large red line bisecting Bruce Fowler's face and body in screenshot 2 for just one example). This is never less than watchable, but it's a relic of its time that has also perhaps been put through the processing mill a bit too aggressively.

Roxy: The Movie Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Roxy: The Movie features a boisterous LPCM 2.0 stereo track, but for whatever reason the included surround 5.1 iteration is presented in lossy Dolby Digital, a choice that will no doubt disappoint some ardent audiophiles. The 5.1 track does open things up, while also perhaps not offering quite as much on the low end as might be desired. The 2.0 track is quite vivid and nicely detailed, offering crisp reproduction of the multilayered percussion that Zappa favors in several tunes, as well as more traditional sonic elements like Zappa's own blistering guitar solos or some of the great keyboard work by George Duke. Fidelity is top notch and there are no damage problems of any kind to report.

Roxy: The Movie Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Supplements are found under the Yes & But Also Menu on the disc:

• More Tracks (1080p; 20:50) include:

  Pygmy Twylyte

  The Idiot Bastard Son

  Dickie's Such an Asshole

Note: These are authored to default to the lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 audio option, though the LPCM 2.0 track is also available. Also, there is an option to play all of these successively or jump to the beginning of the second two tunes (they're all authored together as one supplement).


• Discography features several pages of Zappa album covers.


• DVDography features one page of Zappa video release covers.


• Where advertises Zappa.com.

Note: Those who like surprises may want to poke around the various menus for "treats" which have not been spoiled here.

This Blu-ray comes in a CD sized trifold pack that also includes a soundtrack CD. The CD is missing tracks 8, 13, 14 and 16 and 17 from the above set list. Also, I'm dealing with several decade old memories here, but at least some of the tunes on the CD sound like different performances than the ones that were on Roxy and Elsewhere.

Roxy: The Movie Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Gail Zappa sadly passed just as Roxy was screening in its revitalized state and this Blu-ray was about to hit the market. Gail provides some sweet additional liner notes here, but the entire Zappa family can be justifiably proud that Frank's amazing music and live performances continue to thrill fans to this day. There are some issues with video quality here that are at least partially understandable, and some audio aficionados will quibble about the lack of a lossless surround track, but the historical importance of this release not to mention the sheer unadulterated genius of Zappa's music tend to ameliorate any concerns. Highly recommended.