Here Comes The Flood: FIDOplaysZAPPA: Too Big To Fail

Swiss dectet FIDOplaysZAPPA entered in the studio in the Spring of 2010 to record Too Big To Fail, an acoustic tribute to Frank Zappa and a few originals in the vein of moustached maestro.

It is a respectful album, on the verge of overdoing it. They follow te originals like overzealous St. Bernhard, jazzing things up a little with mixed results. Black Napkins is just a notch above late night dinner background music, while Let's Make The Water Turn Black is turned into enjoyable brass fest. What is missing are the tongue-in-cheek vocals that were such an essential part of the Zappa experience. The stand out player is Martin Medimorec, who channels vibes and marimba player Ruth Underwood rather well. Too Big Fail is an album for people who are not ready yet to handle the real stuff.

As for the originals, only Colonia 4711, a piano piece, is a memorable tune. The sixteen minute plus Musician's Salary is overlong piece of free jazz meets 20th Century classical music that could have been interesting when they had taken out the uninteresting bits, which means that it would have run for about four minutes or so.

FIDOplaysZAPPA:
Dave Muscheidt: vocals, general grumpiness
Oli Fredli: piano, keys
Stef Strittmatter: guitars, vocals
Martin Medimorec: vibraphone, marimba, percussion
Pascal Grünenfelder: bass, vocals, bandleaderism
Remy Sträuli: drums, vocals
Dave Blaser: trumpet
Alex Hilbe: alto sax, baritone sax
Ueli Pletscher: tenorsax
Christoph Huber: trombone