Frank Zappa Archives Reveals ‘One Size Fits All’ Items
The latest archival releases include a tabs songbook and celebrates the final studio album credited to the Mothers of Invention
The Frank Zappa archives continue to bestow surprises. The latest finds include items released to Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention’s 1975 album One Size Fits All.
Eight original copies of the 1975 vintage promo LP have already sold out but the album is receiving an official reissue this year in honor of its 50th anniversary. The album will be available as a five-disc (4CD/1Blu-ray Audio) Super Deluxe Edition and as a pair of special colored vinyl.
One Size Fits All is the final studio album credited to the Mothers of Invention. It features Zappa alongside keyboardist George Duke, drummer Chester Thompson, percussionist Ruth Underwood, bassist Tom Fowler, and saxophonist Napoleon Murphy Brock. The album includes eventual setlist mainstays like ‘Inca Roads,’ ‘Florentine Pogen,’ ‘Andy,’ and ‘Sofa.’
Also available is the One Size Fits All – Sheet Music Songbook featuring note-for-note transcriptions with tabs for all nine famously complex tracks from Zappa’s classic release. Published by sheet music company Hal Leonard, the 184 Page booklet includes an introduction by guitarist Steve Vai.
Vai began transcribing for Zappa in the summer of 1978, at 18-years-old. “The bulk of the work was guitar solos, some with their accompanying drum parts,” Vai wrote in 1983. “While transcribing the material, I was often confronted with situations that led me to reach into the intuitional areas of my imagination to come up with various notational devices and constructions that I had never seen before. I soon discovered that many contemporary composers were then (and are still) using these notations.”
Zappa’s 1980s video company, Honker Home Video, was recently revived. Originally founded in 1985, the brand is getting re-launched as an online video service in the Zappa.com store: “Honker believes that what you watch and when you watch it should be a matter of personal choice, and such decisions are not appropriately made by third parties or organized pressure groups.”
