The New Freak Out! Box Sets

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STOP THE PRESSES! IT’S TIME FOR SOME FRANK ZAPPA BREAKING NEWS!

Well, actually, it’s not exactly breaking per se, but it is the hot story of the week… The new 60th Anniversary Edition of Freak Out! is coming!

I have been asked by several of you whether or not my posts about the sessions for the album from the last few weeks tied into the announcement of the new release. Well, yeah, sort of, they did, kind of ;-)

This is a highly anticipated release, certainly by me anyway, and now you guys can get to share in that anticipation! For this week, I thought I would give a rundown as to what you can expect, especially for those of you who do not already know, and how this anniversary release differs from the 40th anniversary release, the MoFO project/object from 2006.

Basically, the crux of the biscuit here is that, bottom line, this appears to be all of the usable material from the Vault related to this album. And as some of you know, at least some of it was not even in the Vault to begin with. But thereby hangs a tale…

To get this one up and popping, let us start with the CD version of the box, which is reasonably priced here at the official Zappa Store for under $70 US (in fact, every format of this set is reasonably priced - and no, that is not hype, that is truth):

https://store.zappa.com/collections/mothers-of-invention/products/the-mothers-of-invention-freak-out-60th-anniversary-super-deluxe-edition-5cd-1br

As you can see in this photo, the box is in the 5-inch format that has been the preferred packaging for the recent anniversary sets. I know that a few people have said that it’s a bit of a shame that there is no 12-inch version of the CD box, but frankly, for me, the 5-inch is just easier to store (and the 12-inch fetishists can buy the vinyl box which we will get to in a bit).

DISC ONE

To begin with, we have a brand new 2026 remastered of the original stereo mix of Freak Out! I really enjoyed the 2006 remaster, but this promises to be punchier, and there’s been a lot of technological advances in the last 20 years that can make this mix sound closer to the original vinyl. I have not heard it, but I’m quite sure that it will be different enough from the 2006 to become everybody’s go-to for the stereo mix.

DISC TWO

Disc Two gives us the first legitimate release of the Pre-Master mix of the album. Somehow or other, the master tapes of this version wound up in Europe, and in 2011, the tapes released as a bootleg titled The Alternate Freak Out! Essentially, this is an early mix and assembly of the album, dating to late April 1966. The release of this is interesting for a few reasons; for one thing, it shows us that Frank did not go into the sessions with an absolute plan for the sequencing of the album. Another thing about this version that is significant is that it is very obviously much cleaner sounding than the original. In fact, to my ears, it is remarkably cleaner – the utilization of reverb gives the final mix and mastering its character, but to hear the tracks without the added effects is really interesting to say the least. Musically, the most notable difference in the tracks would be the unedited “Wowie Zowie”, which has an extra bar in the middle of the song (a breakdown, essentially) that was wisely edited out of the final version. Pretty cool!

It is worth mentioning that the master tapes for this version, which were living in Europe for some several years, have been returned to the Vault, an astonishing feet of generosity, the credit for which goes to Zappa collector and author extraordinaire Erlend Sundin. The tapes were freshly mastered for this release. So for those of you who have been wondering, it is not simply mastered from the bootleg. This will be definitive, folks!

DISC THREE

Disc Three gives us the original 1966 mono mix of the album, presented in digital for the first time, and released legitimately for the first time anywhere since the mono pressings were phased out around 1969. Now, as some of you know, I have a very special connection to this, and let me explain to you how I came to help out.

Sometime earlier this year, I got a call from His Vaultmeisterness, Joe Travers. The topic was something that I was familiar with - and we’ve probably spoken about this on this ZappaCast as well - that the original mono mix of Freak Out! does not exist in the Vault. As Joe pointed out in the promo video that was released on Tuesday, those tapes were never returned to Frank when he was given back his masters in 1981/1982. They’ve never been located, and are presumably lost in the ether somewhere. But the mono mix of the album is a legitimate, discrete mono mix, and deserves to be heard and made a permanent part of the catalog once again.

In order to get a usable mono version of the album without a master tape, you would pretty much have to turn to what is known as a needledrop. Basically, this translates to a recording from a vinyl source. To make this happen, and make it happen in a way that is up to the audiophile standard that has been set by Zappa releases since time immemorial, Joe needed the cleanest possible copy of the mono mix of the album.

But where to find it? Now, you guys may know that I am a voracious collector, with far too many copies of just about every Zappa album in my collection. I don’t know why I do this, my wife doesn’t know why I do this. But I do this. Given that, Joe called me and asked me what I had in terms of a clean mono copy of the album.

Now this, folks, is where paranoia sets in. I do have several mono copies of Freak Out!, But upon quick inspection, even the cleanest one had a few superficial lines in the vinyl. Nothing that would affect play, but not exactly virgin either. I made the decision that it would be wiser to scour the Internet and simply buy a new copy of the album, if I could find one in the condition that was required.

The first copy of the album that I bought was $75, but unfortunately, it was not in any better shape than the best copy that I already had. While I must say that there was absolutely no pressure being put on me to land this, I felt a duty to give it my all, for the benefit of my fellow Zappa fans, for the benefit of Joe, and for the benefit of Frank’s legacy. We feel it is our duty…

So it was that I happened upon a listing on the Discogs website. My fellow record collectors will know that this is, at best, a crapshoot, since the level of detail that you can get about records in advance on that site is, generally speaking, less than what you would find on eBay. So you really have to trust the word of the seller before you buy. And, as we all know, anything can happen.

The listing said something to the effect of “the records look like they have never touched a turntable”. Photos included with the listing seemed to confirm that. The vinyl looked shiny and absolutely virginal. Not a single line was noticeable to my eye. But photos are photos, right? A photo of something and the reality of it are two different things.

If you can purchase records off of vibes, then this seemed like a reasonable time to do so. After a couple of times corresponding with the seller, I took the plunge. $125. I had it sent directly to Joe. I am sometimes a glass half-empty kind of guy. I fully expected it not to be up to snuff. But it was worth the gamble, even if I’m not by nature a gambler.

About a week or so later, I got a call from Joe, who had just received the album. It was exactly as the seller had listed it! Probably never played. It certainly showed no signs of age or wear. It was a pristine mono copy of Freak Out!, Which could not have been better unless a sealed copy were to be found. (did they regularly seal albums back then?).

It is important to note that the three songs for which there extant mono mix tapes in the Vault, “How Could I Be Such A Fool”, “Who Are The Brain Police?” and “It Can’t Happen Here”, are taken from those tapes, and thus are the only tracks in the new mono master of the album to be taken from tape. These mono mixes, which are identical to the LP mono mixes, were used as the 45 single masters.

For a complete list of mono mix differences, I will refer you to Jacopo Muneratti’s superb document about the mixed differences of the early MOI albums, which can be found here. I could never dream of doing better than that!

(I contributed something else to the project as well by the way, but I will leave that to you to see for yourself!)

DISCS FOUR & FIVE

Disc Four is chock full of You’ve Never Heard Most Of This Before material. To start with, Joe gives us the entirety of the two shows the Mothers performed opening for Lenny Bruce at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco on June 24 & 25, 1966. Frank has issued material from these tapes before of course, going back to the 1985 Mystery Disc, but at long last we have this now in complete form. I will, of course, have more comprehensive reviews of these shows in a future post, but for now I will just say that it is absolutely amazing to have these very special tapes made available to us. Yes, some of the performances from the 25th were released on the 4-CD MoFO, but to hear it all in proper context is a special thing.

And here also, Discs Four and Five gives us something of a mystery that we didn’t know was a mystery: several tracks from a tape of a previously unknown show at the Fillmore on February 24, 1966. The tracks from this tape on Disc Five have “probably” listed next to the date; we definitely did not know that the Mothers were playing shows in San Francisco in February. In any event, from this tape we get two long stretches of the Mothers jamming, an arrangement of what I presume (having not heard it yet) to be Guy Lombardo’s “Coquette”, and “The Downtown Talent Scout”, which had of course been used to open the 1992 album You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore Vol. 5. I had previously misidentified this as being from one of the June shows in my book Hungry Freaks Daddy, but it’s apparently from February. Who knew?

Disc Five continues with the complete tape of the Seward Street rehearsals for Freak Out!, most likely from February 1966. We have of course had some of this before – a bit of conversation and “How Could I Be Such A Fool” appear on the 1985 Mystery Disc, and a bit more of the conversation can be heard on the 1971 David Walley interview tape. This is the first time that we’ve had the complete tape. Speaking of complete tapes, we then get something incredibly exciting – the complete set of the Mothers’ October 20, 1965 Original Sound Studio demos! Some of this has appeared on the Joe’s Corsage album, and a Frank edit of the demo for “Trouble Every Day” was released on the 2-CD version of MoFO. This is the first time that we’ve had the complete set of demos made available to us. Weirdly enough, what is apparently the master tape for the demo session is in the hands of a collector in Europe, so the version that is heard here is sourced from a copy of the master.

Original Sound Mothers demos master tape, 1965. Imagine breathing THAT mold in!

Up next is five mono vocal reference mixes from the Freak Out! sessions. I believe these were rough mixes that were designed to help Frank and Tom Wilson make decision regarding mixing. This is followed by another extreme rarity, a vintage 1966 radio ad for Freak Out!. a 1967 ad which combined hype for that album with hype for Absolutely Free was released officially on the 2-LP reissue of the latter album in 2017. For those of us true Zappa geeks who go into ecstasy over this kind of fetish stuff, this is brand new and will satisfy your heathen desires.

The final tracks on Disc Five provide us with a window into the final night of basic sessions for Freak Out!, a.k.a. the actual “Freak session”. Having not heard this yet, I will take a couple of educated guesses here and say that “Freak Out GTR Solo & Screams 7/4” is a previously unreleased FZ edit of material from the sessions, while “Freak Out Zilofone” was previously released on the 2-CD edition of MoFO. That leaves “Percussion Cue #3”, which I believe is another previously unreleased piece from the sessions.

THE BLU-RAY

Honestly, we have to give Universal a lot of credit for allowing the inclusion of a Blu-ray disc in this set. We live in an era where this sort of thing is disappearing as the market continues to shrink for physical product. Hell, just the fact that we can get a full CD box set at all is a minor miracle these days. And this is why we need to support these releases by purchasing them. The more we invest, the more product we get. It’s kind of as simple as that. There are plenty of other artists whose archive releases have all been dried up as sales have declined. For instance, it took the Beatles more than two years to release their forthcoming Rubber Soul box, and they are The Beatles. So this is just something to think about.

The Blu-ray gives us the usual mind blowing Dolby Atmos mix, along with a true 5.1 mix and 192/24 and 96/24 copies of the original 1966 stereo mix. Magnifique, non?

The CD box is being limited to four per customer, which indicates that the pressing run is fairly limited. So you will want to grab yours sooner than later, especially at that cheaper price point. These things do tend to sell out, and then the prices go through the roof. And while I hate to be a hype pitchman, I do this because I genuinely believe in the product and the only thing better than the Zappa that we already have is more Zappa. I’m sure you all feel the same way.

THE VINYL BOX

Wanna talk cool? Feast your eyes on the 5-LP vinyl box, all sparkling and shiny! Really, the presentation here is killer. Flip-top box? I’m in all day! For obvious reasons (it would be ridiculously expensive being the main one), the full CD box cannot be made available on vinyl. But what you will be able to put on your turntable is pretty notable. The first two LPs consist of the Pre-Master version of the album, properly mastered and utterly mind-blowing. LPs three and four consist of the 1966 mono mix, back in print on vinyl legitimately for the first time since 1968! Dreams come true here. I wouldn’t be surprised if this sounds significantly better than the 1966 original. LP five gives us the selection of curated highlights from discs four and five of the CD box, including the aforementioned 1966 radio ad. None of this material has been released on vinyl before, and it’s wonderful to be able to drop the needle on it.

COLORED VINYL

Finally, we have the 2-LP colored vinyl edition, or multicolored vinyl in this case, corresponding to the colors seen on the front cover of the album. It also includes the legendary Freak Out Map, which is also included in the CD and LP box set versions of the album. I’m not really sure why, but this is only available from zappa.com in the US, as there is apparently no European distribution for this version. A planned 2-LP black vinyl release was canceled:

In any event, this features the original 1966 stereo mix, taken from a 192/24 digital copy, which would probably make this the best-sounding version of this album ever. For those of you who worry about digital transfers, I can assure you that a ridiculous amount of attention to detail goes into the digital transfers of these tapes, and in the case of Freak Out!, the original album masters are on acetate tape, which is subject to warping after 60-plus years. The best way to preserve this, therefore, would be to create a high-resolution digital master.

So as you might be able to tell, I am VERY excited for this release! It is a fitting tribute to the album that, as you will probably know from my previous writings about it, utterly changed the course of my life. I encourage all of you who love Frank to pick this up, and get it while you can, this won’t be available for long, I suspect!