Dweezil Zappa - Hot Rats at The Royal Festival Hall

Dweezil Zappa at The Royal Festival Hall.

By Decibel Report.

Uniquely talented artists are rightly revered during their lifetime yet, following an untimely passing, only a choice few continue to be passionately held in high esteem with heftily attended live shows of their oeuvre. It’s a living form of a musical afterlife. As proof, Dweezil Zappa has preciously conserved and presented his father Frank’s music on many a tour; as he did so with an extra-special consummate performance this evening.

This 50th-anniversary airing of Hot Rats, dedicated to a newly born Dweezil upon its original release, drew a sold-out audience to the RFH to witness a mind-boggling, note-perfect play on this entire album’s tracks which followed the opening of tonight’s superb set with Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow.

A crack band of young multi-instrumentalists, inter-changing instruments, expertly rolled out stellar takes of jazz fusion, deep funk, doo-wop and subversive humour on Montana, a hilarious Penis Dimensions/ My Sharona hybrid and a captivating fuzzy funk out on Bamboozled By Love, which elicited excited yelps from this entranced audience.

Plentiful guitar solos by Dweezil deftly captured his father’s fierce, gilt-edged tone to the delight of the stunned assembly. Deep Lowell George band era blues cut Here Lies Love and an encore including a delicious I’m The Slime zapped everybody between the ears. It was akin to being musically tasered by these highly proficient players who faithfully executed a highly entertaining, hot evening of supremely rendered complex music by a most missed and unique maverick whose legacy lives on through his big chip off the old block son.