Kill Ugly Radio: Frank Zappa & Elsewhere

Rufus Wainwright’s Shakespeare Sonnets

Rufus Wainwright’s newest project, following the critically acclaimed Want One, Want Two, Release The Stars and Rufus Does Judy, envolves putting Shakespeare sonnets to music. Apparently a work in progress still but what I’ve heard so far sounds beautiful:

Both Sharl and I are avid Rufus fans — his music (or dresscode for that matter) may not be your cup of tea though.

More clips at Roger Bourland’s weblog.

Boz Scaggs at Wolfgang’s Vault

Boz Scaggs‘ voice was a very big part in the soundtrack of the seventies, so it’s really not a big surprise that this artist’s music still resonates with me (myself, having come of age in the mid-seventies). For me, Scaggs was then, and still is now, the epitome of smooth blues (like aged dark rum in a shot glass, straight back). If you look past his well known hits like “Lido Shuffle”, “Lowdown”, “Look What You’ve Done To Me”, you quickly realize that Scaggs is one in a long line of great American bluesman (which, perhaps, answers why his music is still popular today while so many of his 70s contemporaries have long since faded away).
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Hip Hop Meets The Violin

You know hip hop really isn’t my thing — never has been. Hook it up with a classically skilled violinist though, and things get interesting:

More violinesque YouTubery, courtesy of Paul Dateh. More of his music can be downloaded here.

Eric Dolphy Quintet — Berlin ‘61

A recent post made me think of another great innovator of free jazz, as well as third stream music: Eric Dolphy.
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The Mar Vista Philharmonic – No Forest Fire

Any fan of Tommy Mars‘ improvisational keyboards and scat filled solos within such classic Zappa compositions as “Pound For A Brown (On The Bus)” or “Little House I Used To Live In” will absolutely love the four tracks (”No Forest Fire”, “Prison Bush”, “Bitches Castle”, and “Here, George”) which make up The Mar Vista Philharmonic CD, No Forest Fire.
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Igor Stravinsky – Composer of the Week

Donald Macleod explores the life of Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) in this five part BBC Radio 3 documentary:

1. Looking West | 2. Wartime in Hollywood | 3. Craft |
4. A New Method | 5. Return to Europe

The King Of Pop Is Dead

RIP Michael Jackson. Believe it or not, as a kid I was a big fan of his music. Billy Jean! Beat it! Thriller! Regardless of the wacky behavior he displayed in later years, this is a sad day for pop music… Take it away Mikey!

Zappa’s Universe — Revisited

Zappa’s Universe (the album and video of the same title) documents the big tribute concert thrown for Frank Zappa over four nights (November 7-10, 1991, although the footage on the album and video are from the first two nights), organized by conductor Joel Thome, who assembled the Orchestra of Our Time at the Ritz in NYC. Mike Keneally and Scott Thunes were joined by other ex-Zappa sidemen Steve Vai, Denny Walley among many others including Frank’s son, Dweezil Zappa.

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Frank Zappa and Charles Bukowski

Kuiper en Berbée perform Charles Bukowski’s poem “The Machinery of Loss” at the Leiden Poetry Festival on June 7th, 2009, accompanied by a medley of music by Frank Zappa, performed by Renk Jan Vissers (violin) and Ton Schijvens (drums and typewriter). Kuiper (the woman)= Klaas Bolhuis, Berbée (the poet)=Wilco Maas.
Technician: Lamp Wouda.

As a writer and a Zappa freak, I can certainly dig this — I mean, who else hasn’t dreamt of playing the Black Page on their manual Underwood or Smith Corona?

Demo Disasters

A little something to ease your Monday blues:

We’re an indie label digging through years of demo backlogs day by day. These are some of the choicest gems we’ve received. We know that some people worked very hard on these, but also that sometimes, things just don’t succeed…

Take for instance, this particular gem entitled Making Love.