Jean-Luc Ponty at Zappanale, 2010

You might want to listen to the original King Kong (’69) album – collected temporarily here.

Posted in Alumni, FZcovers, Jean-Luc Ponty, YouTubery | Tagged , | 17 Comments

Cover Freak’s Zappa Tribute

Eleven Zappa covers from a variety of bands, a year in the making + free download equals coolness! Mucho kudos to Cover Freak, a blog well worth following I should add.

Posted in Frank Zappa, FZcovers, Music | 5 Comments

Sunday Big Note – Listening Session #7

I had a completely different artist in mind for this week’s listening session before the sad, untimely passing of poet, painter, musician and all round iconoclast, Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart).
Continue reading

Posted in Alumni, Captain Beefheart, Sunday Big Note | Tagged | 13 Comments

Too Big to Fail – new album from FiDOplaysZAPPA

The new Fido Plays Zappa album called Too Big to Fail is coming soon – itt will be acoustic!

FiDOplaysZAPPA – Black Napkins by mistergreen

Check out their homepage for more! (found at United Mutations)

Posted in FZcovers | Tagged | 3 Comments

Unreleased Lumpy Gravy Cover Photos – Part 6

The final (6th) part of these unreleasesd photo series (see our earlier post). From the Commodore Crush blog, with no Zommify Widget this time, but watermarks – read the accompanying text there also, hehe.

Posted in Frank Zappa, Visual Arts | Tagged , | 15 Comments

The Frank Zappa AAAFNRAAAA Birthday Bundle

By now you may have read about this elsewhere: the ZFT yesterday released another Birthday Bundle. It’s a digital-download compilation album featuring various artists including Macy Gray, Holland Greco and of course FZ himself. Full tracklist here, a bit more info over at the wiki and zappa.com.

Posted in Frank Zappa, FZ's birthday, Official Releases | 22 Comments

Beautiful & Heartbreaking – Vliet Recites Poetry, 1993

Both beautiful and heartbreaking, Don Van Vliet recites his offbeat poetic lyrics:
Continue reading

Posted in Captain Beefheart, YouTubery | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Strictly Genteel (All Versions Mix)

This is a mix of four different arrangements / recordings of “Strictly Genteel,” synchronized measure for measure and then re-synchronized to the video.

It’s worth watching it in it’s original Youtube page, reading the detailed description of the amazing mix. Great, great work!

Posted in Community, Frank Zappa, Music, YouTubery | Tagged , | 7 Comments

Stravinsky’s First Childhood Memory Of Sound

… and I quote:

…an enormous bare legged peasant seated on the stump of a freshly cut tree singing a two-syllable nonsense song and accompanying himself with what we as kids used to call “arm farts.”

… and so:

The young composer-to-be rushed home to his family summer place in the Ukrainian countryside and practiced the technique assiduously until he was so successful at it that his parents forbade him to indulge in such an indecent accompaniment. (“Igor, stop that this instant, or go to your room!”)

Be sure to read John Adams full post.

Hat tip: Jonny Butter

Posted in Heh Heh, In Writing, Music | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Rondo Hatton Report: Vol. 5

Right in time for Christmas, a new Rondo Hatton Report has been published – Volume 5 can be downloaded here and contains ten fresh essays. For coming issues, you are encouraged to submit your own!

Posted in Community, Frank Zappa | Tagged | 2 Comments