Tag: audition

Can You Play It Backwards?

Funny little anecdote about Zappa’s typical way of dealing with musicians. Act one goes like this:

Just to be sure that Mr. Piano had a fair chance at the reading part of the audition, Frank gave him 2 pieces of music to work on a week before the audition was to take place. One of these pieces is called “The Black Page” which was pretty dense with notes and a real challenge to play. Challenge enough that Mr. Piano kind of gave up learning it as precisely as needed and decided he was good enough to wing it during the audition instead.

Fatal mistake #1! Keep reading for a nice twist at the end.

(Via Paul Carr)

Napoleon’s New Album: Pre-Order Now

We reported on Napoleon M. Brock’s new album “This Is What Frank Zappa Heard” a couple of weeks ago. Now you can pre-order with the aid of this handy Word document. As a reminder of what this release is about, a quote:

On August 8th, 1973, Frank Zappa was alerted by his road manager, Marty Perellis, that an incredible band with an extraordinary lead singer was performing downtown to a standing room only audience … and that it might be wise that he come and see this for himself.
When Zappa went to the club and watched the show, he saw a young talent sing, dance, play sax, flute and keyboards, in a manner that clearly made it appear that he was having more fun than even the other patrons in the club.
After two hours of observing and listening to this young man and his very disciplined band of musicians, he introduced himself as Frank Zappa, and the young man introduced himself as Napoleon Murphy Brock. The next words out of Zappa’s mouth were, “You are my new lead vocalist.”

Me thinks Mrs Barry’s Imaginary Publisher is going to want this…