Zappa plays Zappa

Oh my god!!! As Moon Unit might say. Dweezil Zappa and the band was just a pair of knickers this side of freakin nirvana. Well.....nothing similar to Kurt Cobain and the fellas....but just about as awesome a show as a Frank Zappa lovin HopHunter could hope to encounter.
The scene was the New Years Eve 8pm show at the impressively ornate War Memorial Opera House in downtown San Francisco..... but earlier that same day...........
Terri and I finished off our 2008 work year by toiling a couple of morning hours and then headed out of town to meet up with Zack at the 1st Street Ale House in Livermore for some lunch...and of course maybe a couple three hop libations. The excellent Blue Cheese burger I had was only outdone by the outstanding IPA's the 1st street people had available. I started with the IPA from Schooners in Antioch which just seems to get better every time I have it. Excellent West Coast IPA style representation ....great aroma, huge hop bite and a nice clean finish. Next, of course I HAD to have a Pliny the Elder right? I would have saved the Pliny for my last beer except the beer menu also offered the Hopocalypse Imperial IPA from Drakes Brewing in San Leandro. Oh my. What a big hop monster that sucker is......If not for the show that evening I could have just stayed on 1st street and tried to demolish that keg of 11% sweetness.
After finishing up lunch and switching my bike onto Zack's transport we rode BART from Dublin to the Civic Center station in SF and immediately grabbed a cab with instructions to proceed to 547 Haight Street. With nearly three hours to spare before showtime it seemed only prudent to use the opportunity to polish some bar stools at Toronado. The Marin brewing Cask IPA, Russian River Blind Pig and Pliny the Elder went nicely between excursions into the beauty that is Port Brewing Hop-15 .....
After cabbing back to the show we made our way to our seats.....2nd row....dead center. Yes it IS worth spending 40% more for these kinds of seats. After a forgettable and useless opening act Dweezil, Ray White and the rest of cast came out and just nailed some FZ classics like INCA ROADS, COSMIC DEBRIS, MAGIC FINGERS (a 200 Motels song? Amazing) CAROLINA HARDCORE ECSTASY which feature some killer solos by everyone in the band. The middle of the show they did BILLY the MOUNTAIN which realllly surprised me. Not one of my favorites but impressive that they could pull off that nearly 25 minute piece of FZ musical history. They also did two of my favorites from way back WILLIE the PIMP (No, no Captain Beefheart sightings) and The MUFFIN MAN.
Keyboard/Flute/Saxophone player Scheila Gonzalez was particularly impressive; but what I enjoyed the most about the show was the sheer joy that was just oozing off all the players. They obviously enjoyed the show nearly as much as I did and their performance radiated it.
Unfortunately for Les Claypool, who is an incredible bass player, he had to try to follow up the FZ crew. It couldn't be done. Somewhere Frank was grinning and enjoying being the proud Papa of such a wonderful kid. We are all the better for it.
Our train ride home was uneventful ..... fortunately......because an hour and a half after we left town there was a shooting homicide in the BART station where we departed from.