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Customer Rating:  
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Product Description
Touted as "a movie about people who do stuff that is not normal," Frank Zappa's Baby Snakes chronicles a late-'70s Halloween stand in New York City (a zany enough proceeding in its own right) with digressions throughout the first half for backstage antics, band interviews, and some outlandish clay animation from Bruce Bickford, with whose work Zappa was obviously smitten. Onstage, Zappa is a live wire, the audience is appropriately rambunctious, and the band--an especially potent incarnation of the famous Mothers of Invention--is tight as could be. The film amounts to a three-hour musical carnival whose participants lack any trace of artistic or personal inhibition. Zappa, who died in 1993, always worked with consummate musicians, and Baby Snakes showcases the cream of the crop: Terry Bozzio (one of the greatest drummers ever to command a kit), bassist Patrick O'Hearn, keyboard wizard Tommy Mars, and even pop chameleon Adrian Belew. The DVD packaging, with its deluxe miniature dossier on Zappa and the film, is fabulous, and the sound and picture seem about as good as they could be, under the influence--that is, the circumstances. Undeniable are Zappa's intelligence and charisma, which flicker and blaze every second he's on screen. The progressive-leaning rock and jazz music is frequently interrupted for meandering spoken interludes and is certainly not for all tastes. But Frank Zappa was a force to behold, and Baby Snakes offers a unique cultural education for anyone bold enough to give it a spin. "Without deviation," Zappa wrote, "progress is not possible." Baby Snakes is one of Frank's most fervent contributions to progress. --Michael Mikesell
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Customer Review(s)
Customer Rating: Summary: Goodness snakes! What a trip! Comment: Not just a glimpse of genius, but a virtal smorgasbord! In this video, many twisted minds come together like baby snakes in the night, producing a sensory overload unequalled by any group of artists. You have the totally bizarre claymation freak-outage, the uninhibited backstage showing off, and the not-frequent-enough footage of Zappa squeezing every drop of musical talent from his band members in rehearsal. Then you have the irreplaceable concert footage- it's such a blast to watch Terry Bozzio clad in a devil's mask and underwear, banging away at the drums like a maniac. Zappa commands the stage but then drags in an assortment of audience members, a blow up doll, a talking toy cop car and even his road crew manager for comic measure, as if he needs to get more random. Oh yeah, there's some amazing guitar playing, too.
If this sounds like fun to you, you are not normal and you will enjoy watching this. I totally recommend it!
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