Kill Ugly Radio: Frank Zappa & Elsewhere

Sunday Big Note – Listening Session #5

From the very start, Led Zeppelin was a band whose essential ingredients were a ”crushingly loud interpretation of the blues”, “heavy, guitar-driven blues-rock sound”, a style that crossed many music genres, and their unbound male sexuality. It pulsed beneath the surface of every Zeppelin album. Unlike the plethora of hard rock and heavy metal bands which would rise from their wake in the 1980s – none would possess any of the mystique of Led Zeppelin.
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Sunday Big Note – Listening Session #4

Anyone familiar with Frank Zappa’s 1988 band is no doubt familiar with the unique guitar and lyrical stylings of multi-instrumentalist Mike Keneally, that band’s “stunt guitarist“. It wasn’t very long after the demise of Dweezil and Ahmet Zappa‘s band ‘Z’ that Keneally formed his own recording and touring band, Mike Keneally & Beer for Dolphins. It was around this time that I seriously took an interest in the music of Mike Keneally, who some critics consider “a leading progressive rock genius of the post-Zappa era.”
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Sunday Big Note – Listening Session #3

This week’s Sunday Big Note finds Chick Corea and Return to Forever performing at the Chateau Neuf in Oslo, Norway on the 14th of March, 1976. Return to Forever were touring to promote their sixth studio album, Romantic Warrior (the final album by this longest-lasting lineup which all tracks from today’s listening session originate). After this tour (and album) Chick Corea and Return to Forever would continue with a wholly new lineup with Stanley Clarke, producing one more studio album before disbanding.

From February 2011, Return to Forever commences a reunion world tour in Australia. The line-up, billed as Return to Forever IV, is Corea, Clarke, White, Bill Connors and Jean-Luc Ponty.

And so, without further ado, Return to Forever in Oslo, 1976:

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Sunday Big Note – Listening Session #2

It would be another year – the last week of April and the early weeks of May 1973 – before the Mahavishnu Orchestra found themselves on the road opening for Frank Zappa and the Mothers Of Invention on the tour promoting Zappa‘s Over-Nite Sensation album. Yet, as the above clip of Ruth Underwood illustrates, the Mahavishnu Orchestra had a profound effect upon Zappa and the direction which his music took.
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Sunday Big Note – Listening Session #1

Over the last few weeks and months, fellow KUR-Meisters, while compiling the various mixtapes for Kill Ugly Radio, I had an idea for an ongoing weekly “listening session” of various artists and groups, both Zappa-related along with his contemporaries, as well as others, from various field recordings, FM radio broadcasts, and internet webcasts.

I brought the idea to Barry who also shared my enthusiasm for a weekly “listening session” and he gave the project an enthusiatic green light. Anyone who knows me, knows that I have a near rabid love of recorded live music, so it can pretty much be guaranteed that my contributions to the “Sunday Big Note” listening sessions will be of the “live music” variety. What the other SBN contributors will contribute, though, will be as much a surprise to me as it is to you.

Without further ado, for your listening pleasure, I present The Billy Cobham/George Duke Band at McAlister Auditorium, New Orleans, Louisiana, on February 18th, 1976:

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