Rare footage of Jean-Luc Ponty from 1972. Performing his only original composition from his album King Kong: Jean-Luc Ponty Plays the Music of Frank Zappa. While the album version goes 7:12 in length, this version (it is surmised that this recording is from a German TV Archive – can anyone confirm this?) goes 10:13. Though recorded under the Ponty name, King Kong is largely considered a Zappa record by fans.
Tag: rare videos
Small Screen Zappa – 67/68
On September 16, 1967, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention made a brief 10 minute appearance on Fred Weintraub’s WOR-TV New York show “From The Bitter End”. They lip synched “Son Of Suzy Creamcheese” from Absolutely Free, then performed an improvisation (above) which has come to be known as “In Memoriam, Hieronymus Bosch” which appeared on the bootleg, Apochrypa.
Jethro Tull @ Fillmore East 1970
Let’s all climb aboard the YouTube time machine and trip back to the year 1970 at the Fillmore East where Jethro Tull is captured performing two tracks from their 1969 release, Stand Up: “A New Day Yesterday” and “For A Thousand Mothers”. Got to love the energy and enthusiasm in these videos. Well worth the trip.
Alice Cooper Group — Sun Arise (Live) & Black JuJu (Studio)
Some music listeners (born after the 1970s) don’t understand the early appeal of the original Alice Cooper Group. They had a unique sound and image (which like all great rock ‘n roll mortified our parents) that was very appealing to those of us born in the 1960s and were obviously quite cynical about just about everything that came out of that decade (hippies metamorphosing into yuppies). Yet listening to Love It To Death (first issued on Straight Records), one can still hear the sound of the band which Frank Zappa originally signed before Warner Brothers completely morphed them into the mainstream (leading to the original band’s eventual demise). The first clip, Sun Arise (Live), is somewhat choppy, but rare footage. The second, Black JuJu (Studio Version) is the one track I always recommend to anyone wanting to explore the true, real sound of The Alice Cooper Group (before Vincent Damon Furnier took on the band’s nom de plume as his own, and the self-parodying that followed the band’s break up).