Vintage Camp

Posted on Monday, 07/03/06 by Barry's Imaginary Publisher

From Dennis Catron, a wonderful collection of camp 50s album covers. Here’s just one:

space escapade

I bet you that’s some 25th century Grimbergen they’re having!

Posted in Amusing, Music, Pop Cult | Comments Off on Vintage Camp

Bam-Bam Bam See

Posted on Monday, 07/03/06 by Barry's Imaginary Publisher

Things to hate about local TV news.

3.) “The dumb-ass witness” – They find some yocal who may or may not have seen the incident, but you get his incomprehensible story anyway. “he drove up dare see den turned around and came back to where I was standin’ at…. then started firin at the man, bam-bam bam see”. The best ones are from places like Melvindale or Taylor. Oh and don’t forget the brother who ends every sentence with “know what I’m sayin’”, know what I’m sayin’.

Posted in Amusing, In The News | 2 Comments

The Shank Medley

Posted on Monday, 07/03/06 by Barry's Imaginary Publisher

So that’s what the Z Band were up to in the 90s: 70s medleys! Live at Milwaukee’s Shank Hall, March 15, 1994 here are parts one and two — around 22 minutes in total. (via) Oh, and how about some advice on choosing tunes for medleys?

Posted in Frank Zappa, Zappa Audio/Video | 1 Comment

Dublin Bound

Posted on Sunday, 07/02/06 by Barry's Imaginary Publisher

Dr Sharl and I will be leaving for a week long trip to Ireland starting next Friday — save a two day wedding attendance with our friends MagicFingers and Indra in the greater London area. We’re to arrive at Dublin Airport at around 8pm local time next Sunday. We have two days to spend there before we fly over to Galway. Do any Dubliners reading this have any suggestions as to which places we should visit (comic shops, music shops, curiosity shops)? If so, do let us know, either in the comments or by direct email. Thanks!

Posted in Personal | 3 Comments

Pistoia ’82

Posted on Friday, 06/30/06 by Barry's Imaginary Publisher

Una giornata ricissima ricchissima! Ahem.
This (and next) week’s Friday Boot: Pistoia, Italy, 8 July 1982.

Posted in Frank Zappa, Friday Boots | 4 Comments

American Splendor, Again

Posted on Thursday, 06/29/06 by Barry's Imaginary Publisher

Yesterday we watched American Splendor once again (previous reportage here). It’s really become one of my favorite movies — quaint, funny, slightly surreal and featuring an excellent Paul Giamatti as Harvey Pekar who, as it turns out, has a blog (last updated October 28 ’03!). In the film there’s some footage of Pekar on the David Letterman show, where he appeared several times, and was generally treated as an amusing freakazoid weirdo. Might YouTube have a clip? Sure enough, and in it Letterman’s being an ass:

Bonus clip from the movie: Toby explains the importance of the 80s comedy “Revenge Of The Nerds” to Harvey.

Posted in Comics, Film, Pop Cult | 5 Comments

Zappa Galleries Revisited

Posted on Wednesday, 06/28/06 by Barry's Imaginary Publisher

As some of you old-timers may recall, there used to be a Frank Zappa image gallery around here back in the day (it was the year 2000, this site got about 10 visitors a day, and my ginger-tinted beard had yet to come to fruition). As time passed and the galleries became cumbersome to maintain, and since there was/is a plethora of Zappa pictures floating around the interwebs anyway, I decided to just lay that feature to rest.

Fast forward, enter Flickr.

zappa vorst, 82

Here’s two photo-sets that I deemed worthy to re-publish from Ye Olde Obsolete Zappa Gallery: Zappa live in Vorst Nationaal (Brussels ’82, ’84) and Zappa at the Yellow Shark press conference. Both photo-sets were kindly sent to me by (and are copyright) Dirk Laforce. Enjoy!

Posted in Frank Zappa, Zappa Imagery | 1 Comment

How I Got To See Artis The Spoon Man

Posted on Wednesday, 06/28/06 by Barry's Imaginary Publisher

So I post an entry linking to David Ocker’s blog, who in turn links to Duncan’s Zappa-page, which in turn links to his weblog where today’s post links to some cool YouTube footage of Artis The Spoon Man — but only because I asked.

Posted in Frank Zappa, Zappa Audio/Video | 2 Comments

The Kriegsmann Files

Posted on Wednesday, 06/28/06 by Barry's Imaginary Publisher

… and here’s just one:

unknown 70s band

See the entire set »

Posted in Amusing, Pop Cult | 2 Comments

Varèse, Zappa, Slonimsky & Ocker

Posted on Tuesday, 06/27/06 by Barry's Imaginary Publisher

David Ocker, former copyist, synclavier programmer and clarinetist for Frank Zappa drops me a note:

I don’t usually post about Frank on my own blog but I just did a long article entitled “Varèse, Zappa & Slonimsky“, which I would hope some of your readers might find interesting.

Posted in Frank Zappa, Music, Zappa Articles | 6 Comments

Boner Rush

Posted on Tuesday, 06/27/06 by Barry's Imaginary Publisher

What better way to exercise Conservative Family Values than to have a stash of illegally obtained Viagra sitting in your pocket? Just make sure you don’t get caught though, Rush!

Posted in Amusing, Politics, Sex | Comments Off on Boner Rush

ZPZ Wrap-Up

Posted on Tuesday, 06/27/06 by Barry's Imaginary Publisher

ZPZ‘s first leg of the tour is over, and we have a whopping 154 reviews to look back upon. Having read every single one of them, a couple of recurring remarks I noticed:

  • The bandmembers: baffling musicianship, very tight playing.
  • Dweezil: wonderful guitarplaying, obviously doesn’t have the onstage presence/humor of his dad, and was wise enough to acknowledge this by just being himself.
  • Napoleon M. Brock: vital to the group, probably everyone’s favorite throughout the tour.
  • The sound: consistently way too loud, with vocals and musical subtleties getting lost in the mix.
  • The conclusion: we want more!

Now it’s on to October 18 when another 10 shows kick off.

Posted in Frank Zappa, Zappa Plays Zappa | 9 Comments

Garni Du Jour

Posted on Monday, 06/26/06 by Barry's Imaginary Publisher

Interesting interview from Downbeat Magazine’s May ’78 edition, where Zappa talks (among other things) about foreground vs background in music and how he approaches the issue:

The chord is like the establishing shot in a movie–where you see the exterior of the building, or the alley with the garbage cans. It tells you where it’s happening. Then the action takes place. So you have a chord, and you have three notes that provide certain types of emotional activity versus the chord. And that emotional activity is redefined every time you change the order of the notes and the space in between the notes. (…) But what’s really happening in the solo is this: for each harmonic climate that’s presented, there are experiments being conducted, in real time, with different notes and weights and measures of those different notes, versus the climate. And every time you change the position of the note, it has a different impact.

(via Popular Musing)

Posted in Frank Zappa, Zappa Articles | 5 Comments

Call Any Vegetable?

Posted on Monday, 06/26/06 by Barry's Imaginary Publisher

Okay… how about… PICKLE!

Posted in Bizarre, Silly | 2 Comments

Extreme Cello

Posted on Monday, 06/26/06 by Barry's Imaginary Publisher

Between 24 July and 4 August 2006, The Extreme Cellists will visit all 42 English Cathedrals with the aim of playing on the roof.

Yes, that is correct – we will play at 42 Cathedrals in only 12 days. This will involve over 1900 miles of travelling (that’s an average of more than 150 miles a day), visiting almost every county in England, climbing countless stone spiral staircases, and offering lots of prayers for dry weather!

Posted in Music | Comments Off on Extreme Cello