Bootleg:Fire At The Casino Montreux

The Montreux Casino come up in November 1881 to create entertainment for people to the Swiss resort on the shores of Lake Geneva. The casino created authority as a music venue, bringing in Stravinsky and Ravel. In the late 1960s, it also began having concerts by jazz, blues and rock music artists, turning into the location for the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1967, under the guidance of Claude Nobs.

On Dec. 4, 1971, Casino in Switzerland, became a spot forever linked to rock history. A fire at the Montreux Casino through a concert by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention inspired Deep Purple‘s classic ‘Smoke on the Water.’
The Mothers were performing ‘King Kong’ — around 80 minutes into the show — when, during Don Preston’s synthesizer solo, somebody shot off a flare gun. The flare hit the wooden roof and quickly spread.



Fire At The Casino in this bootleg!

Setlist:

1. Intro,

2. Peaches En Regalia,

3. Tears Began To Fall,

4. She Painted Up Her Face,

5. Half A Dozen Provocative Squats,

6. Call Any Vegetable,

7. Anyway The Wind Blows,

8. Magdalena,

9. Dog Breath,

10. Sofa Suite,

11. Pound For A Brown,

12. Sleeping In A Jar,

13. Wonderful Wino,

14. Sharleena,

15. Cruisin' For Burgers,

16. King Kong (interrupted by fire)

----.FIRE!

Frank Zappa:

The 1971 European winter tour gets the award for being the most disasterous. On December 4, we were working at the Casino de Montreux in Geneva, Switzerland, right on the edge of the lake- just in front of Igor Stravinsky Street- a venue noted for its jazz festivals.
In the middle of Don Preston's synthesizer solo on "King Kong," the place suddenly caught fire. Somebody in the audience had a bottle rocket or a Roman candle and had fired it into the ceiling, at which point the rattan covering started to burn (other versions of the story claim the blaze was the result of faulty wiring).
There were between twenty-five hundred and three thousand kids packed into the room- well over capacity. Since more kids were outside, trying to get in, the organizers had cleverly chained the doors shut. When the fire began, the audience was left with two ways out: through the front door, which was pretty small, or through a plate-glass window off to the side of the stage.
I made an announcement- something like: "Please be calm. We have to leave here. There is a fire and why don't we get out?" You'd be surprised how well people who speak only French can understand you when its a matter of life and death. They began filing out through the front door.
As the room was filling with smoke, one of our roadies took an equipment case and smashed the big window. The crew then began helping people to escape through it into some kind of garden place below. The band escaped through an underground tunnel that led from behind the stage through the parking garage.
A few minutes later the heating system in the building exploded, and Some people were blown through the window. Fortunately, nobody was killed and there were only a few minor injuries- however, the entire building, about thirteen million dollars' worth, burned to the ground, and we lost all our equipment.