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

This Mexican vinyl version of Hot Rats lists all the songtitles in Spanish. I had no idea these records were “localized” that way — perhaps only in Spanish speaking countries?

Posted in Frank Zappa, Zappa Imagery | 1 Comment »

This entry was “co-blogged” with Hanan Levin of the incredible Grow A Brain.

Zappa beers - Get Your Freak Out Ale from Lagunitas Brewing. The lyrics. Also, Joe’s Garage 12-pack

Plastic Ono Mothers (John & Yoko+ Mothers) perform “Scumbag” – The lyrics consist of only two words.

From “Drunk Men work here”, A Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch and the origin of the doodle in a Lucky Strike $25 contest

Absolut Zappa and many other fake ads

Zappa Zippo

Antelope Valley High School ‘57/’58 yearbooks

A wholesome snack of milk and cookies

The poodles chews it (Little curly tail!) Poodle Fitness with Mariko Takahashi. Frank would be proud. What is is with Zappa and Poodles? More from The International Conference of Esemplastic Zappology - Phenomenology of One Size Fits All: Zappa and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Interviewer: “So Frank, you have long hair. Does that make you a woman?”
FZ: “You have a wooden leg. Does that make you a table?”
And many other True Zen Sayings

Zappa VS. The PMRC Original letters. Also, Yellow Shark press conference pictures, 1992

Sign the “We Want Roxy!” petition

Peaches En Regalia, live on SNL December 11, 1976. (Nice pants)

1988 Phone interviews (MP3) by Bill Camarata of Box of Sound

The only known public statue of Frank Zappa, in Vilnius, Kalinausko 1, Lithuania. Created by sculptor Konstantinas Bogdanas, well known for his massive sculptures of Communist figures

Zappa with Jean-Luc Ponty, live at festival de Valbonne, France (07/25/70)

Cal Schenkel’s July Specials. (Cal was Zappa’s resident album art artist, responsible for such gems as “We’re Only In It For The Money”, “Lumpy Gravy”, “Ruben & The Jets” and “One Size Fits All” and more)

2006 Zappa Plays Zappa European tour reviewed by readers of “Kill Ugly Radio”

Zappa covers arranged by Ensemble Ambrosius

Posted in Frank Zappa | 4 Comments »

We should have posted this ages ago, but hey: it is never too late! Napoleon Murphy Brock interviewed by Pisspot the rabbit, from gAD TV dot com team.

(thanks ben)

Posted in Frank Zappa, Zappa Misc | 4 Comments »

Hannover, West Germany, 26 March 1979: get it while it’s hot.

Posted in Frank Zappa, Friday Boots | Comments Off

Google has introduced archive search to their news service. That’s 200 years of news articles right at your fingertips (some of which you have to pay a small fee for unfortunately). Any Zappa articles? You bet — right back to 1968 (see here for one).

Posted in Frank Zappa, Zappa Articles | 6 Comments »

In response to this comment from someone pretending to be Joe Travers, the real Joe Travers writes:

Only a true asshole zappa fan would go up on a site like this & say that it was me. Do you guys really think I would post comments like that? Do you really think GZ would ever allow something like that from the ZFT? Yeah, I’d really have some job security saying stuff like that. You guys really continue to prove yourselves.

There have been other occasions where a commenter reacted under the guise of Gail, or Dweezil, or Joe (or me for that matter). I tend to leave such comments untouched in cases where it’s obvious that the comment is a non-malicious spoof. When that line gets crossed however, it becomes a matter of identity-theft, and the rules change.
And so, since:

1. nobody wants their name attached to something they did not write, and do not agree with or feel insulted by,
2. it is not my ambition to get into trouble with the ZFT

… I will as of now be deleting any malicious comments from people that do not respect these guidelines. You know I like a good laugh as much as the next guy, but let’s keep it civilized and respectful. Okay?

Posted in Personal, Site News | 22 Comments »

Do you see any in this picture?

I did recently, in Buenos Aires while visiting the Rio de la Plata galleria:

Upon asking Rik, owner of Soundtrack Records, for the price, I hastily ran out of the shopping mall to call KUR headquarters.

- (me) “The price is $200, whaddayathink?”
- (The Boss) “Mmmmh… that’s a lot of money… does it have the beret?”
- “Yes!”
- “Buy it! Why, I’ll donate a kidney if need be!”

I didn’t much like the thought of a one-kidneyed Barry — so I resorted to robbing two enchanting old ladies of their pesos, and kicked a cocacola machine to get some more cash. Mission about to be accomplished…

Here’s Rik The Enabler, checking with me whether the goods are in mint condition (i’ve waited my whole life to say “mint condition”! at last!)

Fast forward to half an hour ago. Barry is running around the house sporting the beret mumbling something about disconnected synapses and swiss cheese while i take some pictures:

I’m a little worried about the foam around Barry’s mouth right now…

Posted in Frank Zappa, Personal, Zappa Imagery | 6 Comments »

In the comments of the previous post, Balint says:

What if ALL the FZ-tribute pages would accept a kind of “statement” or something, and all would present in their homepages at the same time? Telling what we think about it, what we suggest/ask for, and why. It could be called “We’re Only In It For The Music”

While I like the idea, I’m not sure how many FZ-tribute pages would actually agree. So for starters: who of you out there with a FZ-fanpage are reading this — and what do you think about the idea? Second: we’d need a clear, well-written text that explains our position in a restrained, respectful manner. My English is “okay”, but for this kind of copy we’d need some collaboration I guess. Third: do you think it’ll make a difference?

Thoughts?

Posted in Frank Zappa, In The News | 2 Comments »

John Healy, curator of the wonderful Chrome Dinette has apparently received a cease & desist letter, courtesy of the ZFT’s lawyers.

We are hereby formally advising you that you must immediately disable the above-referenced website and cease and desist any and all further unauthorized use of the materials referenced herein or any materials owned by The Zappa Family Trust. Our client will consider every available remedy including injunctions and recovery of attorney’s fees, costs and any and all other damages which are incurred by our client as a result of any action that is commenced against you.

Ouch…

Posted in In The News, Zappa Misc | 40 Comments »

Music Thing has a great series of posts up on “tiny music makers”, the people responsible for the sound of your Mac/Windows OS starting up, the “Intel Inside” tune, and more.
Brian Eno who composed the Windows 95 tune:

The thing from the agency said, ‘We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah- blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional,’ this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said ‘and it must be 3 1/4 seconds long.’

Posted in Geek, Music, Pop Cult | Comments Off

This and next week’s Friday Boot: Hannover, West Germany, 26 March 1979. Gilles had uploaded the tracks as .wma, so I had a bit of fun converting to 192 kbps .mp3’s using Switch and the truly craptacular flip4mac. Anyway, enjoy.

Posted in Frank Zappa, Friday Boots | 5 Comments »