A unique once-in-a-lifetime set-up; from the Saturday Night Live band, Lou Marini, Ronnie Cuber, and Tom Malone guest Zappa's band on stage, along with SNL's announcer Don Pardo, jazz-vibraphonist David Samuels, and the Brecker Brothers, at the Palladium in NYC during Christmas week 1976. The rhythm section consists of musicians with more routine in Zappa's music; Ray White (although he was quite new,) Eddie Jobson, Patrick O'Hearn, Terry Bozzio, and faithful percussion virtuoso Ruth Underwood. Aside from some re-arrangements of earlier released tunes, the album featured a lot of new material upon its release, but much of it would be re-recorded and re-released later during the composer's career, so there aren't more than three selections on these two discs that aren't available on other Zappa albums. In their original forms, both "Black Page #1" and "Black Page #2" are included - a nice treat. The overall musicianship on these discs is pretty loose and free, which isn't necessarily always for the better, since the album, aside from "Illinois Enema Bandit," "I'm The Slime," "Big Leg Emma," and "The Torture Never Stops," features very complicated compositions with very specific voicings and rhythmic phrases that call for a nitpicky performance in order to work. It's a shame that Zappa never recorded studio versions of songs like "I Promise Not To Come In Your Mouth," "Honey, Don't You Want a Man Like Me," "Manx Needs Women," and "Approximate" because even if these are fine performances by famous virtuoso musicians, the overall performance comes through a bit hectic and sometimes slightly unorganized due to the possible lack of practice of this particular line-up. A lot of the horn players are sight-reading during the performance.