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The Ed Palermo Big Band

Eddy Loves Frank

Cuneiform Rune 285

Seeing Frank Zappa performing live in 1969, says Ed Palermo, 'permanently altered my entire scope on music', and on the great man's death in 1993, Palermo held a concert in his memory comprised entirely of arrangements of Zappa material.

Palermo's big band subsequently held down a ten-year residency at New York's Bottom Line, during which they played countless Zappa tunes, and they have also taken part in numerous Zappa-fests worldwide. Palermo is, in short, a Zappa freak with all the right credentials to make an album of the composer/guitarist's music (his third such), and it shows.

Palermo's arrangements, again in his own words, 'are inspired by my absolute love for FZ's melodies and chord changes, and my desire to put them in a framework that best showcases those elements. It was Frank's personality to arrange in a way that almost obscured the beauty of his melodies … He never sentimentalised his work.'

Palermo certainly compensates, on this fascinating, often downright exhilarating album, for this tendency of Zappa's to bury his work in flippancy and the occasional casual obscenity. With no vocals at all (except for on the closer, 'America the Beautiful'), and with a rowdy, rumbustious but always controlled seventeen-piece band teasing out all the considerable felicities and subtleties from Zappa's matchless, utterly distinctive music, this is an unalloyed treat, an album that reveals fresh delights every time it's played.