Does humor belong in music? During this particular Z gig (NAMM, Hilton, Anaheim, CA) in late January, 1995, it did.
Bryan Beller:
The Z show was a private party for Peavey, with a special guest appearance by Dick Clark. We all got dressed up in fake costume stage tuxes and wore ZZ Top beards for a planned skit, before playing our only song of the evening: an even newer medley, one that spanned the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. It was fun, it was silly, it was Z in a nutshell.
I had nearly forgotten about Capt. Cheese Beard & The 7 Sisters Of Prevention after Barry first posted their video of “Black Napkins” here at KUR back in 2007. Frankly, this ten piece band blows me away with their musicianship and their enthusiasm for the material they are playing (just check out the first two clips from their performance at Atelier210 – the aforementioned “Black Napkins” and “More Trouble Every Day”).
Captain Cheese Beard & the 7 Sisters of Prevention are a ten piece fusion band from Brussels, Belgium, formed by Johan De Coninck in May of 2006 after a year of pondering whether the whole project was actually feasible and worth all the trouble of managing a production of its size.
About three years ago, after riding pygmy ponies for many hours at the Pygmy Pony Riding club and smoking a whole pack of Wellfields (these are very dodgy Togolese cigarettes, by the way) Capt. Cheese-Beard went into a trance and had a vision in which he was visited by his long-time idol Frank Zappa who died in 1993. The great man himself told the captain that it was clear that his oeuvre was at risk of being lost, as it was not being exposed to the music listening youth of today. This was of course totally unacceptable. Maybe it was the side-effects of the Wellfields, temporally disabling the captain’s sense of reason, but during that cerebral meltdown he swore as a proud member of the pygmy pony riding club that he would do everything within his power to bring Zappa’s music back to life. Of course this was easier said than done. The media, regulated for many years now by the central scrutinizer, the sort of person who smells of cabbage, hired by so-called friends of the music biz, wasn’t going to be very receptive to the idea of putting the great composer’s “subversive” music back on the air. To make things worse, the central scrutinizer’s roll consists in making sure that the minds of our young consumers are continuously bombarded with tasteless, lukewarm, prefab pop. The captain, who by now had come back to his senses, realized he had to come up with a different, more daring plan. He decided he would find 9 other crazy musicians (preferably with prior pygmy pony experience) who would join him on a quest to go out there and attempt to play Zappa’s music themselves. He scratched his beard, put his fingers up his nose and smelled that it was good.
The Band:
Didier Demeestere – drums
Pascal Hauben – bass
Sara Corsius – keyboard
Johan De Coninck Corsius – guitar & voice
Rojah Lao – vocals (first 2 gigs only)
Abil Khazzaka – vocals
Vanessa Spy 007 – lead vocals
Katja Maes – melodic percussion
Ansje De Groef – flute
Thomas Van Gelder – alto & soprano sax
Kristof Kerremans – sax
Ludovic Jean-Mart – sax
Masterminded by the Austrian legend Wickerl Adam, and formed as an offshoot of the Hallucination Company in 1998 (an Austrian rock music theater project also founded by Wickerl in 1977 that operated in a “Frank Zappa-oriented, modern rock music performance theater with political demands”) along with guitarist Conrad Schrenk – Sex without Nails bros performed the first full Musical adaptation of Zappa’s Joe’s Garage on the tenth anniversary of the artist’s death in 2003.
S.W.N.B. also performed at Zappanale 18 (August 4th, 2007) as a rock band with Napoleon Murphy Brock on guest vocals. In the following clips they perform “Penguin In Bondage”, “Pygmy Twylyte” and “Yellow Snow Suite”:
Sex without Nails bros bandmembers:
Margit Schoberleitner – Percussion, marimba
Hannes Kerschner – Keyboards Jil Y Creek – Guitar Werner Laher – Bass
Sigi Meier – Drums
Angie Reisinger – Vocals
Anzo Morawitz – Vocals
Peter Dürr – Vocals Conrad Schrenk – Guitar Wickerl Adam – Vocals, MC
Denny Walley, slide guitar player and childhood friend of Bobby and Frank Zappa, Don Van Vliet, and Jim Sherwood (Motorhead) was asked to tour with The Paul Green School of Rock (PGSOR) All Stars. As he says in the clip above, “I jumped at it [the chance].” Walley also talks about his musical origins, influences and jamming with the PGSOR All Stars. Of particular interest is a statement he makes at the 4:27 point in the video:
If it hadn’t of been for other people, bands, and people that loved his [Zappa’s] music, playing it, nobody would know who he is anymore.
The PGSOR All Stars is a group of the best students from the entirety of the program:
The program consists of year-round, weekly individual lessons as well as full band rehearsals for seasonal shows. Instructors are encouraged to stress the fundamentals of both popular music and music theory in their teaching. Instruction is available in electric guitar, bass guitar, drums, keyboards, and vocals. Students are encouraged to play other instruments as well with instruction from other sources. Students learn songs from popular bands/artists like Led Zeppelin, The Who, Pink Floyd, 80’s hair metal, punk, and grunge. Those songs are eventually played at themed live shows held throughout the year. There are occasional workshops featuring accomplished musicians, and include discussions about past experiences, songwriting, live performance and fame in general. To be admitted, students generally must be between the ages of 7 and 18. No musical training or experience is necessary to attend the school.
They go on tour to play such venues as BB Kings in Times Square, The Knitting Factory in LA and NYC, The Roxy and Crash Mansion in LA, Stubbs in Austin, Hard Rock Cafes, House of Blues, and many of the biggest festivals in the country such as Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits. They tour and play with famous musicians from rock’s past and present, including Jon Anderson, Peter Frampton, Alice Cooper, Adrian Belew, Napoleon Murphy Brock, Stewart Copeland, Ike Willis, and Ann Wilson. The All-Stars consist of five nationally touring groups.
Denny Walley appeared as a special guest with the PGSOR All Stars at Zappanale 19 on August 15th, 2008 in Bad Doberan, Germany presenting a special Zappa/Beefheart program. In the following clips they perform “Dog Breath/Uncle Meat”, “One Shot Deal” and “Nowadays A Woman’s Gotta Hit A Man”:
The Paul Green School of Rock All Stars will return to the Zappanale 20 Main Stage on Saturday, August 15th, 2009. Denny Walley will appear with the Mats & Morgan Band on Sunday, August 16th.
Read an interview of Denny Walley conducted by Idiot Bastard at Zappanale 19. Click here.
In keeping with the general Beefheartian theme of recent posts, I recently found this video of the Mats/Morgan Band performing Captain Beefheart’s “Lick My Decals Off, Baby”.
During the same week in April, 1996, while in Los Angeles, California, Juha Rompannen recorded several private interviews with Frank Zappa alumni.
On April 20th, Rompannen conducted his interview with Tommy Mars (first clip). Mars talks about his musical schooling, his time with Frank, synthesizer and keyboard technology and current projects. Mars is a keyboard player who played piano, organ and synthesizers in Frank Zappa’s touring and recording band between 1977 and 1982.
On April 17th, Rompannen conducted his interview with Robert “Bobby” Martin (second clip). Martin talks about his musical development, early music career, his time with Frank and composer jobs. Martin is a vocalist and multi instrumentalist who sang and played keyboards, saxophone and french horn in Frank Zappa’s band during the tours of 1981, 1982, 1984 and 1988.
On April 14th, Rompannen conducted his interview with Bruce Fowler (third clip). Fowler talks about his time with Frank, the movie business, the music scene, and his musical schooling among other things. Fowler is a trombone player that played in Frank Zappa’s touring and recording band during 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975 and also during Franks last tour in 1988.
All three alumni are members of The Band From Utopia. Partly known under that name, The Mar Vista Philharmonic: No Forest Fire, released this year (2009) also features Tommy Mars and Bruce Fowler (Walt Fowler, Larry Klimas, Kurt McGettrick, Arthur Barrow and Vinnie Colaiuta).
Bogus Pomp began in August, 1994, when guitarist Jerry Outlaw and keyboardist Rick Olson got together for some informal jamming. It started out as a quartet (Jerry Outlaw: guitar, vocals – Rick Olson: keyboard – Alex Pasut: bass – Tom Mccowan: drums), but quickly grew to a 10 piece ensemble. The Bogus Pomp Orchestra consists of Bogus Pomp (the 10-piece electric band), plus a 15-piece chamber ensemble. They’re based in Tampa Bay, Florida, USA.
The band has performed concerts with New York Big Band leader Ed Palermo, and in 1998 and 1999 performed with Zappa alumni, Ike Willis. Since October 1999, Napoleon Murphy Brock has been a permanent member.
In the clip above, performing as the “Bogus Pomp Semi-Acoustic Orchestra” feat. Napoleon Murphy Brock at the St. Katharinen church in Hamburg, Germany, on August 13th, 2008 (organized by the Arf Society and opener for Zappanale 2008), the band performs “The Idiot George Bush Son” and “Sleep Dirt”.
Click here to download or listen to German radio broadcast of this Hamburg concert (It’s well worth the listen).
Perhaps it’s the French attitude towards music and musical groups, yet I find the sheer number of incarnations that the band Gong has gone through to be truly amazing. Just imagine if each member of the original Mothers of Invention decided to start their own version of the Mothers after Frank called to tell them he was breaking up the band (then you’ll get an idea).
Gong is a progressive/psychedelic rock band formed by Australian musician Daevid Allen in 1967, after Allen—then a member of Soft Machine—was denied entry to the United Kingdom because of a visa complication. Allen remained in France where he and a London-born Sorbonne professor, Gilli Smyth, established the first incarnation of the band.
While the “Classic Gong” line-up retired from regular touring in 2001, there have been one-off reunions since, most notably at the “Gong Family Unconvention” (Uncon), the first of which was held in 2004 in the Glastonbury Assembly rooms as a one day event. The 2005 Uncon was a 2-day affair featuring several Gong-related bands such as Here and Now, System 7, House of Thandoy and Kangaroo Moon. The most recent Uncon was a 3-day event held at the Melkweg in Amsterdam on 3-5 November 2006, with practically all Gong-related bands present: classic Gong, System 7, Steve Hillage Band, Hadouk, Tim Blake & Jean-Philippe Rykiel, University of Errors, Here & Now, Mother Gong, Zorch, Eat Static, Acid Mothers Gong, Slack Baba, Kangaroo Moon and many others.
The Grande Mothers feature Zappa alumni, Napoleon Murphy Brock (lead vocals, tenor sax, woodwinds and choreography), Don Preston (vocals, keyboards and transformations), and Roy Estrada (vocals, bass and pachuco falsetto), along with musicians Chris Garcia (drums, percussion and vocals) and Miroslav Tadic (electric guitar and all the difficult Zappa licks). Over the last few years they have toured to enthusiastic audiences in the US, Canada, Great Britain, as well as various stops in West and Eastern Europe showcasing their special blend of musical mayhem, virtuosic playing, bizarre humor, and as always, their playful love of the music, itself, and each other. And the feeling is contagious and infectious (or so was the sensation when they performed in my little neck of the woods last year).
Just don’t just take my word for it, though. Listen to the interview with the group (first clip). Watch them perform “Pygmy Twylyte” at the Pacific Road Arts Centre, Birkenhead, UK on the 12th March 2008 (second clip). Or perform “Peaches en Regalia” at the Sugar Nightclub for Victoria’s JazzFest ’08.
If those aren’t enough to convince you, click here, here, and here.
Madrugada (which in Spanish and Portuguese and means “dawn”, “the blue hour” and was suggested to the band by poet/writer friend Øystein Wingaard Wolf) is a Norwegian rock band formed in 1995 hailing from a little place called Stokmarknes in Vesteraalen. The band’s members include Frode Jacobsen (bass), Sivert Høyem (vocals) and Robert Burås (guitar).
On July 12, 2007, guitarist Robert Burås was found dead in his apartment in Oslo. He was 31 years old.
A new, self-titled album was released on January 21st 2008 after having released the single “Look Away Lucifer” on December 10, 2007. All tracks of the album were recorded before Robert Burås died. After his death, they continued recording the album to honour Robert. In the spring of 2008, Madrugada embarked on a tour throughout Europe and Norway, playing material from the Madrugada album as well as material from previous albums. In late October 2008, their farewell tour began. The 11th and final concert of their last tour was held in a sold out Oslo Spektrum November 15, 2008.
Madrugada always surprised me with their anti-love songs and their thought provoking lyrics (check out the videos, “Majesty” and “Look Away Lucifer”, respectively), as well as their often discordant music (which any Mother’s fan cannot help but enjoy). Unfortunately, I discovered them too late to ever see them live, though.
