Kill Ugly Radio World Tour: Let’s Roll!

Right, well I’ve pretty much finished doing the cover of Our Latest Pet Project. Just to give you an idea of the mess this has been causing on my desktop, here are some pictures:

kur_wt_cover1.jpg

kur_wt_cover2.jpg

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The Plastified Cover…:

kur_wt_cover4.jpg

More on Flickr. What’s more, Dr Sharleena has completed her contribution as well, so this book is ready to hit the road — starting with Tommi. I’ll be putting up a promotional banner shortly but until then, remember: if you want to be part of this, the place to sign up is right over here. Happy doodling! :)

Posted in Frank Zappa, Site News, Visual Arts | 6 Comments

WikiDumper

Fabulous reading:

From the bold to the beautiful, from the wicked to the wise, every day the Wikipedia team relegates possibly “inappropriate” submissions to the garbage dump of time. Here, we make selected rejects immortal and preserve them for posterity.

(merci bernard!)

Posted in Amusing, Randamonium | 3 Comments

Dog Tricks!

SOFA writes: “I thought this was kinda cool — but I’m a sucker for cute…” Well so are we! :)

Posted in Amusing, Randamonium | 1 Comment

Reactable

Is this how we’ll be making music, 20 years from now?

The reactable, is a multi-user electronic music instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface. Several simultaneous performers share complete control over the instrument by moving physical objects on a luminous table surface.

And in case you’re wondering, here’s how it looks:

Posted in Geek, Music | 4 Comments

Milano ’82 (2)

It’s on to Part Two.

Posted in Frank Zappa, Friday Boots | Comments Off on Milano ’82 (2)

Got Trance-Fusion?

Quoth Birdman:

Hey!!! No Trance-Fusion thread? I suppose everyone here had already heard it as a bootleg, but still, Bob Ludwig and GZ’s liner notes could generate discussion.

Well here you go! Got the album? Love it? Hate it? Mixed feelings?

Posted in Frank Zappa, Zappa Audio/Video | 15 Comments

How Tonedeaf Are You?

While working at the music and neuroimaging lab at Beth Israel/Harvard Medical School in Boston, I developed a quick online way to screen for the tonedeafness. It actually turned out to be a pretty good test to check for overall pitch perception ability. The test is purposefully made very hard, so excellent musicians rarely score above 80% correct.

I can’t try this out right now, but you have a go! Via Duncan who (besides having way too much time on his hands these days) tells me he scored an impressive 77,8%.

Posted in Amusing, Music | 18 Comments

Lizard Queen

Meet Patricia Kennealy: author, Celtic priestess, retired rock critic, wife of Jim Morrison. She had a brief relationship with David Walley — “probably the closest friend I have ever had“.

Posted in Books, Music, Pop Cult, Zappa Misc | 2 Comments

77 Million Paintings

Brian Eno, Light Painter:

The multidisciplinary artist, with the help of a few technical experts, has created a computer program that continually fuses his translucent light paintings to create an ever-evolving artistic display on your computer screen. The piece is accompanied by a randomly assembled ambient track that’s never the same twice. The program is capable of creating about 77 million permutations of Eno’s visual work and is titled, appropriately, “77 Million Paintings.”

As Duncan put it: Art or Screen Saver?

Posted in Geek, Music, Visual Arts | Comments Off on 77 Million Paintings

You Talkin’ To Me?

What American accent do you have? As for me:

Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak.

I’m particularly looking forward to reading Balint’s results. :)

Posted in Randamonium | 6 Comments

Calvin, Hobbes & A Robot Chicken

Thanks Stephane!

Posted in Amusing, Comics, Film | 3 Comments

The Fugs

Frank had this to say about The Fugs:

You mentioned the Fugs in comparison to us. The Fugs are not in good taste. They have a few bugs in their plan. One of them appeared on the David Susskind Show. I suppose their basic premise is “You talk dirty on a rock and roll record and this will lead the way to freedom of speech.” This guy is sitting there in his chair and he couldn’t care less about freedom of speech. He wants to be as cool as possible saying things like, “Yeah man, sure. Yeah, we live in the Village.”

Regardless: here’s a full download of their “Electromagnetic Steamboat”, should you be curious enough…

Posted in Frank Zappa, Zappa Misc | 4 Comments

Milano ’82

Part one is now available!

Posted in Frank Zappa, Friday Boots | 7 Comments

Lee Evans Trio

Posted in Amusing, Music, Silly | Comments Off on Lee Evans Trio

Kill Ugly Radio World Tour

Remember those scrapbooks that were passed around when you were a kid? A friend would ask you to write or draw something in his/hers and then you’d give it back. Some of the pages would turn out rather cheesy, while others would consist of really cool doodles or collages.

I was thinking: why not do something similar with the entire KUR readership? It would work something like this: I buy a blank sketchbook, put my contribution on page one, and then pass it on by snailmail to the next person in line, who in turn passes it on once s/he’s finished — much the way an Uncle Beat vine works. Once all the pages are filled up (or there no longer is anyone next in line), the last recipient sends it back to me. I would then scan in every single page and post them here and/or on Flickr.

Entries for each page could be anything Zappa- or KUR-related: writing, collages, drawings, glued-in scraps of paper, pictures, prints, etc. With a bit of luck we’d end up with the coolest Zappa scrapbook ever!

What do you think? Would you participate? I have a feeling this is going to be one of those posts with zero comments… :)

Update: Looks like we can take this baby on the road! I’ve set up a thread at the Uncle Beat Forum where you can add your name (and location) to the chain. For those who hadn’t signed up there yet: registration has been re-enabled. Hey Ho Let’s Go!
Posted in Books, Frank Zappa | 38 Comments