Frank Zappa – My Guitar & Interview

In this fan-made video, Frank Zappa’s 1969 7″ Extended Version of “My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama” is combined with a Zappa interview by Bill Hewey on “What’s It All About” – recorded for the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. For Public Service (Religious) Broadcast, August 1979. Some really, really weird takes on Zappa’s point of view…

Trouble Every Day – Live In Philadelphia ’74

A couple of weeks ago, I was contacted by a couple of old friends I knew in High School, and among our collective reminiscences, were those long afternoons we spent listening to my Frank Zappa and Mothers of Invention records on my parent’s ancient, mahogany console stereo. “Do you still listen to Zappa? they asked, wondering perhaps if I’d put aside my childish concerns for more adult oriented fare. Of course, it’s their children, now, who are listening to Zappa. Songs like “Catholic Girls“, just a reminder of younger days. What is it about Zappa’s music that turns the average, ordinary fan, musician, into a life-long freaks of his music, I wonder?
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Return Of The Knick Knacks

Ha! There you were thinking this weblog was going down the drain. Silly you.

Hedgehog

The BBC is currently broadcasting a superb documentary series about the internet and how it will change any and all of us in the future.
Last night’s episode, Homo Interneticus, was all about social networks such as Facebook and how they influence our lives.

At the end of this episode, an online test was mentioned which attempts to determine how you behave when online, in animal terms.

Of course, I had to take it. My result:

You are a Web Hedgehog

HedgehogSlow-moving – Web Hedgehogs are careful internet users, taking their time to find the right information – just as the real-world hedgehog carefully searches out insects and berries.
Solitary – Hedgehogs lead mainly solitary lives and are happiest foraging for food of their own. In the ecology of the Internet, you also prefer to go it alone, rarely relying on information on social networks or other sites whose content is created by its users.
Specialised – The hedgehog relies for protection on its highly specialised ability to roll into a spiky ball. Similarly, your test suggests you are a specialised web user, best suited to concentrating on one thing at a time rather than attempting to multitask.

Yourself?
Test requires (painless) registration and about 20 minutes of your time.

Frank Zappa — Cynic, Satirist, Social Anthropologist

Frank Zappa had been referred to as a lot of things throughout his thirty year career – some complimentary (genius, iconoclast, family man) and some not so complimentary (misogynist, anti-semite, misanthropist) – yet all one need do is listen to some of the myriad of interviews Zappa gave during his life (beginning with an excerpt from the Mark Radcliffe BBC Radio 1 Interview, above) and evidence becomes overwhelmingly clear: besides being a musician and composer, Zappa was a life-long cynic, satirist, and a social anthropologist:
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Zappa, Frank – 200 Motels DVD

As mentioned in the comments by LA Guru, heeeere’s Zappa’s 200 Motels:

Released on DVD for the first time, by original director Tony Palmer, is this flawed masterpiece of circa 1970 Frank Zappa craziness. Obviously shot in a very short time on a very low budget, some of this drags, but some of it is really funny and/or spot-on; I still see the ‘re-education camp for musicians’ sequence in my dreams

Previously.

Dweezilla!

Looks like Dweezil is branching out into new territory. From the inbox:

Get ready to expand your harmonic horizons and ignite your musical creativity this summer at DWEEZILLA! DWEEZILLA is a unique five-day experience where musicians will be surrounded by Dweezil Zappa and members of his core band for a musical bootcamp. From June 21-24 in the Catskill Forest Preserve in upstate New York, DWEEZILLA offers aspiring musicians a wide range of master classes at all skill levels in addition to one-on-one sessions with Dweezil himself.

DWEEZILLA

Quoth The Dweez: “I decided to create a diverse music boot camp for people of all skill levels hoping to increase their musical prowess. It would make me very happy if I could help a fellow musician take their skills to the next level.”

Pricing? Here’s the cheapest admission as stated in the Dweezilla press kit: $485 — Day Use (No Accommodations/Camping): Includes all daily activities and workshops from breakfast to the evening activities.

More Dweezila info here.

Ahem… is this the beginning of the end of ZPZ?

The Muffin Men @ Fairport & Elsewhere

In 2008, The Muffin Men – a British band, based in Liverpool, England which primarily plays the music of Frank Zappa – performed at Fairport’s Cropredy Convention, performing such Zappa classics as “Zoot Allures”, “Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow” and “Black Napkins” (above) as well as “Road Ladies“, “San Ber’dino“, and “My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama“.
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