Episode 056 - Dweezil Zappa Concert Review

In this week’s episode of The Rock-N-Roll Show Podcast, I review the unforgettable Dweezil Zappa Rox(Postroph)Y concert at New York City’s Town Hall. We got to witness a killer 26-song set celebrating the 50th anniversary of Frank Zappa’s Apostrophe and Roxy & Elsewhere albums. From “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” to “Muffin Man,” Dweezil’s insanely talented and delightfully weird band brought the music to life with precision, humor, and total rock-n-roll spirit.

Whether you’re a hardcore Zappa fan or just Zappa-curious, Dweezil’s concerts are a rare kind of magic—equal parts virtuosic and irreverent. I break down the setlist, share some great video clips, and share the very unique was the show ended - unlike any concert I've ever seen. 

Plus, we’ve got a full Spotify playlist to go along with the episode, so be sure to check that out. Like, follow, subscribe, and don’t forget—life is short, so get those concert tickets! All this week on the Rock-N-Roll Show Podcast!

00:00 Introduction
01:37 Who is Dweezil Zappa?
03:11 The Concert Experience
07:47 Special Guests and Cover Songs
13:24 Encore and Final Thoughts
15:46 Closing Remarks

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Rock-N-Roll Show podcast. I'm your host, Alex Gaddd, and this week I've got another concert review for you. I went to see Dweezil Zappa on his Rox(Postroph)Y tour at New York City's Town Hall recently, where he and his impressive band played a 26 song set over almost three hours, and it was a really fun rock-n-roll show. Now, I would never pretend that I'm a Deep Zappa fan or that I even know every song that Dweezil and his band played. But I knew enough to follow along and the amount of joy emanating from that stage was unusual to say the least. I'll explain and I've got videos, so please join me for my Dweezil Zappa concert review coming up right now. My old friend Dave is my longest running concert buddy. We've been seeing shows together since 1984. Whoa. Wow. And I, yeah, I can't even get my head around that. And you can learn more about him. In episode 28 of this show. He sees more concerts than anyone else I know, and I love going to see music with him. So when Dave texted me in early April asking if I wanted to join him to go see Dweezil Zappa play his father's music at Town Hall in New York City. I immediately said yes. I try to say yes to every invitation to see live music whenever I can. And this was a show I wouldn't have thought to go to on my own. So I was excited. If you're not familiar with Dweezil Zappa, he's the oldest son and second oldest child of Frank Zappa and his wife, Gail. Dweezil, was born about six months after me in 1969, and when his parents tried to give him that name at the hospital, the nurses wouldn't let them thinking it was too cruel. So his name at birth was Ian Donald Calvin Euclid Zappa. But he is always gone by a Dweezil. At an early age, he became a monster guitar player getting lessons from his dad and members of his dad's band, including Steve vi. He even got lessons from his dad's friends, including Edward Van Halen. He was a VJ on MTV for a brief time in the late eighties, and at the same time, he was recording and releasing some albums, mostly of hair metal influenced rock. That was happening throughout the second half of the eighties, into the early nineties, but he never really broke through with his own music. He continued to get his name out in the public eye as a guest guitarist on a number of records. From his father's last few rock albums to Don Johnson's 1986 solo album, he played on a few of Winger's songs, a Spinal Tap song from their early nineties Break Like the Wind Album, and a weird Al Yankovic song among many others. Then in about 2006, he started playing his father's music live and a series of Zappa Plays Zappa tours and the show we went to was the latest in a series of similar tours. This one was the Rox(Postroph)Y tour, celebrating the 50th anniversary of two Frank Zappa albums that were released in 1974, the studio album Apostrophe and the live album, Roxy Elsewhere. Town Hall is a great venue to see a rock-n-roll show at. It's small, the sound is good and it's the most centrally located music venue in New York City, especially for me who lives an hour outside of the city. To get to Town Hall, I take a train to Grand Central Station. I walk three and a half blocks West and it's right there just outside of Times Square. I saw John Petrucci there with my buddy Rod back in late 2022, and that was a great show. So I was ready for another show that was on the outer edge of my wheelhouse musically, but full of promise. Now Dave had celebrated a birthday just a few days before the show, so we met up at the ultimate Times Square tourist trap, Virgil's BBQ, where I treated him to a belated birthday meal, and it was pretty good. Then full of slow cooked meats and cornbread, we headed around the block to see the show. When we were brought to our seats, I was pleasantly surprised that we were in the fourth row right in the center, even though there really isn't a bad house, and even though there really isn't a bad seat in the house at that venue, these were great seats. Take a look. The first observation I had very early on the set was that Dweezil's band was incredibly talented and pretty weird. In the best way, of course, but this wasn't an overly serious rock show. As anyone who's familiar with Frank Zappa's music will know, his music was generally pretty intricate, and so the band touring with Dweezil was filled with excellent musicians. But Zappa was also famously irreverent and was really serious about being irreverent. And so it was that the band we saw was both incredibly capable and really silly. Following the opening track, Filthy Habits from the 1979 album, Sleep Dirt, Dweezil took a minute to welcome us and set the tone for the evening. We are happy to be here. We're glad chose to come out, hear this, visit tonight and support this band. This is the Rocks Tour. That means we're playing from the Roxy and elsewhere and also me, but perhaps not like you've heard the songs before.'cause we've found special versions and tonight we're even having special guests. So, and I'm also. Actual guitar. This is actually playing it on the A album as well. I was just playing the player guitar, Les Paul. So, woo. We've got a little bit of my dad here with us tonight. Are you ready? as you can hear in that clip, the band was already playing the basic rhythm track for the opening song from the apostrophe album. Don't Eat the Yellow Snow. They went right into that, followed by the next two songs from that album in succession. Nanook Rubs It and St. Alfonso's Pancake Breakfast, and they knocked out all three of those songs. They sounded really, really good. Various band members sang Dweezil, didn't really sing, sang some backup. Dweezil was more the band leader and the mc for the evening. What he did mostly was play killer leads and watch amused and even a bit detached as his band acted weird. That was my second observation. Dweezil seemed to be as entertained by his band as we in the audience were. He had most of the same band members that had played on previous Zappa plays, Zappa tours, including the incredible rhythm section of Kurt Morgan and Ryan Brown and the multi-instrumentalist Scheila Gonzalez on sax, on keyboards, on vocals, and even some other instruments. We'll show you those, and she was just great. The two new members were Bobby Victor on Keyboards and Zach Tabori on guitar and drums, and occasional vocals. It was an incredible band, and Zach and Kurt, the bass player especially, had a silliness that was really infectious. Here's Sheila Gonzalez singing Montana from the 1973 release Overnight Sensation Just to raise me up a problem raising it up. Waxing it down in a cheesy little box that I. After that, as Dweezil teased in the introduction to the show, he brought out his first guest, local guitarist, Oz Noy. Now, if you follow this podcast, you'll remember that when I saw Joe Bonamassa on my birthday this past February at the Beacon Theater, he also brought out Oz making that two shows in a row that I saw Oz come out as a guest for when I had never seen him before. I had never even heard of him before, which is just a curious coincidence, but pretty cool. Oz is originally from Israel and has made a name for himself as a player, accomplished in many different styles from blues, jazz, rock-n-roll, even funk. He's clearly respected and appreciated by the best guitar players around. So here he is sitting in on"Cosmik Debris" also from the Apostrophe album. Um, uh, Um, uh, Um, uh, The fun continued in the middle of the show when the band went into a set of cover songs. First up was Jungle Boogie By Cool in the Gang. Then Lionel Richie's. Hello, an Odd Choice for me. Living on a Prayer by Bon Jovi. And finally the underrated Van Halen track Push Comes to Shove Later they went back into Jungle Boogie and segued into, I Want to Be Like You from the animated Disney movie, the Jungle Book, proving that Dweezil's band can play anything. All were solid renditions of these decidedly not Zappa songs, and all were given the appropriate level of semis seriousness that they deserved. Here's a little bit of the band doing"Livin' on a Prayer." The tribute to the Roxy Elsewhere album happened for the most part in the middle of the show when the band played four tracks from that record just before they started playing their covers. Then at the end of the show, Dweezil played"Cheepnis" from that same album. That was probably the most avant-garde track they played all night with Dweezil wailing on guitar, while the rest of the band replicated the ridiculous story song about a monster in a cave. I was too wrapped up in trying to absorb all of this to have taken any video, and unless you listen to all seven minutes of the song, it's hard to absorb what you're taking in, but it's out there on the internet to find if you're so inclined. Dweezil brought out his second guest for the last song of the set,"Zombie Woof". The guest was Echo Picone, a 17-year-old singer and actress who's apparently been performing with Dweezil's various bands since she was four. She was awesome and it really gave the song a great energy. My view at this point of the show was impeded by the guy in front of me who was standing up. It was the last song after all. So here's a good video taken by a guy in the balcony. Thanks, guy in the balcony. Please welcome to the stage. Go Echo has perform with us since. How many were you? Like five? The first time. Four years old. The first time she performed with us. And you're 18 now. 17. 17. So she has done so many different things in her short life, but one of them is getting very, very good at singing. And she's gonna sing Zombie Wolf with us. 300. After a brief break, the band came back out to play one more song, the Classic Muffin Man. And then the most amazing thing happened, something I've really never seen before from a famous rock star. Dweezil stayed on stage and talked to any and every person that wanted to talk to him. He signed things. He took pictures and just chatted with everyone who wanted a minute of his time. He was the most down to earth guy. My esteem for him shot up a hundred fold seeing this. Unfortunately, I couldn't stay around because I had a train to catch, but it was an awesome thing to see. Now while this tour is over, he'll inevitably go out on the road again in the next year or two. And if you're the least bit interested in Frank Zappa's music or even just curious about it, or you just want to see something different in a rock concert, go see Dweezil and his band play live. It will be more than worth it. I have to thank my buddy Dave again for the ticket. And that's it for this week's episode. Thank you for joining us. We'll be back next Tuesday, and if you like what you heard today, we'd appreciate it if you would like, and subscribe or follow to make sure you get notified about each new episode, and please tell your friends. Also, a reminder that we release a playlist for every episode. So look for The Rock-N-Roll Show Podcast playlist on Spotify every week this week, featuring all 26 songs from the set list of the Dweezil Zappa Show at Town Hall, plus other Zappa songs that I really like. So check that out. Additionally, we want to know what you think. Please leave us a comment. We'll try to respond to them all. The Rock-N-Roll Show Podcast is a World Highway Media production. I'm your host, Alex Gadd, and until next time, remember that life is short, so get those concert tickets.