Automatic translation: Hot Rats, re-released in the 1987 mix curated by Zappa himself, is the masterpiece we know: the first work without Mothers, the exploration of jazz-rock territory, that pastiera of playful melancholy that is Peaches En Regalia, the cameo of Captain Beefheart on Willie The Pimp and so on. The real interest this time lies in the documentation – at times illuminating, at times challenging material for exegetes and philologists – of the work in progress that led to the album. An immense collection, spread across six CDs, of cues, notes, false starts and ideas later relocated elsewhere (Aybe Sea is a section of the first piano sketch of Peaches; Toads Of The Short Forest originates here): Zappa's conceptual continuity captured in its coagulation.

Automatic translation: In short: the 1970 reboot of the Mothers, revisited in 70 unreleased tracks (some absolutely unreleased) spread across four CDs. The setlist includes a stop at London's Trident Studios (the same sessions would yield part of Chunga's Revenge), a concert broadcast by Dutch radio station VRPO, and various other scattered recordings mostly captured – on stage and in dressing rooms – on Zappa's Uher portable recorder, with limited battery life but good sound quality. The result is a portrait of a band short-lived (bassist Jeff Simmons would leave during the making of the film 200 Motels), with Flo & Eddie not yet absolute stars (a good thing for this writer), effective in reinterpreting the recent past and outlining a new Zappa direction.

Automatic translation: Six CDs, three nights (the Halloween residency at the Palladium in New York in 1981, now a regular event) until now only partially documented on the You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore volumes and more generously in video format (The Dub Room Special and The Torture Never Stops). Over 70 unreleased songs in total, all performed by an octet including Steve Vai on his second tour with Zappa, compact and agile in traversing the composer’s output from the early 70s onward, with ample space dedicated to that year’s album, You Are What You Is. Among the memorable moments are the King Kong suite, reimagined on the upbeat without losing its majesty, and an intense cover – more devout than iconoclast – of the Allman Brothers Band’s Whipping Post.