- BBC NEWS | Americas | Venezuela creates own time zone – Bananas!
- wetriffs.com/gallery – “Warning: gallery contains some nudity, guitars.”
- Look Great Naked at Any Age – Whatever happened to Bobby Martin?
- Zappa.com – Is Robert Bobby Martin dead or alive? – Whatever happened to Bobby Martin?
Month: December 2007
Lukewarm Poop From Dec 8th
- Jewsrock.org : Take the Quiz – “Some of the following 20 pop idols are Jewish. Some are not. Your job: figure out which are which. “
- C.I.A. Destroyed Tapes of Interrogations – New York Times – America the Beautiful
- History of Religion – Jesus thinks you’re a jerk!
- The Blonde Map of Europe | strange maps – “Q: How do you get a blonde out of a tree? A: Wave”
- Composer Stockhausen dies aged 79 – “Endlessly prolific, whether in fashion or out of it, he composed 362 works, including the world’s longest opera, Licht, a sequence of seven pieces – one for every day of the week.”
Santa Monica, December 1981
Missed it in 2003? Here it is again, from Burkhard! With some additional stories here.
Great show, atomic solos, fun moments, amazing special guests – should be released!
Dortmund ’79
If it’s Friday this must be the Friday Boot! We’re off to Germany again: Dortmund, 25 March 1979.
The FZ Tape Reviewing Society says:
(…) it’s in FZ’s City Of Tiny Lites solo where the show comes to life. This is the first Outside Now jam in circulation, with FZ mulling over a phrase he also played a lot in 1980 which ended up in The Radio Is Broken. This is also the debut of the “vampless” Easy Meat, and possibly the best of this last week of ’79, despite the lack of Catholic Girls.
From Counterculture to Consumer Culture
As early as the 1960s, Frank Zappa already knew that to get to the “real” truth one had to go to the underground, because the mainstream was just out to sell you something you probably didn’t need in the first place, or so says the article, “Going Underground” at Computer Arts:
“The mainstream comes to you, but you have to go to the underground,†said Frank Zappa, that extraordinary songwriter, singer and guitarist whose music spanned three decades and who was known for despising organized religion, was passionate about freedom of speech and advocated the abolition of censorship. Zappa understood that if you wanted to avoid the mainstream, the ordinary and the mundane, then going underground was where it was at.
The underground isn’t dead, it just smells funny…
100% Zappa – On The Radio!
Tomorrow (thursday) the whole program of the MR Symphony Orchestra will be aired on the radio – of course you’ll be able to listen to it online. At 19.35 (in Hungary).
A tiny video of the program can be seen here. Hey!
Update: the program can be downloaded here. Just scroll down to 19.35 – it’s in Real Audio format. The segments start at 19.00, 20.00, etc, so you’ll have to download two parts.
A Frank Zappa Street For Amsterdam
Following Berlin’s example comes a Dutch initiative to have a street in Amsterdam named after FZ: Frank Zappa Straat dot nl. Care to give your support? Sign the petition here!
Hat tip: Han Zijlstra
Zappadan
…starts right about now:
Yes, we’re calling out to you – you over there with the hair on your head – step on up here and tell us what you can do to contribute to The Festival of Zappadan.
Not quite sure whether there’s anything more to this beyond tricking you into buying a T-shirt, but there you have it.
Today may be a sad day for you Zappa freaks out there, but why not make it a celebration of FZ’s music? Put on your favorite FZ record! Dance The Be-Bop Tango! Freak Out!
Thank you, Uncle Frank. You’re gone, but not forgotten.
PS: how’s the coffee up there?
Lukewarm Poop From Dec 1st
- The Magic Band play Captain Beefheart in 2008 – “It may be a bit premature for me to mention that more dates are planned, but if I’m wrong you can just say it’s the first time I was happy to be confused.”
- Radio6 commemorates the anniversary of the death of Frank Zappa – To commemorate the anniversary of the death of Frank Zappa on december 4 1993 Wim Brands and Co de Kloet will shine their light on some legendary musical stories of FZ.
- Music Thing: Japanese melody road plays tunes through your tyres – “Don’t be distracted by the burst of DJ Mink’s ‘Hey Hey, can you relate?’ at the start and keep watching.”
- Conceptual Continuity – Zappa Wiki Jawaka – A fun little category page to peruse.
- YouTube – TPMtv: Racing For the Exit – Jonnybutter says: “Just a bit of hilarious for you from rightwing American politics. The opening clip of the ‘Singing Senators’ is funny in its own right, but there is also a little bit of ‘Lone Ranger’ CC there (Hi-yo Silver! Away!).”
- Crossfire Releases Zappa Veteran Bob Harris’ the Great Nostalgia – “The Great Nostalgia, originally a self-financed release on his Mastahna label, has been remastered (and in some cases remixed) from the original session tapes.”
The Mp3 Encoding Debate: Results Are In
A follow-up to this post: Cognitive Daily yesterday published its rather (un?)surprising results:
For both recordings, there was a significant difference between ratings of the 64 kbps sampling rate and the 128 kbps sampling rate, but no difference between ratings of the 128 and 256 kbps sampling rate. It’s looking like the 256 kbps MP3s offer no advantage over the much smaller 128 kbps MP3s.
Out of nearly 700 participants, 33 were able to detect a difference in audio quality between both sampling rates. I bet those 33 will be identified as being avid KUR readers! :)