YOU CALL THAT
NEWS?
(Hot Poop,
Lukewarm Poop…final poop)
Hot Poop
·
Thanks to Kill Ugly Radio, you can now read
some of the papers read at Les Fils de l’Invention's Grande Freak in
·
Anyone got a spare $4K for this http://www.gottahaverockandroll.com/LotDetail2.aspx?lotid=1038?
·
Dweezil on ZPZ's
European adventure: "The Italian audience blew
us away. When we played Peaches En
Regalia in the encore I thought my mind was playing tricks on me. The
audience sang the melody so loud that at a certain point we broke it down to
drums and bass so we could all hear the audience sing. I've never seen or heard
anything like that. That's a tricky melody to sing - they nailed all the
rhythms. It was amazing to witness that." And you can here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rcPsWDuFjQ
·
Here's an extract from a 1992 interview with
Jack Bruce by Polish rock magazine Tylko Rock regarding his involvement in
Apostrophe: "At the time I was recording an
album with Carla Bley, far more interesting one...so
Frank, whom I met earlier, appeared one day in the studio
and asked me: "Can you take your cello and go to my session?" So I
turned up in a NY studio with my cello, I'm listening to his music, pretty
awful, and just don't know what to do with myself, and Frank says to me:
"Listen, I would like you to play a sound, like this... whaaaaaang!!!" So I did what he asked me to do. Whaaaaaang!!! That was all. That was my input to Frank
Zappa's most popular record! (laughs)" (Bear
in mind that this was found on Wikipedia, which also
claimed that Jan Molby was openly bi-sexual and that
Ronnie Hazelhurst co-wrote Reach for S Club 7.)
·
Another Zappa home video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izXQPUW-Fg4
·
Order your Touva
Zappa crappa tribute stamps here: http://www.doors.com/door_mem/RandR/other/
(and paste them in).
·
MGM is developing a musical based on the
1983 comedy film, Valley Girl. Wonder if
Gail will succeed where Frank failed?
·
George
Duke talking about the merry old month of March: "Probably the highlight of the month for me was
putting my original funk band back together for a reunion on my album. They
played two tunes, got drunk and talked plenty sh-t!
In the studio was Ndugu,
Byron Miller, Sheila E, Napoleon Murphy
Brock, Josie James, Lynn Davis, Sweet D and Wah Wah Watson sitting in for Charles Johnson. The sessions
were so crazy that I might try and find a way to release the video footage we
shot during the sessions. They played the title cut of my new CD Dukey Treats and another track called Mercy. ICM, my agents, are madly working
away on a tour for the Fall where I can showcase my new CD, which will be
released August 26th”
·
The
Moving Tones is a new band comprising members of the Belgo-Dutch alternative musical scene, including the Wrong Object's Michel Delville. It produces an unusual
blend of avant-pop, jazz and
·
Steve
Vai's
Naked Tracks Vol. 1-5, is a series of recording packages that contain mixes of
Steve’s songs without the lead guitars. They are offered as “play along
tracks.” Included are select backing tracks from Passion and Warfare, Sex
& Religion, Alien Love Secrets,
Fire Garden, The Ultra Zone, Alive In An Ultra World, Real
Illusions: Reflections and others. And there's more from Steve: "The
video goals on the Real Illusions tour was to capture a unique kind of
performance for each song on the Real
Illusions CD. Since K’m-Pee-Du-Wee
was already released on a G3 DVD from
·
Billy
James (aka the ANT-BEE) will
be filmed for an interview on 21 July for a British documentary on Frank Zappa
and the Mothers of Invention (“from inception to the
break-up in 69/70”). Many of
the original Mothers will also be interviewed for the film, which is being
released by Prism Films UK - who produced the Captain Beefheart - Under
Review DVD. Says Billy “So far Bunk, Don, Billy Mundi and Art Trip will do interviews here in the States.
I'm still waiting to see if Motorhead is interested.
·
Bunk
Gardner says “Hello, boys and girls!”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seaZMjnv7KU
·
The classic 80s line up of the Butthole Surfers is being joined by Zappanale
regulars, The Paul Green School of Rock
All-Stars, for a tour of
·
Interesting that the Beat The
Boots series now available on iTunes
re-instate Petrushka
on ‘Tis The
Season To Be Jelly: this track was removed from
·
Lumania
Records released a rarities compilation CD, Lost
And Found Pep, by Wild Man Fischer
earlier this year. It includes the track, I’m Sorry, Frank Zappa.
·
Respect to the Zappa family: home video on YouTube at http://youtube.com/watch?v=bs9JXsxiVX8
- features Zappanale #19 special guest Stanley
Jason Zappa and his uncle, Carl
Lewis Zappa. And a dog named Ginger.
·
The old Reviews section has been updated a bit –
including a special guest review from the fine, fine Evil Dick on last weekend’s ICE-Z III.
·
Weird
Al Yankovic recently on his homage
to Frank from a few years back, Genius In France: "[It] was
really a labour of love. I'm a big Zappa fan, and I
wanted to do it right. I started by going through Frank's catalogue, focusing
on the early 70s — listening carefully and making notes about every little
lyrical or musical nuance that seemed uniquely Zappa."
·
Did we all know about these 'Zappa refs on MST3K'?
I didn't. (Thanks, Ad)
·
After The
Arrogant Dubya Son comes Let's Make Blackwater Turn Back – another
Pojama People special: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awZF5nEmjP4
·
Update on the ‘Aggressive Action by the Zappa
Family Trust’ story: Dweezil has posted
his reaction to André’s allegations over here. And André’s
riposte can be found way on down here.
·
The Zappatistas are playing at Ronnie Scott's in
·
Coming soon from Crossfire Publications, a deluge of Jimmy Carl Black wonderment (many with bonus tracks*). On CD: Can I Borrow A Couple Of Bucks Until The End
Of The Week?; If We'd Only Been Living
In California...; Where's My
Waitress?; I'm Not Living Very
Extravagantly, I'll Tell You For Sure…. And for download only: In Heat* (Big Sonny & The Lo Boys); Welcome Back Geronimo Black* (Geronimo
Black); Clearly Classic* (Jimmy Carl
Black); Live At KUT Radio (Jr.
Franklin & The Golden Echoes); A Lil' Dab'l Do Ya*
(Jimmy Carl Black & The Mannish Boys); Brown,
Black & Blue (Arthur Brown with Jimmy Carl Black); I Just Got In From Texas (Chris Holzhaus,
Jimmy Carl Black, Louis Terrazas); Dreams On Long Play (both versions)*
(The Grandmothers); Mercedes Benz
(Jimmy Carl Black And The X-Tra Combo); Hamburger Midnight (B.E.P.); How Blue Can You Get? (The Jimmy Carl
Black Band); Granthology 1 (The Grandmothers); and Granthology 2 (The Grandmothers).
·
…and here’s a cool interview with the
current Grande Mothers before their performance at the Vancouver
Jazz Festival recently: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip01tf8Cqsg.
Great, we should have another new live album from them soon.
·
Marco
Minnemann's
latest DVD, The Marco Show, includes
almost one full hour of drum solos and performance with the Buddy Rich Big
Band, Bryan Beller and Mike Keneally. Mike also plays additional
guitar on two tracks on Marco’s imminent A
Mouth Of God CD.
·
This Idiot is currently interviewing Denny Walley,
Robert Martin and Jimmy Carl Black. Extracts from my chat
with Zappanale headliner Denny can be pre-viewed now at http://idiotbastard.com/Interviews/DennyWalley.htm
·
Chad
Wackerman is touring the
·
At the Quebec Festival on 8 July, Julie and Eric Slick will be on stage with Adrian Belew, Tony Levin, Pat Mastelotto and the California
Guitar Trio, opening for Primus
as F.o.C.K. ("Friends of Crimson King").
Apparently the Adrian Belew Power Trio will do a half
hour set - they will then be joined by Tony and Pat for a half hour of Crimson
music, after which a huge jam with the Trio...and possibly Les Claypool. On the preceding two days, the ABPT opens for ZPZ (in
·
Gail has been posting a lot at the Zappa
Forum recently: first, seemingly in support of some anti-English sentiments
aimed at me and my ‘bullshit spinning’ (interestingly,
Dweezil’s latest blog is
now much more carefully worded: “introducing Frank's
music to a new generation of fans is one of my biggest goals”). But then, even more interestingly, to
explain one of the reasons why FZ’s music isn’t on iTunes anymore (“Ryko believes they have the digital rights and that we do
not.”)…and, most recently, to advise that “…we are working on a minimum of four
more releases this year.”
Drool.
·
The Gail-approved Ascolta plays Zappa in the
·
KMB
(that’s Keneally-Minnemann-Beller)
will be shooting a live concert video at their official live debut on Sunday 20
July (at Channel Twelve 25 in
·
Thanks as ever to the Radar Station for this:
It Comes To You In A Plain Brown Wrapper,
intended to be the second Captain Beefheart album, will finally be released on vinyl 22
July by Sundazed Records - with sleeve notes by Drumbo and a “plain brown like slip cover thing that wraps the package”
on which Cal Schenkel
“did some doodles”, replicating the album’s
planned 1967 design.
·
Check out the July edition of Guitar World magazine, which has an
article on Zappa and features the Dweez showing off
the Hendrix start at UMRK on the CD-ROM.
·
You can now order the new FZ CD, One Shot Deal, from Barfko-Swill
(click the pic above). Here’s some helpful (though
possibly a little inaccurate) details, as posted at Kill Ugly Radio: http://www.killuglyradio.com/2008/06/13/zappa-one-shot-deal-status-released/#comment-1438.
Given the short clip posted at zappa.com, most folk think the final track is
actually from Royce Hall 1975 – ie. the Abnuceals Emuukha
Electric Symphony Orchestra, not Petite Wazoo. And Space Boogers is believed to be from the
only known gig where Michael Urso of Rare Earth
filled in on bass for Tom Fowler after he broke his arm in November 1974 (hence
‘one shot deal’?).
·
The Jack
& Jim Show is currently touring
·
John
French (aka Drumbo) is re-equipping,
re-forming and re-vitalising. His
·
Cuccurullo Brillo Brullo
will be playing in
·
At the International Zappa Conference in
Paris on 5/6 July, Les Fils De l'invention
is proud to announce that speakers will include Dr Richard Hemmings (aka
Evil DIck), Ben
Watson (aka Out To Lunch), Dr Esther Leslie (aka Miss Pinky), Simon Prentis
(aka the Semantic Scrutinizer), The Wrong Object’s Michel Delville and Arf Society
President, Thomas Dippel.
And ahead of their performance at Zappanale, the Delicious Band Research Kitchen will perform on Saturday. Find out
more at http://lesfilsdelinvention.net/.
·
The
latest MOJO includes an article by Dave DiMartino on
the relationship between FZ and Captain Beefheart,
with some interesting quotes from the likes of Miss Pamela, Cal Schenkel and Gary
Lucas.
·
Matchbox Twenty guitarist
Paul Doucette will release the debut
album from his side project, The Break And Repair Method, this Autumn. It will
be called Milk The
Bee. One of the guests on the album is Moon
Zappa, his wife, who sings on several tracks.
·
Barfko-Swill
has unleashed The Torture Never Stops
DVD, including liner notes by Scott Thunes, bonus material featuring the audio of two songs
from the Halloween ’81 shows previously not included (Teenage Prostitute and City
Of Tiny Lites) and the YAWYI promo video, plus a photo gallery. As some will recall, the Dub Room DVD liner notes referred to
this and the KCET 74 TV show being "slated for
DVD as whole concerts, mixed in multi-channel." The package for
this new DVD says it is in PCM Stereo, but it isn't. Explains Vaultmesiter Joe
Travers: "We originally were going with PCM
audio but we decided that we would go Dolby Digital 2.0 since we did not treat
the audio in any way, nor remix. We went for picture quality instead. But when
we switched the audio, the print work had already been completed. That's the
story. We are planning on a special edition-type release with (hopefully) the
full shows & all remixed in surround."
·
Walt Disney Studios has signed a multiyear
deal with Ahmet Zappa to help oversee its newly
christened Kingdom Comics, which will shortly announce which graphic novelists
and artists plan to collaborate on upcoming projects.
·
The life and career of Motörhead frontman
Lemmy Kilmister is
being celebrated in a new documentary, tentatively titled Lemmy and slated for release in
2009. The film includes an interview Steve
Vai.
·
Mike
Keneally is "26 minutes into recording on Normalizer 2: Evidence of Humanity which is an entirely insane collaboration
with Marco Minnemann.
The story of this one: Marco recorded a 51-minute improvised drum solo, and
then gave the recording to a few different composers to record music. Following
the twists and turns of Marco's improvised musical choices has led me to write
some of the most intense and crazy music I've ever done, probably.”
Meanwhile, Marco's new band, UKZ
(led by Eddie Jobson) is about to
reveal its first piece of music via YouTube. And the
band will apparently also be playing at a festival in
·
“Jimmy
Carl Black was living in
·
Patrick
O’Hearn spent the month of April
in the studio with Terry Bozzio. Their collaboration of improvised duets was
filmed and will be viewable later this year with the launch of The Drum
Channel. But before then, Patrick can be heard, then
seen, with singer-songwriter John Hiatt;
Patrick played upright and electric bass on John's soon to be released album,
Same Old Man. They had not met previously, but got on so well that Hiatt has
now invited Patrick to join his band for an upcoming Summer
tour.
·
Read about Scott Carter Thunes’ personal style.
·
Wymer Publishing is planning a Zappa book: http://www.wymerpublishing.co.uk/in_the_pipeline.htm.
·
As mentioned
earlier, on 10 July at the Jazz Festival in Vienne,
France, L'Ensemble de Basse-Normandie
(conducted by Dominique Debart) pays further homage
to FZ with its The Big Note, Zappa Alchimiste show…and now confirmed on Jean-Luc Ponty’s website, “JLP will perform with his band and will also join the
Ensemble to perform four tunes from the King
Kong album, which he never performed again since its recording with Frank
Zappa in 1969”.
·
A bust of FZ is
to be erected in
·
Time was when this Idiot used
to send FZ ‘media spots’ to T’Mershi Fred…now the
radiant Mr Tomsett sends me
stuff like this: “There's a film called Things We Lost In The Fire with Halle Berry and Benicio del Toro
and David ‘X-Files’ Duchovny. The music contained
within features a snippet of FZ's Little House In What We Used To Live and
the opening to (one of the versions of) Black
Napkins, as well as a long chunk of Beefheart's
Cool Spot (and all of the VU's Sweet Jane). The film
is about a recovering heroin addict (BdT) who loses
his best mate (DD) and ends up moving in to the garage of his best mate's wife
(HB) - sound complicated? Not really. Good performances from the two main leads
- DD dies very shortly after the film starts, though re-appears throughout in
flashbacks.”
·
Read this press release
about travelling to “this
quote-unquote festival slash event slash what the fuck" in Bad Doberan in August.
·
My Soul - The Complete
MPS Fusion Recordings, a 4-CD box set comprising George Duke’s Solus; The Inner Source; Faces In
Reflection; Feel; I Love The Blues…; The Aura Will Prevail; and Liberated
Fantasies, has just been released. Not sure where this leaves the Promising
Music remastered reissues.
·
Wendy Bannister: “We
have two of the big original 1971 tour posters left (with a slightly larger
tear than the ones we sold through your site for £75) for only £45.” Anyone
interested should email Wendy on info@rockmusicmemorabilia.com or phone
01954 268088.
·
Vivid Entertainment plans to
release what it says is a film from the vaults of classic rock: a sex film
supposedly of Jimi Hendrix. The film shows a naked man
who resembles Hendrix, but his full face appears on screen for only a few
seconds, with his eyes closed. The film has no audio, but the DVD includes
commentary from two women who believe the tape is real: Pamela Des Barres and Cynthia Plaster Caster, who says “I’m 100 percent sure it’s him. The facial bone structure
is the same. The eyebrows and the moustache are true to the style he was
wearing in 1970.”
·
Warren Cuccurullo's long awaited next
release should be N' Liten
Up this September 2008 on Edel Records in
·
Ray Scherr
and Steve Vai
are the Executive Producers of Crazy,
a new independent feature film inspired by the tragic life and music of
1950s-era guitarist Hank Garland.
Steve performs a cameo as Hank Williams.
·
Last year saw the release of Tony Palmer's All My Loving DVD. Now, available for the first time, his All You Need Is Love has made its DVD
debut as a lavish boxed set containing all 17 episodes of the TV series on 5
discs. This includes interviews with some of the major names of the past 50+
years including John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Elvis Presley, Jimi
Hendrix, Tina Turner, Bill Graham, FZ and Eric Clapton.
·
German label, Promising Music,
has gained access to a range of more than 400 titles of the MPS catalogue and
has remastered and reissued Don ‘Sugarcane’ Harris’s Got
The Blues and George Duke’s Faces In Reflection. They may also
reissue George's I Love the Blues, She
Heard My Cry (featuring Ruth Underwood, Bruce & Tom Fowler, Janet
Ferguson and Johnny "Guitar" Watson), The Aura Will Prevail (featuring Echidna's Arf
and Uncle Remus), Feel
(featuring FZ), and Liberated Fantasies
(featuring Napi). The CDs are packaged in downsize
replicas of original LP, with inner sleeves, an extra booklet with legible
reprints of liner notes.
·
I Believe In
Music: The History Of The Gross Prophet
is a 50-track, double CD collection featuring tracks recorded by Gross Prophet
members before, during and after their time in the band (1962–1999). The band’s
prime line-up included bassist/vocalist Gerald Sanders of the Tornadoes. The
collection (which includes the FZ-engineered Tornadoes’ track Moon Dawg) has
been put together by Greg Russo (with Gerald’s help) and will be available from
Crossfire Publications in May. If you haven't checked out the two Tornadoes CDs
that Greg put together (Now And Then
and Charge Of The
Tornadoes), visit the Crossfire site for more info now.
Lukewarm Poop
Here’s
a press release on the 5-Disc Deluxe Edition
Zappa Plays Zappa set and more from
Razor & Tie: http://www.idiotbastard.com/ZPZ.htm
(includes a video player with a couple of extracts from the DVD – scroll to the
end)…Bright Eye Pictures has two new DVD releases: Prometheus’ Garden (28 minutes, 1988) is the only film over which Bruce Bickford maintained complete
creative control. The DVD features a commentary track by Bickford, an alternate
score by Laird Dixon, and the half hour documentary featurette,
Luck Of A Foghorn: The
Making Of Bruce Bickford’s Prometheus’ Garden, directed by Brett
Ingram. The other is an exclusive release of the new Monster Road “Collector’s Edition” DVD, featuring a DVD-9 encode
for superior image quality, plus the movie soundtrack by Shark Quest and 15
additional minutes (45 min. total) of extras, including rare Bickford animation
and deleted scenes from the documentary…got a very sweet email from Frank’s
brother, Bob Zappa, the other day:
“I have been reading - and enjoying - material on your web site for quite some
time and would like to thank you for keeping Frank's memory alive for so many
of his fans,” he wrote. Guess that makes me Zappa Family approved? And with
Bob’s son, Stanley, playing Zappanale this year, that
means the festival has both the spirit and the genes. Double sweet…Claude Nobs and Perry Richardson have just published four hardback
books – Live! From Montreux:
40 Years Of Music From The Montreux Jazz Festival
– that include many photos from the 1971 casino fire…Guitar Center's Fresh Cuts Volume 1 CD, featuring Guitar
Center employees & more, includes Magic
Carolina by Dweezil Zappa, seemingly an excerpt from a ZPZ
show of the segue between two songs by his daddy. Get it on eBay today…last
year, Marty Smyth released an album
of tunes played on a church organ, called Synchronous,
that includes Peaches En Regalia (http://www.martysmyth.ca/Listen/A39642BC-30AB-49D2-BA57-C54A30CFA358.html)...
even further back in time, Hasidic New
Wave released an album called Kabalogy that included The
Frank Zappa Memorial Bris…YouTube,
a great place…oh no, it’s an embarrassed looking Idiot with Blurp:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2TJjAvNdJw...like
father like son: Dweezil's version of the mighty Zep's Stairway To
Heaven can be heard on three new-ish releases: Led Box: The Ultimate Tribute To Led
Zeppelin (2008, Cleopatra Records); Rock
Band Classics (2008, Deadline); and Classic
Rock Masters (2008, Deadline). Sounds like Axl
Rose on the out-chorus…Pamela Des Barres is “looking for former groupies or modern girls
still hanging with bands for an upcoming doc based on my last book, Let's Spend the Night Together. The
bands have to be very well known, sorry! Please send me a brief note about your
exploits,” she asks…watch George
Clinton’s P-Funk All Stars rip into I’m
The Slime on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Bqf2mPoOns
(thanks to The Amazing Mr Bickerton
for that)…Steve Vai
has contributed a previously unreleased song to the new Musicians For Minneapolis - 57 Songs for the I-35W
Bridge Disaster Relief Effort benefit CD. Without Me is a soaring ballad originally recorded during the Ultra Zone sessions, and features Philip Bynoe
on bass, Mike Mangini
on drums and Mike Keneally
on keyboards. Says Steve of the track: “This piece of music is contributed to
this project out of respect and love for the great city of