In the Beginning…

In the beginning there was a word, and the word was secret, and the secret word was…Mudshark! And for fifty years the Mudshark ruled supremely as the only secret word on the planet Earth, but one day the Mudshark became older, and began to turn yellow, and decided to go onward and upward into the cosmos as a Yellow Shark…But, in his wake, he left a void…filled by MTV and Supermarket Shopping Musik! And the family of the Mudshark became so bloated that they didn’t know what to do anymore with the legacy which the Mudshark had left behind him…They became concerned with the question of whether or not a Fish, or a beard Fish, or a Zappatika or a Central Scrutinizer Band could be a Mudshark! And how we can stop them swimming in the waters of the ocean! And the Mudshark looked on from high, and scratched his head, and scratched his beard, and he picked something living out of it, and he ate it. Then he pondered the question…”I wonder if there’ll ever be a new secret word?”

“The Secret Word”, ZAPPATiKA! Live at Zappanale #21

Continue reading →

Posted in Alumni, Bizarre, Frank Zappa, Music, Personal | Tagged , , , | 20 Comments

Rondo Hatton Report Vol IV

A new Rondo Hatton Report has been published:

Amongst other contributions, this issue features a second submission from Kohjitsu Ohyama, author of two authoritative Japanese books on FZ, proposing a solution to the vexed question of the ‘ultimate compilation’ problem — and from the wilds of Indiana, Prof. Hollinden weighs in with the third installment of his Pigs & Ponies series.

More info and a free download right over here.

Posted in Community, Frank Zappa, In Writing | Tagged | 1 Comment

Le Noise

Nobody plays distorted guitar in the absence of Crazy Horse the way Neil Young does it – Long May He Run.

Posted in Movies, Music, Personal | Tagged , , | 10 Comments

A Special Paris Halloween

Grande Mothers at Trabendo

Veuillez visiter Les Fils de l’Invention pour plus d’info…

Posted in Alumni, Frank Zappa, Music | 1 Comment

Fuck Yeah Frank Zappa!

Fuck Yeah Frank Zappa

I heartily recommend that you direct your browser to this tumblr blog.

Posted in Community, Frank Zappa, Heh Heh | 11 Comments

78 Years Ago Yesterday…

In a house that someone used to live in, little Donny Preston, also known as little Dom DeWilde or little Biff Debrie, was born on September 21st, 1932 in Flint, Michigan.

Happy Birthday, Don!
Continue reading →

Posted in Alumni, Bizarre, Frank Zappa, In The News, Miscellany, Official Releases, Pop Cult, YouTubery | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Berklee Interviews Gail

You know something? I was going to write a massive post related to this interview with Gail (mailed to me by many), but to be honest: I figured life is too short as it is. I’ll leave you with a couple of choice quotes though.
Continue reading →

Posted in Frank Zappa, Interview, Music, Zappa Family Trust | 18 Comments

FZ Interview – KYUU-FM San Francisco, 1984

In this three part KYUU-FM radio interview with Frank Zappa broadcast on May 17th, 1984 in San Francisco, California, Zappa talks about some his early guitar influences (Johnny Guitar Watson and Clarence Gatemouth Brown, for instance), the reasons which led to his decision to stop writing orchestral music after the Berkeley Symphony performance of his orchestral work at Zellerbach (and some of the ugliness of that world which he describes at length), his views concerning the usefulness and place of drum machines in recording music and concert performances, as well as other Zappa news circa 1984. This interview certainly reminded me how much Zappa became a bridge for me across so much of the awfulness which became known as 80s music.
Continue reading →

Posted in Frank Zappa, Interview, YouTubery | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

UG’s Semi-Orchestral Low Budget Memorial Barbecue

This month I have put together a special mixtape for Zappa/Mothers Die-Hards with many of my favorite instrumental, semi-orchestral, and orchestral Zappa works – many of which I’m mixing here for the first time – from some of the best of Zappa‘s individual bands to the Petit Wazoo Band to his Grand Wazoo Orchestra to The Abnuceals Emuukha Electric Orchestra to the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra to the Ensemble Modern to the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to The Orchestra of Our Time to Nederlands Philharmonisch Orkest & Cappella Amsterdam – punctuated with interviews by and about Zappa from Kent Nagano and David Ocker and Studs Terkel.
Continue reading →

Posted in Alumni, Frank Zappa, Interview, Music | Tagged , , , , , | 20 Comments

200 Motels DVD – Review by SOTCAA

Frank Zappa’s 1971 big-screen venture 200 Motels has not been particularly well-preserved on VHS over the years. Although there have been several releases and re-releases, these have tended to be sourced from the same slightly iffy video masters with no attempts at any kind of upgrade.

The first ever (official) DVD release of the film last month on the Voiceprint label should have been the perfect opportunity to rectify this. Sadly, this release – overseen and ‘restored’ by original co-director Tony Palmer – stands out as not only the worst edition of the film ever commercially released but could actually hold the honour of being the worst DVD ever compiled. (…)

It looks like shit.

Full – very very detailed – article here (see our previous post about the DVD!) Just one side-note: on the official site of the DVD one will find where the trailer should be: “This video is no longer available because of copyright reasons – belonging to  Metro-Goldwin-Mayer”.
(Sorry, the latter had to be translated back to English from Hungarian… I’m not sure whether it’s perfect, but you’ll understand anyway.)

Posted in Frank Zappa, Movies, Official Releases | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments