Released in August 1971 just two months after it was recorded, Fillmore East - June 1971 was Frank Zappa and The Mothers’ masterstroke conceptual live album, a well-oiled and well-edited aural treatise chronicling the prurient feast and famine of a certain band’s somewhat salacious life on (and off) the road. In effect, it was the seemly predecessor to October 1971’s expansive, groundbreaking magnum opus, 200 Motels, the surrealistic documentary and soundtrack which ultimately took on a life of its own. Even so, Fillmore East - June 1971, the landmark live recording with the scrawled “penzil” cover art made to resemble a bootleg of the day, managed to capture its own level of then-modern zeitgeist in patented Zappa-reconstructed form.
The expanded 50th anniversary 3LP vinyl edition of Fillmore East – June 1971 will have a remaster of the original 1971 live album on LP1 along with 2 LPs of bonus tracks, including the John Lennon and Yoko Ono encore and the complete masterpiece “Billy The Mountain,” plus liner notes by Joe Travers. Significantly, the vinyl version of Fillmore East has been expanded to include vintage, period-perfect Zappa mixes, some of which are not included in the CD box set and can’t be found anywhere else. The original album appears on Sides 1 and 2, while Sides 3, 4, 5, and 6 contain the original “Billy The Mountain” as well as Zappa’s original version of the John & Yoko encore along with other material from the original mix sessions of the Fillmore East album. The Fillmore East 50th Anniversary Edition 3LP set was cut by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering.
