Travers & Beller Are In

From The Keneallist newsletter:

This is most likely your final opportunity to see this amazing, powerful band for many moons. After these MKB US dates, Joe [Travers, drums] and Bryan [Beller, bass] will spend the remainder of 2005 as a crucial part of Dweezil and Ahmet Zappa’s “Zappa Plays Zappa” tour.

(Thanks to the multitude of people who forwarded this one to me! ;))

The Return Of Flo & Eddie?

According to Frippe, who points to this (Swedish) news article, the Zappa Plays Zappa tour is going to have Flo & Eddie in the band from start to finish. “According to Sundsvalls Tidning it will be a ten man band with ‘young musicians'”.

Updäte: This article confirms the presence of Flo & Eddie during the tour (thanks again Frippe).

Update 2: George Duke will be attending as well (thanks Balint).

Big Plans

Dweezil has big plans:

“We have a really big plan for this year, something that we’ve never done before.” Dweezil says. “We’re going to put a band together and play only Frank’s music. We’re going to start in Europe then come back to the states and then go to Japan. We’re going to start in October, so we’re going to rehearse the band for three months in order to learn close to fifty songs, including a lot of the very difficult instrumentals. I’m learning a lot of stuff on guitar that was never meant to be played on guitar. For me, it will be like training for the Guitar Olympics. We are going to create a core band of people that haven’t played with Frank, and then we will have some special guests and Ahmet is going to sing. We want to have our own thing that we do that is free from interpretations of other people’s expectations.

Cucamonga Revisited

More information about the upcoming Cucamonga Years documentary:

By the end of 2005, filmmaker Fiorenza of Pasadena and producer Miley of Whittier plan to wrap up two years of exhaustive research, culminating in a documentary that celebrates the artists and bands that passed through the Pal studio during its heyday.[…]
In the end, Fiorenza said he hoped the documentary would leave a sense of artistic culture, a source of pride for the community of Rancho Cucamonga.
“If you’ve grown up in a town like this, it’s really lame as far as culture,” he said. “For kids that want to do more arts and theater, it’s not the place to be. … There’s no sense of history, and that kind of bothers me. No sense of self.”

Stockholm ’05

According to a press release from Ema Telstar (a big Swedish concert promotor) published in yesterday’s Sundsvalls Tidning, there will be a big Zappa tribute concert in Stockholm this fall (see KUR’s earlier coverage). Gail, Dweezil and Ahmet are coming to Stockholm May 24 to announce it.

“We will probably be able to reveal the names of the musicians in a week, says Catarina Oscarsson at Ema Telstar. Some of the musicians played with Zappa – and the idea is to give you a feeling that he is present.”

And before you ask “Since when does Barry speak fluent Swedish”: all the above courtesy of Frippe. (Thanks Frippe!)

CCFZ Webring Lives On

The CCFZ Webring, formerly managed by yours truly, has found a new caretaker. I’ve known Jason of ZappaFreaks for quite some time now as he is a regular reader of KUR, and I’m confident he’ll do a great job maintaining the ring.
Since I’m interested in knowing your opinion about the ring, I put up a little poll to the right of this page. Please cast your vote, thanks…

Whispers and shouts

Marcelo Gobello, a journalist in London working for the newspaper La Capital (in Argentina), reports that Dweezil Zappa is planning a world tour to play the music of his father Frank. According to Gail, “the decision already is taken, meanwhile we will be seeing how, with whom and where, but I believe that most probable will be to begin the tour by Europe the next summer (July, August 2005)”. “Unofficially, names of impressive ex–musicians of Zappa are shuffled to conform the band that will return to take to the scenes (although nonofficials several exist that are dedicated to make versions everywhere) the music and legacy of the genius of Baltimore.”

Zappa Slash StoreFront Dot Bok

Today, September 19, I purchased “Halloween“, “QuAUDIOPHILIAc” and “Joe’s Domage” from zappa.com’s online services all in one time (hey gimme a break: gotta be strategic with these things, me being belgian et all). Truth be told: payment through Paypal was a breeze. Now let’s wait and see when and how I receive the goods…