Category: Personal
Grande Mothers Re:Invented Embark On EU Tour
Warning: You’re about to enter a zone heavy with nostalgia. Take with a very large grain of salt.
In the late 70s and early 80s (yes, when Dinosaurs roamed the city streets wearing Walkmans and eating veggieburgers) – when a Zappa tour was an almost regular (if not annual) occurrence, and a Zappa fan might expect sometimes multiple releases from the maestro, and my own rabid obsession with the Mothers of Invention (and all things Zappa) was at least at a somewhat manageable level – myself and my fellow freaks had devised a method of determining the level of freakdom of a given Zappa fan by what albums they had in their collection.
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Chanan Hanspal Plays Zappa
Waiting in my inbox today was a missive from an impressive and interesting chap, to say the very least: one Chanan Hanspal, a composer/guitarist of Welsh Indian extraction from Wales. Who is Chanan Hanspal? Click on his name and discover more about how he dove into the London jazz funk world – played, recorded, and toured with the likes of Kylie Minogue, Geri Halliwell, and Pharoah Sanders to name just a few.
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Immaculate Voodoo Butter Mix – Part IV
It’s that time of the month, fellow KUR-Meisters, when I dip into my personal, not-so-mythic, vault of Zappa field recordings to compile the latest KUR mix: the “Immaculate Voodoo Butter Mix – Part IV“. What is Part IV? Part IV is 200 tracks from the maestro’s last two touring bands, ’84 and ’88, beginning with a Rehearsal session from December 23rd, 1987. Why 200 tracks? 200 allows for the best performances of each respective tour to shine through…
Click here to listen to the mixtape. Enjoy!
Note: In the tradition of leaving the best for last, the fifth and final installment of the Immaculate Voodoo Butter Mix will arrive on July 15th, 2010.
Frank Zappa’s Grand Wazoo EP, 1972
When Barry first emailed the link to the above excerpt from the bootleg EP of Frank Zappa and the Grand Wazoo Band‘s (mistakenly printed as Frank Zappa and the Petit Wazoo Orchestra on the front cover by the bootlegger) September 15th, 1972 performance at Deutschlandhalle in Berlin, West Germany, I was immediately thrust back in time to when I first purchased this very bootleg EP.
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The Sonic Beauty of Igor Stravinsky
After a long week beset from all sides with city sounds and industrial rhythms, there is nothing more soothing to my ears and mind than the sonic beauty of Igor Stravinsky‘s compositions. Listening to the following three clips, one can easily understand Frank Zappa‘s affinity for this man and his music:
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Mumford & Sons
You know that feeling when you hear a band for the very first time, and your immediate reaction is “wait just a minute — wow, this is, this is, really really good”, and you just have to park by the side of the road to have a closer listen? Yes? Here’s one for you:
Mumford & Sons. They’ve become wildly popular in Europe over a short period of time — wanted to share this with our American non-Euro friends.
More Mumford & Sons on YouTube.
Spam 2.0
Hey guys ‘n gals! Just wanted to warn you of a new comment-spam technique I’ve come to identify here at KUR. The M.O. goes something like this:
- Spammer picks a random comment from a past post/thread
- Spammer copies said comment
- Spammer pastes said comment to the same post, with a signature link leading to what appears to be a harmless weblog
- Ignorant KUR moderator (moi, that is) approves comment
- Spammer happy!
- Happy spammer turns harmless weblog into dubious link-fest
Lesson to be learned: be aware of “new” comments that already look familiar to you — the author/spammer’s signature link will be a dead giveaway, as their sites all look identical. I’m monitoring this closely so it shouldn’t be much of a problem. Still, if a comment you wrote shows up again, signed by someone else: you’ll know what’s going on. Feel free to contact me when that happens.
Panzerballett Blitzes Zappanale
Panzerballett is a German ensemble that uses “an innovative, hard ‘n’ heady mixture of jazz, funk and metal, crossing complex polyrhythms with metal guitar riffing, funky grooves and jazz improvisation”. In the clip above, from Zappanale 19, they perform a medley of Zappa songs including “Oh No”, “City of Tiny Lites”, and “Evelyn, A Modified Dog”. Check out their website to hear some their other musical works.
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FZ, Popular Music, Politics & A Cheesy Epilogue
Hot on the heels of Urbangraffito’s American Fascism post, here’s a freshly published paper by KUR reader and music academic Paul Carr, entitled “Dickie’s Such An Asshole”: Frank Zappa, Popular Music and Politics.
As afficionados, many of us make the mistake of labeling this kind of introductory information as “obvious” and “duh, nothing new there”. But you know what? I’d love to be that ignorant yet curious fifteen year old kid out there who’s right now reading this post, and clicking that link. In fact, I envy that first, one-of-a-kind thrill of what s/he’s about to discover.