The Vaults / CD Reissues : Zappa’s Mastery Shows in Re-Releases

Not long before he died in December, 1993, at 52, Frank Zappa instructed his wife, Gail, to sell his entire music catalogue--to provide for his family and to relieve her of the responsibility of running their home-based record company.

Massachusetts-based Rykodisc bought the catalogue last year for a reported $44 million, and this month is releasing all 53 Zappa titles in improved, Zappa-approved digital remasterings, with lavish packaging. It is one of the most ambitious re-release projects in pop music history.

“As nutty as it seemed . . . to make all the titles available worldwide at the same time, it’s pretty great--pretty Zappa-esque, really,” said Jill Christiansen, who is supervising the project for Ryko.

Zappa has never sounded better. The newly remastered versions of the Zappa and Mothers of Invention albums are dramatically cleaner, richer and better defined. In the cases where the original artwork merited, the CD covers fold out to nearly LP size, and many of the titles include new credits, lyric sheets and rare photographs.

Perhaps the most significant news for Zappaphiles is the restored version of the 1968 album “We’re Only in It for the Money.” Some fans objected to Zappa’s 1984 digital remastering because it included newly over-dubbed bass and drum tracks. Ryko used an analog two-track master provided by Zappa, marking the first CD release of the album in its original form.

The Ryko releases also include a 1986 live album previously issued only in Europe, “Does Humor Belong in Music?,” and one of the more imposing arguments for Zappa as an orchestral composer: “Zappa, Vol. I & II,” with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Kent Nagano.

Newcomers to Zappa might start with “Hot Rats” (1968, featuring Captain Beefheart); “Overnight Sensation” and “Apostrophe” with the great early-’70s band featuring George Duke, Jean-Luc Ponty and Ruth Underwood; the satirical 1978 tour-de-force “Sheik Yarbouti”; the gorgeous final Mothers album “One Size Fits All”; the bawdy and hilarious “Live at the Fillmore East” (1971, featuring Flo & Eddie); the entire “You Can’t Do That on Stage Anymore” series, one of Zappa’s final projects that surveyed his entire performing career; and, for avant-garde/orchestral music, “The Yellow Shark” (1992), Zappa’s most successfully realized “serious music” venture.

Ryko is also distributing “Civilization: Phaze III,” a sweeping orchestral/computer piece that Zappa considered his life’s masterwork (released on the family’s Barking Pumpkin label), and next year will release two new projects Zappa finished just before his death: the semi-autobiographical “Lost Episodes” and a compilation of his more controversial tunes, “Have I Offended Anyone?” The only works that Ryko is not handling are Rhino’s “Beat the Boots” series and the score for the 1971 film “200 Motels,” which is owned by United Artists. Said Christiansen of the latter: “We’re working on that.”