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

Via Casper (thanks Casper!), here’s an interesting 1997 BBC documentary on the life and times of Don Van Vliet, Captain Beefheart:

Parts two and three.

Posted in Film, Frank Zappa, Music | 7 Comments »

A rare acetate of the Velvet Underground’s lost Scepter studio sessions was recently sold on eBay for $25,000. Care to have a listen? The mp3’s are available here.

Posted in Music, Pop Cult | 4 Comments »

Check this painfully clear and accurate Flash-based presentation of the demographics of U.S. service members who have died in the Iraq war to date. These days I tend to avoid posting about “Operation Iraqi Freedom We’re Not Winning So Let’s Send More Troops” but this really shows its dire consequences.

Posted in In The News, Politics | Comments Off

Spanish author Manolo de la Fuente writes in about his newly published book “Frank Zappa En El Infierno” (Frank Zappa In Hell):

It analyzes the role that Zappa developed as a political activist in the 80s. In those years, Zappa ran intensively against the conservative government of Ronald Reagan. [...] It’s the first time that an analysis on Zappa’s work is carried out in Spanish, and it’s also the first time that a book deals with the links of his songs in American politics, a totally new topic even for the bibliography in English.

Posted in Books, Frank Zappa | 1 Comment »

For those of you interested in a slice of authentic Bongo Fury, this week’s boot should be a treat: Boston, 27 April 1975 (Early Show). The Late Show (which differs greatly from the Early one) will be featured next Friday. Enjoy!

Posted in Frank Zappa, Friday Boots | 2 Comments »

How this wonderful video got rejected by MTV I simply cannot fathom — The Penetrators, “Shopping Bag”:

… via KUR’s very own Thing-Fish, aka Jim Davies.

Posted in Film, Music | 4 Comments »

It’s called Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau:

The version of Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau, Land of My Fathers, was discovered on the end of a dusty eight-track tape which had languished for years in a forgotten tea chest in a north London recording studio. Experts believe the ear-rattling rendition may be Hendrix as the track appears on the end of a recording by a group which features a friend of his. He is believed to have been in London when the tape was made. And it does sound rather like him.

You can listen to it online here. (via FunkFiles)

Posted in Music | 13 Comments »

Joe Queenan’s A-Z of classical music: Q is for quirkiness, R is for Rite of Spring:

It is impossible to list the number of movie scores whose soundtracks are either influenced by or lifted from The Rite of Spring (only Gustav Holst’s The Planets is more routinely borrowed from), but let’s just say this: when that shark showed up in Jaws, Stravinsky helped him get there.

That’s sort of how I perceive much of Zappa’s music: a quirky, hyper-cinematic soundtrack to a movie that is being written by nothing more than your imagination. And with that profound statement out of the way, I think what we need now is giant rabbits.

Posted in Music, Pop Cult | 7 Comments »

… and we’re back — with not much interesting to report really. So why not kick off the year with some inanity: celebrity patents! For example, Patent #4,656,917 — “Musical instrument support”, owned by one Eddie Van Halen:

I say he should’ve patented his hairdo as well.

Posted in Randamonium | 3 Comments »