- How would you assign numbers to the different types of human effluvia? | Ask MetaFilter – “What are some smart, memorable ways of numbering our other discharges: tears, sweat, earwax, saliva, breast milk, etc.?”
- The 28 Most Recognizable Guitars – “We salute rock & roll’s most iconic tool of the trade since stuffed spandex — the multinecked, fur-lined, flame-throwing masterpieces that remain as influential as the shredders who strapped them on.”
- japanizer – Lushikatome Zkanonoka!
Author: Barry's Imaginary Publisher
Lukewarm Poop From Dec 9th
- 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?
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.”
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.
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! :)
Montreal ’84
You’ll never guess what I went through this morning, prior to posting this week’s Friday Boot — though you’re free to take a guess.
Say what? Oh, on to the boot already. Yes. That’d be Montreal, Canada, November 2nd 1984, uploaded by Our Man In France.
Have a great weekend! :)
Lukewarm Poop From November 27th through November 29th
- UbuWeb Sound – Edgard Varèse – “Les Mémorables d’Edgard Varèse (French radio broadcasts) “
- globalia.net/donlope/ – FZ discography – Back online. You can start breathing again now :-)
- The Hardest Habit to Break? : idly [dot] org – “Do you double-space after periods and question marks?” Here’s lookin’ at you, Magic Fingers ;-)
- YouTube – zoot allures – as played on acoustic guitar. Slightly up-tempo but very cool to watch.
Special Delivery
This just in, fresh from the Zappa List:
My copy of the ZPZ DVD arrived today with TWO disc Twos & NO disc One. Has this happened to anyone else? What would be the best way to contact the ZFT to let them know of the error? — David
How’s that for a fuck-up? Foo-eee! As for me, I’ve yet to receive my copy of Zappa Wazoo (and Trance-Fusion, and The Dub Room Special CD; yes I’m a slow buyer), even though Barfko-Swill mailed me on November 2nd saying:
Your order has been shipped by IMEX STANDARD.
Apparently the “IMEX STANDARD shipping method” involves a detour via Ouagadougou, then Zimbabwe through to Machu Pichu via Saskatchewan — skipping Siberia, if you’re lucky. Oh and obviously my credit card has already been charged, regardless of whether I actually received the goodies.
What are your experiences with regard to ZFT/Barfko-Swill product delivery?
Lukewarm Poop From November 26th
- Help me compile the ultimate stoner playlist – “I’m looking for songs that sound fabulous while under the influence, not for songs about weed.”
- Dickipedia – A Wiki of Dicks – Needs more dick.
- Non-Stick Plans: Doggies – “Trained by missionaries.”
- What Would Zappa Do? – “The title refers to my belief that if he was alive today he would do the opposite of what the gear freaks of today are doing.”
- Adrian Belew – Life In A Nutshell – YouTube clip
What’s With The Lukewarm Poop?
An eloquent title if ever I saw one, as you’ll surely agree. Anyway, you may have noticed yesterday’s post which consisted merely of a bunch of links and a bit of light commentary. What’s up with that?
Well, every day I come across links that I figure could be of some interest to you, but don’t warrant a full post of their own (or I don’t have time to turn them into one). I either spot these in my RSS reader, or oftentimes because one of you has sent them to me via email.
Using my del.icio.us account, I’m now bookmarking those, and with the magic of a little WordPress plugin, they will then show up here all neatly bundled into one post.
So if you come across a page, site, article, video clip that you think would fit a Delicious Links entry, by all means: do drop me a note. It’ll either show up here in one way or another — or it won’t. Don’t get mad at me when that happens. Remember: such is life. ;)
Lukewarm Poop From November 24th
- Born Again Democrats – is it a hoax, is it a joke? no, it’s… born again democrats!
- Google Trends: zappa – Maroual says: The mains events are highlighted with letters. Unfortunately, it seems that the ZFT suing a furniture store is the event that caused the most searches.
- Radio 2 – Top 2000 – home – Han Zijlstra says: select “stemmen” and pick 10 records of your choice , of course with FZ on top.
- Zappa Mothers Let’s Make The Water Turn Black Outtake – giantalbinopenguin says: I don’t know if you’ve run into this before, but its certainly worth a look…
- The Great Mulo Orchestra – Says StratoBlogster: Listen to tune #1 “My Strange Activity”. This guy is from down in France!!
An mp3 Is An mp3 Is An mp3?
Cognitive Daily is carrying out an online poll to determine just how audible the fluctuation in quality is between mp3’s that have different encodings:
I created three different versions of two song clips — 64, 128, and 256 kbps MP3 format. Then I re-encoded all of them at 256 kbps so the files are all the same size. Can you identify which recording sounds better? Is there a difference between the listening skills of “audiophiles” and ordinary listeners? Now we’ll find out.
There have been numerous mp3-vs-lossless debates here and elsewhere, so I’m quite curious to see the results of this test. To participate, keep your ears and headset at the ready and click here. The results should be posted at Cognitive Daily next Friday, November 30.
Via Duncan.