Kill Ugly Radio | Frank Zappa & Elsewhere: Frank Zappa news, weird links, lumpy gravy. Wanna bun?

Signs that you need to step away from your computer: you have feverish dreams riddled with double square brackets, featuring a sinister looking librarian who chases you around with a huge encyclopaedia whilst singing the Alphabet Song. Whereupon you oversleep, come in late for work, overdose on cafeine — and post Fréjus, May 29 ‘82.

Posted in Frank Zappa, Friday Boots, Personal | 6 Comments »

So, let’s say hypothetically, you’re working on this thing called a wiki, right? Let’s say it’s a wiki on Frank Zappa, and you’re setting up a basic structure (bio, discog, videog, …). All goes well until you hit a bit of a brick wall: naming conventions.

When setting up an alphabetical index of names for instance, how do you list them? The way a librarian would — that is “Zappa, Dweezil”? An inbetween form, like “Zappa Dweezil” (no comma)? Or just plain jane “Dweezil Zappa”? For reading through the list and quickly finding what you’re looking for, I’d say the former is the way to go — there’s a reason why librarians do it that way.

The downside of this however is that it also forces you to mention those names in this form for every article about the person. An article on the Dweez would then read: “Zappa’s first son, Zappa, Dweezil, went on to become an acclaimed guitarist.” Bit awkward that, eh? Same would go for songtitles. You’d have sentences such as “There’s a track on Chunga’s Revenge called “Clap, The”. Hmmm…

So my hypothetical question: how should this be handled in your view? Any librarians outthere reading HotPoop?

Posted in Frank Zappa, Personal, Zappa Misc | 15 Comments »

Chuck Negron on sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll in the seventies — but mostly drugs.

Posted in Music, Pop Cult | 1 Comment »

Introducing The Frank Zappa Wiki Forum.
More later…

Posted in Frank Zappa, Site News, Zappa Misc | 4 Comments »

Gilles — aka The Man Who Is Truly Faster Than His Shadow — has stepped in and uploaded this MOI show from Worcester ‘68. As for you now disgruntled Fréjus voters: next week, okay?

Posted in Frank Zappa, Friday Boots | 10 Comments »

While I straighten out the FB, you might want to have a listen to this interview with Rick Smith who was Frank Zappa’s personal engineer for 5 years in the mid 70s at Record Plant (and who is now quite an accomplished blues guitarist). “Läther was about 8% live”, he says.

Posted in Frank Zappa, Zappa Audio/Video | 3 Comments »

So many things to do, it boggles the mind: witness a grunion run, visit a zircon rock concert, create the ultimate Frank Zappa encyclopaedia.

Posted in Frank Zappa, Randamonium, Zappa Misc | 1 Comment »

Last year, on Friday 13th February to be exact, the Friday Boot was Fréjus, France (82/5/29). Last night, I uploaded the exact same show thinking it hadn’t been featured here yet. Meet Barry’s Imaginary Idiot.

So kids, you still want it?

Posted in Frank Zappa, Friday Boots | 11 Comments »

Shocking news from the world of Little League Baseball:

The team says El Monte is 12 and has a Web site to prove it. Born on April 7, 1989, Kenny’s mother was a groupie who traveled with Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention in the early seventies. He was born where his mother was conceived, at El Monte Legion Stadium. [...]
However, an aide to famed Nazi hound dog Ellie Weasel reportedly provided Little League officials with an affidavit Monday that indicated Kenny El Monte was actually born Carmen Miranda in Moca Colon, a laxative smuggling center in the Dominican Republic, on April 7, 1889, league spokesman and poet laureate Lance Anger said.

(thanks Duncan!)

Posted in Amusing, Frank Zappa, Zappa Misc | 2 Comments »

Took the Commonly Confused Words Test. I am, so it seems, “advanced”: 100% Beginner, 80% Intermediate, 93% Advanced, and 72% Expert.

As stated in the result page: “This is an exceptional score.”

So there! Let’s see yours then?

Posted in Randamonium, Silly | 14 Comments »

1968 Zappa WE’RE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY w/ Insert. With several censored lyrical edits on rare version. Looking good!

Posted in Zappa Audio/Video, Zappa Misc | 1 Comment »

Duncan writes:

My son has just informed me that a programme on TV last night mentioned FZ getting a credit in the Linux manual…. He seems to be all over the Linux world. Did we know about this already?

No we didn’t!

• The Linux Manual with a word of thanks to FZ
• “‘zappa’ is an advanced backdoor, which doesn’t listen on a TCP-port for clients, further it waits for a special ICMP-packet and then it ‘connects’ to an UDP-server on the ‘client’”
• Linux-audio-user mailinglist threads on “Apostrophe”.

This concludes today’s geeky intermission…

Posted in Frank Zappa, Zappa Misc | 6 Comments »

Good stuff: paintings inspired by the music of Frank Zappa.
(via Gilles)

Posted in Frank Zappa, Zappa Imagery | 2 Comments »

I’m a bit late with this, but if you tune in to Zappateers Radio you’ll be able to listen to some FZ-related gems such as a ‘72 KMET interview, a concert in Toronto from ‘84, some acoustic Project Object — and more. I’d listen in myself but I’m currently trying hard not to tell a pain in the butt client to go fuck herself at the office, working.

Posted in Frank Zappa, Personal, Zappa Audio/Video | 1 Comment »

Listen to a rare Zappa radio ad for a concert from Friday - April 11, 1980 at Henry Levitt Arena in Wichita, Kansas from local Wichita radio KECT 95. (via)

Posted in Frank Zappa, Zappa Audio/Video | Comments Off