“Waka/Jawaka” and “The Grand Wazoo” will be released as a box set

Frank Zappa’s 1972 jazz rock albums are reissued. The “Waka/Wazoo” box set combines the albums “Waka/Jawaka” and “The Grand Wazoo” and will be released on December 16, 2022. The 5-disc multi-format box set contains the original albums as well as demos and a complete live performance .

The original albums are included in the box set as Bluray audio, plus four CDs with extra material. Two CDs contain alternative versions and outtakes. There is also a live recording of the complete concert on December 15, 1972 at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. Both albums will also be reissued on vinyl for the first time since the ’70s.

You can already listen to alternative versions of the tracks “Your Mouth” and “Cletus Awreetus-Awrightus”.

The albums date from the time after a concert-goer attacked Zappa in December 1971. The attacker pushed Zappa off the stage, and the musician had to sit in a wheelchair for a long time. During that time Zappa also started to write new songs. In doing so, he musically picked up the thread of his first jazz rock album “Hot Rats” (1969). For the recording and the subsequent tour, Zappa put together the 20-piece formation “Grand Wazoo” and the smaller group “Petite Wazoo”.

As early as 2007, the recording of a Grand Wazoo performance from September 1972 in Boston was released as the live album “Wazoo”. In the box set, however, a master of the track “Approximate” from the Boston concert, revised by Zappa, appears for the first time. The box set also includes demos of solo material by George Duke, member of Zappa’s Mothers of Invention in the early ’70s. Zappa originally played guitar on Duke’s solo recordings, but Duke later re-recorded the songs. The versions with Zappa on guitar were previously unreleased.

The album was produced by Frank Zappa’s son, Ahmet Zappa, and his archive custodian, Joe Travers. A 44-page booklet includes session photos and liner notes by Travers and Scott Parker, author of several books on Zappa. Most recently, Zappa released the live album “Zappa ’75: Zagreb/Ljubljana” in October 2022, which contains recordings of Zappa’s performances in 1975 in what was then Yugoslavia.

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