Introduction

Hello - Welcome to Project Documentation!

If you have contributed to the effort, many thanks to you. If you simply have interest, I hope this project is in some way a help in attempting to learn more about the 1988 tour, and the music of Frank Zappa in general. Music is to be listened to, rather than talked about, thus, this study can only hint at how incredible the music that resulted from "Broadway The Hard Way" was. We can only hope that FZ chooses to be generous in his decisions of what to release for public consumption.

I was lucky enough to attend the first fourteen shows of the tour, and thirteen of the afternoon rehearsal sessions. I was extremely impressed with everything I heard and saw. The new compositions are every bit up to snuff as one would expect, the revamped arrangements sparkle with newness and imagination, and the relatively standard pieces sound fat and full behind the lushness of a five piece brass section. It was also heartening to see Frank actively interacting with the audience once again, to see onstage buffoonery at such a high level, and to witness the wonder that new types of technology have lent to the effort. I was so taken with the whole deal that I decided to try to obtain as much information as I possibly could about anything having to do with this tour. and of course, I can always in the want for any information about Zappa, thus I came up with the idea of P.D., that being, to entice others to share what they have with me by acting as a central collection point for various kinds of data, pooling it, and making it available to those who helped in the effort. Also, because next to being stimulated by FZ's music, about my favorite thing is to stimulate others with it, I decided not to limit this solely to those who could contribute, but to make this available to any interested party. It gets me off to think that in some small way, I can help cultivate and nurture interest in Mr Z. To those of you who may not comprehend some of the more technical aspects of this study, I advise that you simply go to the library, or otherwise expose yourself to a means of grasping the information. To anyone who is equipped to deal with it, I would greatly [appreciate] your comments and elaborations.

So ... in any event, I hope you enjoy P.D. I certainly enjoyed putting it together.

Den Simms

Jon Naurin @ affz

PD is not really a book - it's a compendium, distributed only as xeroxes between fans, just the way you got it. Getting it online would be a nice thing, but with Keneally's, Pat's and Foggy's pages we have most of the info + a lot more

Tom Troccoli @ affz:

Last I heard he had not completed the project. he had still not collected the entire run of shows from the 88 tour in which to actually complete the project. In order to be as accurate as possible he was compiling his data from actual tapes, as opposed to set lists, or other apocryphal information.

Pat Buzby @ affz:

In fact, most of the info on this page [The Frank Zappa 1988 Tour Project] is derived from a xerox copy of "Project Documentation," as well as Den's listing of album sources from Society Pages. "PD" (at least the incarnation that I have) mostly consists of a listing of show dates, locations, and setlists, along with transcriptions of most of the secret word jokes and other comments from the shows (except for those shows for which Den couldn't find tapes).

Jon Naurin @ affz:

Each setlist comes with a section titled "Noteworthy aspects, lyric mutations, etc", which contains most every little deviation from the norm - such as secret word usage and complete transcriptions of onstage routines and monologues, and even some musical analyses of unusual improvisations.

There's also a listing of every song played with analysis of the arrangements, and a partial list of songs rehearsed but not performed. One section contains newspaper clippings and photos (which don't come out very well xeroxed). And some various tidbits with more or less relevance to the '88 tour, such as a Zappa quiz (the one that's on Vlad's page, I think) and some facts about the Simms/Mother People feud.

Hi-res scans @ zappateers
alt.fan.frank-zappa thread
ARF: Biblio

Related sites:
The Frank Zappa 1988 Tour Project
1988 Was A Million Years Ago
We're Only In It For The Touring