Baby Snakes

Baby Snakes available on DVD is a late 70's movie originally released as double videocassette at that time. Actually it is three movies in one: a concert-film, a documentary (indeed rockumentary) and, last but not least, an animation artwork featuring the stunning claymation done by Bruce Bickford. It's playing time last a little more than two hours, so most people will find something for their own taste. The most of it are concert sequences from a series of concerts in Halloween 1977. The bands performances are exquisite, changing between rock, fusion, stunning solos, composing by conducting tracks, funny songs and audience participation. A little bit you can find on the same named soundtrack album. You also see a lot of backstage scenes, funny looking audiences entering the concert-hall and so on, which i would describe as the documentary part of the movie. And finally there is a lot of wonderful clay-animation done by Bruce Bickford, it is not to much in relation to the playing time of the disc, but maybe caused the most hours of work for manufacturing this movie. If you are fair, you shouldn't wonder if Bickford was the second name on the DVD-case. Zappa later filled this gap with the title 'the amazing mister Bickford' for another video-release. The animation sequences are accompanied with soundtracks done by the same Band but sounding totally different to the stuff played in the concerts. You can see a few moments FZ conducting the band in the studio recording these soundtracks, otherwise you wouldn't believe hearing the same cast of musicians. This shows once more the unbelievable band-with of Zappa himself as well of the band-members. All in all the animation sequences are a very special part of the film, i wouldn't like to miss them. These single elements of the movie are melted together in a very chaotic way, just about the last hour consists only of concert recordings, but when you have reached this sequence you have a lot behind you, really! People who don't like FZ won't like this movie also, people who divide FZ in two persons (the good Zappa and the evil Zappa) will find a lot to pick out what they like, i for myself like to watch the disc from beginning to the end.

Nearly all aspects of Zappa creativity are reflected here: Several really long guitar solos, the classic "goofy" crowd pleasing songs, amazing playing by the band (Black Page 2 and many others), funny monologues, on-stage audience participation bits as well as some amazing conducting on some free-form pieces. It's also interesting to compare this to "Does Humor..." which I also love. It's true that in "Does Humor..." the video quality is cleaner, but I actually like that slightly fuzzy older look. But more importantly, in BBSNX Zappa is much, much more energetic, and in addition, the individual talents of the band members really shine here: Tommy Mars has a truly amazing keyboard solo and Terry Bozzio is utilized to the max, including performing, possibly, the best drum solo I've seen on video. I also liked the fact that the audio/video sync is pretty much 99.9% right on. No overdubs, no nothing - what you hear is what you see ("The Song Remains The Same" comes to mind as an unfortunate example of the opposite). I read some complaints about the back stage antics and the claymation stuff (which I liked). keep in mind though, this DVD is so long that even if you skip those things you still get two full hours of first rate concert footage. Enjoy!

How I miss Frank... Can you imagine what he may have had to say today about the state of music, politics and everything in between?

Zappa has the best band out there. Incredible artistic talent and imagination throughout the whole film. The movie contains backstage footage, live performances and much more. And the animation! So unique, I personally haven't seen anything like it. You got to watch this if you're a Zappa fan or a fan of experimental art.

I was never really into Zappa, but I am a stop motion animator and I have to say that this thing (2 tape version) has some of the best claymation I have ever seen. (Bruce Bickford)- Zappa and his band doing the soundtrack is right on the money, too. After seeing this film I think I get the whole Zappa trip.

A must-see for every Zappa fan. This film must be seen in its original 3-hour version if possible. The live concert footage shows perfectly what an incredible musician/composer/bandleader Zappa was. The rest of the band (featuring Adrian Belew, Tommy Mars and Terry Bozzio) put in great performances as well. I wish the re-release of the "Baby Snakes" CD from four years ago was expanded to include more concert footage from this movie.