I have mixed feelings on the very existence of this disc. Cheap Thrills is a budget priced Zappa disc with live cuts, a couple of spoken tracks from the Playground Psychotics records, and strong studio tracks. Right there, you can't go wrong. But! There's no new material here. If you're a Zappa fan with cash to blow, you've already got it.

Cheap Thrills was obviously named for its price (it retails at around $8.99 or so at most major outlets), but why Ryko chose these particular tracks remains a mystery. So let's leave it to the music.

You get seminal Zappa cuts like "Catholic Girls" (a live version), "You Are What You Is," "The Torture Never Stops" (the original version with Beefheart on vox), "My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama," and "Zomby Woof." You get the blunt weirdness that only the late Frank Zappa could wrestle out of the greedy grip of creativity. You get it cheap.

While these are not exactly the best tracks with which to initiate a new fan (the live cuts play with the lyrics a lot; "Bobby Brown Goes Down" in particular loses some of its great lines to half-baked adlibs), but it's a good overview of Frank's rock and roll excursions. Next time, a compilation such as this should feature the orchestral and jazz works Frank toyed with, but am I gonna bitch? Shit, no-- it's Zappa! If you can't get into it, I'll see you at the Ace of Base 2003 reunion tour. (Um, actually, I won't.)

-Jason Josephes