Review of the new and expanded ebook version of Michele Pizzi's book Frank Zappa for President.

Automatic translation: Quite often, an ebook version allows us to transcend space-time constraints and make new friends. The extended edition of Frank Zappa for President, for example, allows newcomers to quickly grasp a very unique understanding, portrayed in detail by this true agitator of contemporary musical culture. While it's often been mentioned how innovative and unique Zappa was as a musician, Michele Pizzi's guide offers clear references, especially regarding the artist's lyrical content. A variety of symbolism that would remain obscure to even the most seasoned English speakers is carefully exeged, allowing the character to stand out and emerge even before the eyes of potential detractors. The ebook edition is destined for further updates; here, it adds new, previously unpublished photos and two texts not yet covered in print. "Walk on by/your schools that do not teach," advises the young Frank Vincent Zappa on his first album. We certainly wouldn't have had any of this if the boy had had someone like Ferdinando Boero, author of the affectionate and previously unpublished preface, in his classroom. Longtime friends, the two exchanged unusual gifts; the professor renamed a variety of jellyfish (Phialella Zappai) after Zappa, and the musician reciprocated with the song "Lonesome Cowboy Nando."

Automatic translation: Fans couldn't have asked for more. After decades of hibernation, the complete film, shot on 16mm, based on the three fateful nights at the Roxy Theatre in December 1973, is finally being released. It's a snapshot of Zappa at the height of his success, when Over-nite Sensation and Apostrophe had just become a smash hit. We're not at the level of the Zappa of Hot Rats or Waka/Jawaka, and the Mothers are more session musicians than the '60s freaks, but this is the Zappa that American audiences like. And it's here, amidst serial gags, quips and jests, convoluted scores, and scantily clad women on stage, that hordes of caba-rock bands were formed (including our own EELST). The excellent filming – rare in the '70s – highlights the virtuosity of the musicians, especially the unforgettable George Duke. I've always imagined Zappa as the master of Whiplash, a ruthless perfectionist behind the guise of a prankster satyr: Roxy: The Movie neither confirms nor denies, but it does provide Zappa's orphans with a well-deserved reminiscence.

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.

Automatic translation: The original project is gargantuan, and so too, inevitably, is the box set celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, with 173 tracks spread across six CDs. A great joy for Zappa fans of strict observance, of course, but doubts remain about the soundtrack of this bizarre musical/surrealist mockumentary (itself a chaotic and at times laborious yet occasionally entertaining piece of Zappa visual art peppered with freak mythology): less adventurous than the equally bulimic Uncle Meat, especially with a few too many concessions to the coarse cabaret of the Flo & Eddie era. But perhaps, to be appreciated, Zappa must be counterintuitively taken as a whole, excesses and ambitions included. And even here, after all, there is no shortage of highlights (Magic Fingers).