Zappa’s Universe — Revisited

Zappa’s Universe (the album and video of the same title) documents the big tribute concert thrown for Frank Zappa over four nights (November 7-10, 1991, although the footage on the album and video are from the first two nights), organized by conductor Joel Thome, who assembled the Orchestra of Our Time at the Ritz in NYC. Mike Keneally and Scott Thunes were joined by other ex-Zappa sidemen Steve Vai, Denny Walley among many others including Frank’s son, Dweezil Zappa.

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Conceptual Continuity, Anyone?

A while ago, I was sent a link to a course on the music of Frank Zappa, given between 2001 and 2007 by one Jason Klein of the University of North Texas. Browsing around, I stumbled across this PDF (caution: 23MB download), in which one page meticulously visualizes Zappa’s notion of Conceptual Continuity:

Conceptual Continuity Chart

The above is just a thumbnail. To study the graph in all its glory, download the big version here (3MB jpg). If bandwidth is no issue, I’ve also uploaded the chart to Flickr for online viewing. Fascinating stuff — someone make a poster out of this!