Tag: the grandmothers

Best FZ Covers – Sandro Oliva’s “Watermelon In Easter Hay”

Sandro Oliva – former member of The Grandmothers, and one of my favourite guitarists – has been torturing Italian eardrums with his own band, The Blue Pampurio’s, since 1974.

Sandro Oliva‘s cover of FZ’s “Watermelon In Easter Hay” (one of the very best covers of that particular song I’ve heard, I might add) from the above clip is from the 2005 4CD private release, “NEVER COVERED” (for family and friends).

Long before making “NEVER COVERED” I recorded “LOVES OF MY LIFE”, a collection of FZ songs sang in Italian, along with a few instrumentals.

This is one of them.

The project has never been put out for copyright reasons, but I still have fun listening to “BROWN SHOES DON’T MAKE IT”, “JOE’S GARAGE/PEE”, “HELP I’M A ROCK”, “GO CRY..”, “CAMARILLO BRILLO” and “TURNING AGAIN”, the Italian Way!

I’m sure Frank would have appreciated it.

Unfortunally he got ill and after that more shit happened, so that I never asked the ZFT permission for releasing the italian translations.

Oh, well… maybe now that I’m not a Grandmother anymore…

But no, never mind.

I’m too busy with MY OWN MUSIC!!

~Sandro

Sandro Oliva – Guitar, Bass, Electric Sitar, Keyboards, Percussion, Sequencing.

Tunes, Treats & Torrents – The Grandmothers

The first version of The Grandmothers came into being in 1980, formed by original Mothers of Invention and Soul Giants alumni Don Preston, Jimmy Carl Black and Bunk Gardner. From almost the start, the group was a thorn in Zappa‘s side (who’d probably thought he’d seen the last of his former bandmates when he forced them into the cold when he disbanded the original Mothers in 1970) when Zappa himself became the target of the new band’s on-stage satire and was apparently particularly upset over a dummy of himself that was being used in various provocative ways. Thus began a pattern of the Zappa family and its legal minions fighting with various members of the Grandmothers over the right to perform and record original Mothers of Invention compositions. At one point in the early ’90s, the Zappa estate quashed a new recording deal for the Grandmothers with a major label that was unfortunately not interested in working with the band unless it was allowed to use the name of the Mothers of Invention.
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When Do We Get Paid? – Jimmy Carl Black

Since Jimmy Carl Black‘s passing, I have had the great opportunity to listen to much of the man’s post-Mothers of Invention recordings. Agree with me or not, JCB was a very unique musician in his own right. Many of his talents, I fear, were unfairly overlooked by a Frank Zappa wishing to distance himself from the original Mothers. Whether they are blues standards, or eclectic cover versions of Mothers of Invention or Zappa songs, JCB stamped them with his own unique identity. Along the way, he played with some of the greatest musicians you’ve probably never heard of (yet should). Now’s your chance (for at least a taste).
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Zappanale 20 – Highlights

I’ve recently come across a couple of highlight videos from Zappanale 20. The first (above) is of Project Object featuring the son of the late Jimmy Carl Black, Geronimo Black performing “Cosmic Debris”. The second video (below) is The Grandmothers performing “A Pound For A Brown”. Awesome live material.
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