LÄTHER

Läther is the sixty-fifth official album by American musician Frank Zappa. It was released posthumously as a three-CD set on Rykodisc in 1996. The album's title is derived from bits of comic dialog that link the songs. Zappa also explained that the name is a joke, based on "common bastardized pronunciation of Germanic syllables by the Swiss." Läther integrates many aspects of Zappa's musical oeuvre — heavy rock, orchestral works, and complex jazz flavored instrumentals, along with his distinctive electric guitar solos and satirical lyrics, all edited together in a seemingly random way. Zappa said in 1978 that he originally configured the music on Läther as four individual albums, and that he completed these four albums in March 1977. Writing in the liner notes upon the album's release in 1996, Frank's wife Gail Zappa claimed a different story. The Läther album was intended for release as a four-LP box set on Halloween, October 31, 1977. However, this release was cancelled. Prior to the official 1996 release, unauthorized bootleg recordings of this material were widely distributed. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Läther) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)