PackardGoose.com Forums

Zappa news

DED - 10-4-2007 at 12:46

10000 Lakes Festival Confirms The Tragically Hip, Zappa Plays Zappa

read more

Super groupie

DED - 10-4-2007 at 12:49

Source Name : Javno.hr, Croatia
Source Url : http://www.javno.com
Publish Date : Apr 7, 2007

Summary :
... to her heroes and thus ensued ?friendships? with Mick Jagger, Jim Morrison, Jimmy Page, Jimmy Hendrix, David Gilmour, Frank Zappa and even Don Johnson. ...

Read the full story

[Edited on 10-4-2007 by DED]

Merchandise

DED - 10-4-2007 at 12:57

Anthill Trading has made a deal with the Zappa Family trust to oversee all merchandising efforts in relation to Frank Zappa, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and Zappa Plays Zappa.

New York, New York (Billboard Publicity Wire) April 4, 2007 -- Anthill Trading is honored to announce that we have entered into an alliance with the Zappa Family Trust. Anthill will oversee all aspects
of merchandising not only for Frank Zappa (http://www.zappa.com) but also for the critically-acclaimed touring concert series Zappa Plays Zappa, featuring Dweezil Zappa.

Anthill recognizes not just the musical contributions Frank Zappa made but also the enormous visual impact his work contains. It is therefore with pride that we will work alongside Frank's wife Gail in memorializing the entire Zappa legacy through a comprehensive assortment of lifestyle products that will appeal to his legions of fans worldwide.

Frank Zappa was a composer, guitarist, singer, film director and satirist. In his more than 30 year career Frank Zappa established himself as a prolific and distinctive musician - composer - band leader. Zappa originated the first concept album in Rock & Roll and worked in substantially every musical genre, creating music for rock bands, jazz ensembles, synthesizers and symphony orchestra and is recognized today as one of the great composers of the last century. And he proved that humor does indeed belong in Music.

Zappa self produced almost every one of the more than sixty albums he released with the Mothers of Invention or as a solo artist. He amassed an enormous archive consisting of thousands of live recordings spanning even beyond his performing career. In addition to his music recordings he created feature length and short films, graphic art and album covers. Civilization - , Phase III (the third part of his Masterwork trilogy which also includes Lumpy Gravy & We're Only In It For The Money) earned a Grammy for the album art. He received multiple Grammy nominations and eventually was presented with a Grammy award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance in 1987 for the album "Jazz From Hell," albeit it, off camera. Other dubious achievements: In 2005 Rolling Stone magazine ranked him #71 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and, posthumously inducted in to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, he is possibly the first inductee whose music was refused a performance at the actual ceremony.

Zappa Plays Zappa- After cocooning himself away in the studio for more than a year learning to play his father's music note for note and in fact, relearning his picking style in order to address parts that were never intended to be played on the guitar, in 2006 Dweezil Zappa hand selected a band of new, young musicians as well as some legendary Zappa alumni to help him present the first official live concert event of Frank Zappa's music since his untimely death in 1993. While not yet confirmed there are plans to take the tour down under in the months ahead.

About Anthill Trading
Anthill Trading, founded in 1996, is a New York based merchandising company specializing in the exploitation of some unique music, entertainment, and lifestyle properties. Exclusive global representation of some of the world's most prestigious icons and trademarks is under the direction of industry veterans and Anthill founders Cathy Cleghorn and Norman Perry. From their roots in the concert promotion business, both Cleghorn and Perry have developed a keen sense of how to merge the very specific merchandise goals of their artists with the desires of their audiences. The result is an exceptional and eclectic roster, which includes AC/DC, David Bowie, Blondie, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Dashboard Confessional, Deep Purple, RUN DMC, Iggy Pop, Pearl Jam, Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, The Tragically Hip, Nelly Furtado and The Police. For all the latest about Anthill Trading or it's clients visit http://www.anthilltrading.com and browse our news section, photo gallery and blog.

For more information contact Renay Palome at 212-675-1114 or email.

###

DED - 10-4-2007 at 22:36

You can find zappa thingies on their website
http://www.anthilltrading.com
But it is a sort of Sesamestreet website. :D

Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz with Frank Zappa

DED - 11-4-2007 at 16:20

Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz with Frank Zappa
Source Name : All About Jazz, PA
Source Url : http://www.allaboutjazz.com
Publish Date : Mar 31, 2007

Summary :
Although many fans of Marian McPartland's long running NPR series heard former Frank Zappa sideman George Duke's guest appearance on Marian McPartland's ...

Read the full story here

DED - 12-4-2007 at 16:01

Quote:
Originally posted by DED
You can find zappa thingies on their website
http://www.anthilltrading.com
But it is a sort of Sesamestreet website. :D

They have some rare stuff (they say)

Korn management confirms drummer exit

DED - 12-4-2007 at 19:16

Korn's management has confirmed that temporary drummer Terry Bozzio has completed his work on the band's new record and is no longer working with the group. Bozzio, a legendary drummer known for his work with Missing Persons and Frank Zappa, plays on some but not all tracks on the album. Bozzio will also not be joining Korn on the road, with a new touring drummer yet to be announced. Brooks Wackerman of Bad Religion played with the band two weeks ago at a youth volunteer show in Los Angeles, but is not expected to tour with them.

Bozzio replaced founding drummer David Silveria in January, after Silveria announced at the end of 2006 that he was taking a "hiatus" from Korn for at least one album and tour.

Korn's eighth studio effort is due out in June. The band will headline the 2007 Family Values tour starting in mid-July, with Evanescence, Hellyeah, Atreyu, Trivium and Flyleaf also on the bill. The on-sale date for most of the shows is April 28th.

punknaynowned - 27-4-2007 at 07:59

1991 Documentary Peefeeyakto c 1991 by Frank Zappa is available to be viewed on youtube here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oAjzztZbQw
this is a link to part 1 of 6
of course the sound is terrible and there seems to be some minor edits, but all in all a very interesting look into the synclavier world of zappa and his concept of sound and of music in general. Eye - ear opening!!
Some unique pieces as well I believe . . .
sorry if you've seen this before, it is new to me.
how ya'll doin? haven't talked to you folks in a while . . .
I'm ok, gotta move:crying:

BBP - 28-4-2007 at 22:23

Move where Punky?

punknaynowned - 30-4-2007 at 03:08

that's just the thing, I don't know yet
somewhere here in town
I hate to move

BBP - 30-4-2007 at 18:32

Oh dear... What's happening to your old place? Demolished? In the way of a new highway or mall? Infested by rats?

punknaynowned - 29-4-2008 at 05:11

New Z Series a Reality?

There may be some truth do you think of the vinyl release of previously unreleased stuff?

BBP - 29-4-2008 at 09:21

Seen the pics, yeah. I'm kinda lost at it. Do I really "need" 2 more renditions of "The Torture Never Stops"?

punknaynowned - 14-6-2008 at 02:13

one shot deal available at Barfko-Swill
but if you go to the what's new page
http://www.zappa.com/whatsnew/index.html
and click on the image, you'll get a flash page that offers a tracklisting
:P

Badchild - 16-6-2008 at 10:15

ordered today -One shot Deal

punknaynowned - 24-6-2008 at 12:26

we got a lead, folks

http://www.zappa.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=14621&postdays=0&am...

really big news

[Edited on 24-6-08 by punknaynowned]

polydigm - 24-6-2008 at 23:34

Hey Punky, if you want the zappa forum to go straight to the post in question you can do the following:

http://www.zappa.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=363669&highlight#36...

You get the post number by hitting quote on the post you want highlighted and then copying the post number from the link in the address field after the quote editor has loaded. There's no obligation to submit the quote, of course. The viewtopic.php command works with a post number p= instead of a topic number t=.

punknaynowned - 25-6-2008 at 00:18

that's a great signifier distinguisher!
I'll use it!
thanx!
Is it useful to php only ?

What I'm most excited about and hope something comes of it is GZ's mention before that:
http://www.zappa.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=363669&highlight#36...

:cool:

punknaynowned - 25-6-2008 at 00:35

This is something that has the best to offer it, for everyone, I think.
Gail has at least said now that she's up for talking about options as to online distribution thru dl's or streams or whatever.
She hadn't done that before.
And with her coming up now more frequently, if the geezers with the online pipes and the fanatic techs step up to make it work and the difficulty of 'encryption' is worked out ( . . .! . . .)
there is finally something else to talk about, positively in addition to the faltering and gimmegimme fanny-tripes when the new releases come along.

My thought is that the zpz dvd sales exceeded expectations, which allowed for broader release of that in different formats and maybe even cover production costs for new releases this year.

I hope that the statement she made that you pipointed above polyd is not a conditional statement or based solely on the context. That is, that there would be 4 releases this year if an on online pipe could be set up. The way she words it, leaves open that possibility I fear. An argument could be made I think that is what she means, despite everyone's wishes or expectations to the contrary. . .

punknaynowned - 25-6-2008 at 00:38

Quote:
Originally posted by punknaynowned
This is something that has the best to offer all around, for everyone, I think.
Gail has at least said now that she's up for talking about options as to online distribution thru dl's or streams or whatever.
She hadn't done that before.
And with her coming up now more frequently, if the geezers with the online pipes and the fanatic techs step up to make it work and the difficulty of 'encryption' is worked out ( . . .! . . .)
there is finally something else to talk about, positively in addition to the faltering and gimmegimme fanny-tripes when the new releases come along.

My thought is that the zpz dvd sales exceeded expectations, which allowed for broader release of that in different formats and maybe even cover production costs for new releases this year.

I hope that the statement she made that you pinpointed above polyd is not a conditional statement or based solely on the context. That is, that there would be 4 releases this year if an on online pipe could be set up. The way she words it, leaves open that possibility I fear. An argument could be made I think that is what she means, despite everyone's wishes or expectations to the contrary. . .

punknaynowned - 25-6-2008 at 00:38

woops I hit quote instead of edit.

polydigm - 25-6-2008 at 00:42

Quote:
Originally posted by punknaynowned: Is it useful to php only?
You have to distinguish between PHP and the use of PHP by the creators of the forum software just like you have to distinguish between keywords and variable names in any programming language. The creators of phpBB2 have their own names for variables that they use when writing their own PHP files.

punknaynowned - 26-9-2008 at 17:28

Joe's Menage
http://barfkoswill.shop.musictoday.com/Product.aspx?cp=971_4039_883...
expect a new frontpage at zappa.com
My guess is that it is Lublyana, Yugoslavia, 22.11.75
yup, one song of which is fz plays fz

cheers all!

[Edited on 26-9-08 by punknaynowned]

scallopino - 27-9-2008 at 13:36

Thanks Punk. I get the crazy emails from zappa.com and sometimes I read them and by the end I feel like I haven't really got any information.

BBP - 27-9-2008 at 18:04

Yup. Gail's more cryptic than Linear A.

scallopino - 29-9-2008 at 11:00

:D I don't know how much use i'll get out of that one Bonny, but if i'm with the right company i'll certainly try it out.

BBP - 29-9-2008 at 20:09

Well, with PCs it should be easier than figuring it out by hand, but you will have to learn ancient Egyptian. And studying Linear A is cursed, btw. But solving it brings instant fame!

Pappawas1975 - 25-11-2008 at 06:40

I see Lumpy Money has been delayed....No surprise there.

Nice little snippet on zappa.com, though....

scallopino - 25-11-2008 at 06:46

Excuse my ignorance...what is Lumpy Money?

aquagoat - 25-11-2008 at 07:04

Quote:
[quote="The Idiot Bastard"]Next from the ZFT, Lumpy Money, a three-CD "audio documentary" due out on 25 November, comprising two separate FZ mixes of Lumpy Gravy and WOIIFTM and the first official release of the instrumental orchestral "ballet" version of Lumpy Gravy that Frank recorded in 1967 for Capitol Records but later revamped. Read more here: http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content... and try to remain calm.

polydigm - 25-11-2008 at 09:02

Quote:
Originally posted by Gojira1975: I see Lumpy Money has been delayed....No surprise there. Nice little snippet on zappa.com, though....

Damn good quality given the original is a 40 year old analog recording. I'm getting weak at the knees over this one.

Badchild - 25-11-2008 at 11:48

Quote:
Originally posted by polydigm
Quote:
Originally posted by Gojira1975: I see Lumpy Money has been delayed....No surprise there. Nice little snippet on zappa.com, though....

Damn good quality given the original is a 40 year old analog recording. I'm getting weak at the knees over this one.


Yeah i know the feeling....Anyone wanna give a ball park figure on how much that little sucker is going to put you back?? I'll go first 40$?

BBP - 25-11-2008 at 15:03

I guess $35 dollars... $40 if you want to buy it at a Dutch store.

Pappawas1975 - 25-11-2008 at 21:14

I think this is going to be nice.....

I have a copy of the original instrumental LG, which I do love, but will be nice to get everything sounding good and polished as possible, as you mentioned, poly...

BBP - 25-11-2008 at 22:22

LG's been my favourite since I first heard it, and every time I play it I just sit still, listen, and chuckle at Louie the Turkey. I used to have a friend who laughed like that: usually I tried not to make him laugh because of it. (And the volume of his laugh would hurt your ears).

Not sure if I'll buy Lumpy Money. It's going to be very hard to get, and this far I haven't really played any new release the way I play the CP3-and-earlier material. Not even Wazoo.

Pappawas1975 - 26-11-2008 at 06:35

Quote:
Originally posted by BBP
Not sure if I'll buy Lumpy Money. It's going to be very hard to get, and this far I haven't really played any new release the way I play the CP3-and-earlier material. Not even Wazoo.


That will come with time,surely? Same for me, actually, but I think this is because they are new releases, y'know? ( and due to the fact I discovered Zappateers! )

Joe's Menage was on the other day actually. Great!

BBP - 26-11-2008 at 15:47

A lot of newer releases (like Imaginary Diseases) just don't have the same vibe. Or the same start-to-finish superb quality.

DED - 30-11-2008 at 12:15

From the Los Angeles Times
obituary

Zappa Drummer Jimmy Carl Black, 70, Dies
Los Angeles Times
November 7, 2008
Jimmy Carl Black, the original drummer in Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention, a band that helped define the sub-genre of art rock, died of cancer Saturday. He was 70.

He died in Siegsdorf, Germany, according to Roddie Gilliard, who performed with Black in recent years as part of the Muffin Men, a British group that specialized in performing Zappa's music live.

A note on Black's official website stated, "Jimmy passed away peacefully. ... Jimmy says hi to everybody, and he doesn't want anybody to be sad."

He moved to Germany in the 1990s after marrying a German woman following the death of his first wife.



James Inkanish Jr. was born Feb. 1, 1938, in El Paso, Texas, but was reared in nearby Anthony, N.M. He changed his name after his mother married Carl Black.

He lived in Anthony for 19 years, started playing piano at age 6 and took up trumpet in high school but switched to drums when he joined the Air Force in 1958 because "there weren't any trumpets in rock 'n' roll."

Black moved to Los Angeles in 1964 and formed the Soul Giants with Roy Estrada and Ray Collins. When the group's guitarist was drafted, they hired Zappa, who took over as leader and changed the band's name to the Mothers of Invention.

After Zappa disbanded the Mothers in 1969, Black appeared in Zappa's 1971 film "200 Motels" and went on to play in a variety of musical collaborations. Zappa died of prostate cancer in 1993.

Black quit playing music entirely at times, once earning a living working in a doughnut shop and later as a house painter and decorator.

He reunited with former Mothers Bunk Gardner and Don Preston as the Grandmothers, performing vintage Zappa songs and other original compositions.

Black is survived by his second wife, Monika; six children; and several grandchildren.

scallopino - 30-11-2008 at 13:30

:(

I didn't know about it. Thanks for posting that Ded.

BBP - 30-11-2008 at 16:13

There was this mass mourning at the Zappa forum... which of course Isaac messed up...

scallopino - 1-12-2008 at 05:48

What did he do?

I guess the thing about all of FZ's band members - especially in the original Mothers - they weren't just sidemembers. They had huge personalities and played such a big part in the early Zappa mythology. It's really sad. Poor Jimmy.

punknaynowned - 21-1-2009 at 21:37

this is really cool
it is part 1 of a CBC radio show

http://www.sendspace.com/pro/dl/9z0yu8

it's REALLY wonderful with extended bits of Ruth and her emotional connection and Gail and her emotional connection. Intense. Delightful to hear these old women talk like teenagers.:P

BBP - 22-1-2009 at 14:42

Of course, Vista won't let me play or download that. :umm:

punknaynowned - 22-1-2009 at 18:20

Vista is on this machine B and it snapped it right up and loaded it automatically in winamp.
I don't know where the system put it .. .:freak:
but I can listen to it. Can't you override the protocol somehow?

BBP - 22-1-2009 at 19:43

Maybe you've got something disabled that we have enabled. But our PC gives us much problems with downloading. It's why I can't upgrade this place.

punknaynowned - 23-1-2009 at 09:56

unfortunately this was sold to me used and 'worked on'. The bugs were worked out supposedly but it allows some things and doesn't others. So I don't know what all it can do. I didn't make it.
As far as the radio show, I'll see if I have a cassette tape and can get it give decent playback.
I can't find the file but can play it. The cassette recorder I have is old and may give a distorted or hissy tape when played back. I'll see.

BBP - 23-1-2009 at 15:00

Oh you really have to take care with secondhanders. I have one. The previous owner left some sensitive information on it.
Vista's security is especially annoying when playing PC games. I spent two days figuring out how to navigate around the password bug in Leisure Suit Larry 5. It never really played Phantasmagoria properly. Ugh.

It also gave me serious problems with college: some teachers publish their text through Internet, and then I couldn't download them with IE, so I needed to use Opera, and then I'd only be able to see the first page...

punknaynowned - 23-1-2009 at 18:43

mozilla/firefox ??
it seems to make dl's and page opens a lot easier . . .
but you're not on dial up,right?

BBP - 23-1-2009 at 19:03

Firefox works real bad on our PC. We barely use it as it would rend some programs unusable.

punknaynowned - 25-1-2009 at 03:33

here
http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/archives_ITM.html
this page has links for pt 1 and pt 2
and you should be able to hear it

punknaynowned - 25-1-2009 at 03:34

fingers crossed

MTF - 25-1-2009 at 08:40

I used to use Firefox. It worked just great until - all of a sudden - it stopped working completely. I tried reinstalling; uninstalling; everything short of lighting the computer on fire. All I get is that stupid "We're sorry" window.

So now I use Safari. It's kind of gray and kludgy, but it works.

BBP - 27-1-2009 at 13:07

Yay! It works!

Pappawas1975 - 14-2-2009 at 06:30

ZAPPA PLAYS ZAPPA European dates! Don't you live near Eindhoven Bonny? Three dutch dates, and one is Eindhoven! Check the ZPZ page for full list!

BBP - 14-2-2009 at 08:58

I live there!
Yeah I'm very excited about it! When they just started out with that You Can't Fit On Stage Anymore stuff, I posted in a reply on their YouTube vid that they could play Effenaar. And they DO!!! Can you believe it? I'll also go to the Amsterdam show with my sister. Not sure about the other date yet, don't know where it is.

Pappawas1975 - 14-2-2009 at 21:27

Quote:
Originally posted by BBP
I live there!
Yeah I'm very excited about it! When they just started out with that You Can't Fit On Stage Anymore stuff, I posted in a reply on their YouTube vid that they could play Effenaar. And they DO!!! Can you believe it? I'll also go to the Amsterdam show with my sister. Not sure about the other date yet, don't know where it is.


Result!

BBP - 15-2-2009 at 11:15

I'm wondering who suggested Oosterpoort in Groningen now... poor lads and Scheila now have quite some travelling to do!

Huck_Phlem - 28-2-2009 at 06:42

Wouldn't that be cool if we could all go to the same show together? Man if I won the Lottery I would at least invite you guys and buy plane tickets. Weather you made it or not would be up to you of course. That would be fun.

BBP - 28-2-2009 at 09:08

Oh yeah... though I have been to the same concerts as other forum members before, and failed to meet them. We'd arranged a Zappa Forum Meeting just before the 2006 Amsterdam show, and every single person who was supposed to be there, forgot about that. I lost track of time when I was talking to a very nice Dweezil fan in the VIP box.

punknaynowned - 25-11-2009 at 23:36

Finally Philly!!!
1976 10 29

01 Purple Lagoon
02 Stinkfoot
03 Poodle Lecture
04 Dirty Love
05 Wind Up Workin' In A Gas Station
06 Tryin' To Grow A Chin
07 The Torture Never Stops
08 City Of Tiny Lights
09 You Didn't Try To Call Me
10 Manx Needs Women
11 Titties 'n' Beer
12 Black Napkins
13 Advance Romance
14 Honey Don't You Want A Man Like Me
15 Rudy Wants To Buy Yez A Drink
16 Would You Go All The Way
17 Daddy Daddy Daddy
18 What Kind Of Girl
19 Dinah-Moe Humm
20 Purple Lagoon
21 Stranded In The Jungle
22 Find Her Finer
23 Camarillo Brillo
24 Muffin Man

polydigm - 26-11-2009 at 21:47

I've already ordered my copy of Philly. I'm not that impressed with the set list though. It's Zappa Light.

punknaynowned - 27-11-2009 at 12:19

You might think so, but the AUD tape is pretty great.
It'll be sweet to get a Soundboard even if it is boosted to max levels like Buffalo...
IMO, all these vaulternative show releases have 3 or 4 stand out tracks and the rest is 'standard' live zappa (Wazoo was the exception to this so far as far as I can tell).
For instance, though there are a number of things also found on ZINY there are also a number of things that aren't there like Find Her Finer and You didn't Try To Call Me. Black Napkins runs over 18 minutes!
Bianca is a real treat on these last two as well!!

For me it'll be like going back to my childhood and listening to The King Biscuit Flour Hour on the radio late at night with that warm '70's FM sound

[Edited on 27-11-09 by punknaynowned]

Huck_Phlem - 28-11-2009 at 21:52

I think the drum mix on buffalo is the best mix of drums I have ever heard! Quite a treat for any drummer to have.

polydigm - 19-11-2011 at 00:16

My Carnegie has shipped. Yoo hoo!!

polydigm - 30-11-2011 at 07:18

Definitely a good release this one. Having a Zappa evening next week with my brother and a mate featuring Carnegie.

BBP - 30-11-2011 at 10:35

Looking forward to it!

How are the liner notes? Any interesting information in that?

polydigm - 1-12-2011 at 01:00

The notes are okay, there are no particular highlights. The big deal is the recording itself which is pretty good. I'm impressed anyway. Gail doesn't sound too far out like she can some times.

It's funny that Don got a blank orange panel where they gallery the individual players but his picture is included elsewhere, so he wasn't left out. I'll bet the issue was that they had difficulty finding appropriate pictures of the correct vintage. Don looks like he was photoshopped in, which means they went out of their way to include him, as opposed to snubbing him like some of the zappa.com freaks seem to think.

KAPTKIRK - 18-7-2012 at 05:37

That is the general consenses over there zappa.com and I've heard about GZ not wanting anything to do with DP after some slight he said or did.I don't think I'd get along with GZ had we been in the same place for awhile.That GZ speak is like a hippie on Lord Of The Rings majic dust.I can't make sense of half of it.That "watch the skies" stuff is just silly,Cosmic Debri talk.I think FZ married a latent zircon encrusted hippie with a poodle fetish! She seems to vasilate between Good Gail.:forumsmiley123: and Bad Gail.:forumsmiley103: when it comes to alumni.DP never did get writing credit for King Kong.I should get a chance to ask him on the 26th of July whats up with that.Anyone got any good questions for any of the Grandmothers I can corral into a conversation?



Attachment: GM2012 BWCloseUps.jpg (122kB)
This file has been downloaded 490 times

punknaynowned - 19-7-2012 at 07:04

ask them who came up with the line,
'Take that progress and stick it under a rock!'

ask Nappy, to give an anecdote about the origins of San Ber'dino, or
to all of them, where was the first Holiday Inn?
or Howard Johnson's?
Don and Bunk have records together, and I wonder if they do anything like Don's Agon

KAPTKIRK - 19-7-2012 at 09:14

Sure,I was in the Palamino one time right after I heard San Ber'dino.I had to stop in and check it out.Had chicken wire around the stage to stop the bottles.No shit! It's not in San Bernadino it's in Bakersfield.The county seat is in San Bernadino.Hence,"they gave him 30 days in San Ber'dino" as the locals call it.That's where the jail is. {-

BBP - 27-11-2012 at 18:04

I missed ZPZ on this tour. Didn't know they were coming. To Utrecht. Which I specifically asked them to come to since it's in the middle of The Netherlands and therefore not an infernal drive to any visitor from any part of the country.

Insert brain here.

polydigm - 27-11-2012 at 23:00

That's got to hurt. Were you not reading any of the threads about upcoming tour venues? I lost interest after discovering they weren't coming to Adelaide last April.

BBP - 28-11-2012 at 13:24

I was but I only ever read about the US on those. They didn't mention Europe. And I don't go around checking Dweezil's website, that messes up my cookies.

polydigm - 28-11-2012 at 23:47

Messes up your cookies? How?

I can understand you not wanting to go to Dweezil's site given he's not your favourite person anymore.

BBP - 29-11-2012 at 10:20

Oh the cookie thing was just a bad joke.

BBP - 14-3-2014 at 12:47

Gail's ill in hospital, hope she'll be all-right...

BBP - 19-4-2014 at 11:37

Rest in peace Billy Mundi...

BBP - 24-9-2014 at 12:01

Roxy video is completed and will be released soon. Downloads of YCFOSA are coming soon. Hell has frozen over.

BBP - 29-11-2016 at 10:06

Hell's truly appeared to have frozen over now that Dweezil will be headlining Zappanale.

BBP - 24-9-2017 at 12:56

It may sound like a bad joke:

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/21/entertainment/frank-zappa-hologra...

BBP - 10-10-2021 at 20:01

Played the Simpsons Season 2 DVD with commentary, when I reached the episode "Bart's Dog Gets An F" - the one where Santa's Little Helper rips Marge's 6-generation plaid to bits and is sent to dog training.

There's a scene where Homer lets Marge place an ad in which he says "best dog in the world, says "I love you" on command.
Later Homer has someone who's interested on the phone and he says "we don't want to get rid of him, but we're emigrating to a country where dogs are illegal." When whoever is on the line requests to hear the dog say "I love you", Homer acts it out.

In the commentary, Matt Groening says:
"I got to know Frank Zappa shortly after this episode aired, and that was his favorite moment."
About 17:50 into the epidode.

GrayGhost - 16-9-2022 at 19:42

Happy Birthday Valley Girl

https://www.zappa.com/news/frank-zappas-satirical-acid-tongued-valle...

Eddie RUKidding - 17-9-2022 at 00:04

Good to see you on here Gray

polydigm - 17-9-2022 at 02:19

Hey GG, how's it going?

GrayGhost - 17-9-2022 at 08:59

Cheers lads

Two Months of Black Sabbath and Roger Water's have taken their toll.....

The little woman intervened, and an e mail to BBP later, here I am.....

GrayGhost - 17-9-2022 at 11:10

THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION IN THE THERAPY ROOM

A clinical vignette exploring The Mothers of Invention's studio album We're Only in It for the Money
with groups of child, tween, and teen psychiatric patients.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xkY8MqAuuk

Eddie RUKidding - 18-9-2022 at 00:08

^ I would never have guessed but I guess makes sense, wonderful that it seems to be getting results for them.

polydigm - 18-9-2022 at 06:38

We're Only in It for the Money did a world of good for my mental health around the age of nineteen.

Plook - 24-10-2022 at 18:29

Interesting, on side note I use to listen to the FZ guitar solo albums when I needed to organize my thoughts, seemed to work real well for me...:)

GrayGhost - 8-11-2022 at 07:11

Anybody else seen this FZ youtubery?

Don't Eat The Yellow Snow (Visualizer)

Frank Zappa - Peaches En Regalia (Visualizer)

polydigm - 10-11-2022 at 15:35

^ A wee bit weird for me.

Plook - 16-11-2022 at 23:53

^^^That was disturbing in a way

GrayGhost - 17-11-2022 at 07:09

Here's another.....

Flakes (Visualizer)

Plook - 18-11-2022 at 19:13

https://youtu.be/HNEtjL_qOl8

Frank Zappa, George Duke - Uncle Remus (Visualizer)

Plook - 18-11-2022 at 19:14

:puzzled:

GrayGhost - 18-11-2022 at 20:59

GrayGhost - 29-11-2022 at 07:34



I'm The Slime.....

ursinator2.0 - 14-12-2022 at 19:29

Quote: Originally posted by GrayGhost  
THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION IN THE THERAPY ROOM

A clinical vignette exploring The Mothers of Invention's studio album We're Only in It for the Money
with groups of child, tween, and teen psychiatric patients.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xkY8MqAuuk
[/url]

Phaze Two(?):
TEEN PSYCHIATRIC PATIENTS REACT TO FRANK ZAPPA
TEEN PSYCHIATRIC PATIENTS REACT TO FRANK ZAPPA # 2

GrayGhost - 22-12-2022 at 08:54

In celebration of FZ’s birthday, the audio version of 'The Real Frank Zappa Book'
is available for pre-order now only on Audible!

Coming January the 19th with Ahmet Zappa voicing the book.

Pre-order now: https://adbl.co/RealFrankZappa

Plook - 29-12-2022 at 22:25

Wooo...That is a definite...:)

GrayGhost - 18-2-2023 at 10:09



Clickity Click….. :right arrow: Frank Zappa - Inca Roads (Visualizer) :yes::yes::yes::yes::yes:

jimmied - 9-3-2023 at 15:58

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7kwAGNFKvc

Zappa Warehouse: Chapter One

posted 19 hours ago :bald:

GrayGhost - 10-3-2023 at 07:00

Quote: Originally posted by jimmied  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7kwAGNFKvc

Zappa Warehouse: Chapter One

posted 19 hours ago :bald:


Well, that's a nice blast from the past, cheers Jimmie…..I'm lovin' chapter two

Eddie RUKidding - 10-3-2023 at 22:57

^Is great to see but shame the sounds is down so much :bald:

ursinator2.0 - 25-4-2023 at 19:30

The new owners of all things Zappa are offering an email newsletter service now:

https://digital.umusic.com/frank-zappa-email-sign-up?fbclid=IwAR2XNerXB435lVn0eue_sxdk-t8xKrTYNOk32p2tK1BEi-3znIyfLVrXNYo

tinkamok - 26-4-2023 at 14:46

BBC sounds have a short programme called "Great LIves "about FZ featuring FZ obsessive John Robins ( comedian and presenter of BBC radio 5 live show Fridays 1pm - 4Pm with FZ music in the background ...sometimes )

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001l97r

tinkamok - 3-6-2023 at 16:03

New preview vid from Funky Nothingness on youtube .
Khaki sack - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy58sBVz-JE

tinkamok - 14-6-2023 at 08:52

Latest preview vid and a brief interview with the mighty Ian Underwood -
https://youtu.be/-40G0Ck87OY

tinkamok - 21-6-2023 at 12:36

This now on Soundcloud -
Frank Zappa & The Mothers with Rahsaan Roland Kirk at The Boston Globe Jazz Festival 1-31-69


https://soundcloud.com/user-100188942/frank-zappa-the-mothers-with-r...

tinkamok - 15-7-2023 at 09:27

Steve Vai talks for over 50 mins about his time with FZ in this great interview from Chanan Hanspal , who has done some nice youtube videos .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pmLtrOsZww

tinkamok - 21-7-2023 at 19:04

From the UMe/Zappa mailing list come this ...................
"The Zappa team has been thinking about creating a new Frank Zappa immersive experience to bring this community together, and we're thinking that a cruise vacation might be the best way to do that. In order to do this right, we want to build this together. So please sound off on the below survey what would make this event the vacation of a lifetime. "

Survey here :- https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ZappaCruise

Eddie RUKidding - 21-7-2023 at 23:58

^land Lover here, Gastro and a show I don't think so :biggrin:

Plook - 22-7-2023 at 00:58

I took the survey and took advantage of the “open comment” section to voice my disgust with the removal of the Zappa Forum since there has been nowhere else to do so, I encourage everyone to follow suit if you are so inclined to do so…Here are the comment questions I replied too;

Q - Tell us more about how you show your love for Frank Zappa
Other (specify)

A - I had a thread post on the forum called "Plook on Tour" since I traveled the country for work and used it to meet people for concerts and meals. The worst act of unkindness committed by the Admins was destroying a site that was laced in the history of many Zappa fans and the ones that have passed we lost the record of them, truly a crime against the Zappa community that is and was a bad act, bad form, bad idea…Just horrific.

Q - Could you share your favorite memory or connection (a song, a show, a moment) to Frank Zappa?

A - The Zappa Forum the ultimate resource for everything Zappa and beyond, the loss of which is a true tragedy

Q - In addition to musical artists on the lineup, who/what else would you like to see aboard? (ie. your favorite podcasts, comedians, etc.)

A - Somebody that could reinstate the Zappa Forum I can't believe you all were dumb enough to delete the archive.

Q - What show, content, or activity would make this a 100% can't miss event?

A - Getting the Zappa Forum back

Eddie RUKidding - 22-7-2023 at 06:48

Well done Plook

tinkamok - 22-7-2023 at 09:16

Good work Plook .
I have put "Please reinstate the Zappa forum " in every possible space .
Not hopefull though .

BBP - 22-7-2023 at 11:21

Great Plook, thanks for guiding me to the opportunity.

I think a Zappa cruise fits in somehow with Dweezil's theme "What The Hell Was I Thinking".

tinkamok - 25-7-2023 at 18:20

This is on Youtube and looks a little interesting - https://www.youtube.com/@EmileChill/videos

tinkamok - 27-7-2023 at 14:11

Tha latest "funky Nothingness" youtube video is out now and has a interview with Ian Underwood .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HZuXPHFpws

ursinator2.0 - 31-7-2023 at 23:20

And cheapness in the case of a monster movie has nothing to do with the budget of the film—although it helps:
Frank Zappa - Zappa Galaxy - Theatrical trailer - Sci-fi Movie 2023 :puzzled:

Plook - 1-8-2023 at 00:07

ursinator2.0 that was mind blowing and I kept getting trailer clips feed to me I saw at least 5 or more, I can't believe it but I want to see this...lol...:lol:

polydigm - 1-8-2023 at 01:10

What the fuck was that?

BBP - 1-8-2023 at 21:01

OMG that's terrifying. No wonder there's an actor's strike.

ursinator2.0 - 1-8-2023 at 21:33

Quote: Originally posted by polydigm  
What the fuck was that?

lol :biggrin:
Quote: Originally posted by BBP  
OMG that's terrifying. No wonder there's an actor's strike.

lol some more :biggrin:
Quote: Originally posted by Plook  
ursinator2.0 that was mind blowing and I kept getting trailer clips feed to me I saw at least 5 or more, I can't believe it but I want to see this...lol...:lol:

I'm not sure what to think about this but i like the idea of FZs first demand after waking up in some kind of afterlife: get me some cigarettes!
BTW: belated congrats for your marriage and best wishes to you both! :cool:

Plook - 1-8-2023 at 22:21

Thank you, even better he ask for cigarettes and the Obi-Wan Kenobi guy
says " I have cigarettes but no lighter we will have to wait until we get to the checkpoint"...OMG I almost peed my pants laughing...:lol:

Frank Zappa’s ‘Over-Nite Sensation’ Turns 50 With New Super Deluxe Edition

ursinator2.0 - 24-8-2023 at 19:53


Frank Zappa’s ‘Over-Nite Sensation’ Turns 50 With New Super Deluxe Edition

In celebration of 50 years of Frank Zappa’s widely-acclaimed Over-Nite Sensation, a newly expanded 50th anniversary edition will be released on November 3 via Zappa Records/UMe in a variety of formats, including a five-disc (4CD/1Blu-ray Audio) Super Deluxe Edition that showcases 88 tracks in total, featuring 57 previously unreleased tracks and mixes.

Shop the best of Frank Zappa’s discography on vinyl and more.

Produced and compiled by Ahmet Zappa and Zappa Vaultmeister Joe Travers, this new, expanded collection titled Over-Nite Sensation: 50th Anniversary Edition, boasts the 2012 remaster of the original album by Bob Ludwig, along with additional unreleased masters, highlights, and mix outtakes from the original 1973 sessions mastered by John Polito. Also included are two completely unreleased live concert recordings from 1973 showcasing the same band that recorded the classic album — one show captured at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles, and the other recorded at Cobo Hall in Detroit.

The Blu-ray contains the core album newly remixed in Dolby Atmos and 5.1 surround sound by Karma Auger and Erich Gobel at Studio1LA, the same team behind the acclaimed Dolby Atmos and surround mixes of 2022’s Waka/Wazoo release, plus it offers Zappa’s original 4-channel Quadraphonic mix (available again for the first time since 1973) as well as the hi-res stereo 2012 remaster at both 24-bit/192kHz and 24-bit/96kHz. The lavish, Super Deluxe Edition box is rounding out with a 48-page booklet and unseen photos from the album cover shoot by Sam Emerson, along with liner notes and new essays by noted audiophile journalist Mark Smotroff and Travers.

Fifty-Fifty (Basic Tracks, Take 7)


In 1973, Frank Zappa and The Mothers were once again on the move. Coming off a year laden with a pair of well-lauded high watermarks — July 1972’s jazz-fusion solo masterstroke Waka/Jawaka and November 1972’s big-band Mothers progression The Grand Wazoo — Zappa wanted to next convene another revised Mothers collective, rethink some long-throw compositional tracts, and begin exploring the differences inherent in the form and function of his songwriting. In turn, Zappa also decided to bring his own singing voice more to the lead vocal fore than ever before, as well as refine the scope of his guitar playing.

And thus, September 1973’s Over-Nite Sensation was born. A stone cold classic, Over-Nite Sensation has long been viewed by both the cognoscenti and layman as being a gateway album entry into the Zappaverse at large, serving as a mighty grand place to enter into the breach along with his follow-up March 1974 solo release, Apostrophe(‘). It was also the first album by Zappa to be released in Quadraphonic surround sound, an ever-evolving sonic medium Zappa would continue to explore throughout his career on the cutting edge.

Not only did Over-Nite Sensation signal a change in musical direction for The Mothers at large, but Zappa handled the bulk of the lead vocal duties and staked his claim as the album’s only guitarist. It was a new band with a new sound that resonated widely, eventually going gold in 1976. Over the ensuing years, almost every song on Over-Nite Sensation became indelible live staples and longstanding fan favorites, with “I’m The Slime,” “Fifty-Fifty,” “Zomby Woof,” and “Camarillo Brillo” immediately making their respective presences known in the setlist. In the here and now, 50 years on, Over-Nite Sensation remains both one of the top-tier highlights of the vast Zappa catalog as well as one of his most consistent bestsellers.

In addition to the Super Deluxe Edition box set, there will be two separate vinyl releases: a 2LP 180-gram black audiophile vinyl reissue with the album cut at 45 rpm for the first time ever from the original analog tape by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering in 2023 and a bonus 24” x 12” poster of the complete cover art and a limited edition 3LP deluxe color vinyl version pressed on clear vinyl with 4-color splatter with the album cut at 45 rpm on LPs 1 & 2 and a third LP with 35 minutes of bonus tracks culled from the box set, cut at 33 1/3 rpm by Bellman. The limited edition color pressing, which will also include the bonus 24” x 12” poster of the cover art, is available to pre-order now exclusively at Zappa.com, uDiscover Music and Sound of Vinyl.

Additionally, the Super Deluxe Edition will be available digitally, with all 88 tracks available in both hi-res 24-bit/96kHz and standard-res 16-bit/44.1kHz options. A standalone Dolby Atmos mix of the core album’s seven tracks will also be available on all major hi-res streaming services.

The new group of Mothers heard on Over-Nite Sensation was comprised of virtuoso musicians rooted in jazz (keyboardist George Duke, violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, drummer Ralph Humphrey, and trumpeter Sal Marquez) and serious music (wind instrumentalist Ian Underwood and percussionist Ruth Underwood) alike, all polished off with the Fowler brothers duly in tow (with Bruce Fowler on trombone, and Tom Fowler on bass). As a result, the instrumentation of this aurally palpable Mothers lineup was akin to having a mini orchestra in a rock format — and Zappa utilized them brilliantly, crafting arrangements for existing material like “Cosmik Debris” and “Montana” in addition to writing a large number of new compositions to maximize their strengths.

The recording sessions at Bolic Sound and Whitney Studios were sweetened by the addition of some now-iconic guest vocalists. The truly crazy, over-the-top vocal stylings of Ricky Lancelotti catapulted songs like “Fifty-Fifty” and “Zomby Woof” into the stratosphere. For his part, Kin Vassy (of Kenny Rogers and The First Edition) added numerous, tasty tidbits all throughout. But perhaps the most legendary guest turns of them all would be those by Tina Turner and The Ikettes. With Zappa tracking at Ike Turner’s Bolic Sound studio in Inglewood, Calif., it only seemed logical that Tina and Frank’s paths would eventually cross. Although famously uncredited, Tina and The Ikettes’ background vocals were draped all throughout the record and are undeniably unique —and spot-on perfect. If you dropped the needle on Over-Nite Sensation for the first time in 1973, it was immediately apparent something new, different, and exciting was happening in Zappa’s ever-expanding musical universe. The material was funky, funny, challenging, and mighty — and, yes, even more accessible than his output of the prior few years.

Zappa and The Mothers hit the road in full force in 1973 by touring auditoriums, theaters, and college venues, looking to tap into a new audience as well as cater to the hardcores. These concerts would primarily consist of new compositions blended with some rearranged older tunes — an approach that was very typical for Zappa, who always prioritized the new. You can hear some of those immediate results via the 27 previously unreleased live tracks included from the above-noted Hollywood and Detroit shows. On March 23 at the Hollywood Palladium, fans got early tastes of the “sort-of” guru blues of “Cosmik Debris” and the sleazy, slow-rolling funky grease of “Curse Of The Zomboids (I’m The Slime).” Nary a few months later on May 12 at Cobo Hall in Detroit, the odds-busting, horn-driven instrumental sneer of “Fifty-Fifty” and the “Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow,” “Nanook Rubs It,” and “St. Alphonzo’s Pancake Breakfast” troika medley were all served up with patented Zappa narrative aplomb.

Over-Nite Sensation indeed opened new commercial doors for Frank Zappa, but the maestro himself would not be sucked down into the corporate conformity ooze as he continued following his own muse all throughout the 1970s, and beyond. This 50th anniversary Super Deluxe Edition of Over-Nite Sensation puts an expanded stamp on all the visceral, tall-in-the-saddle tales recounting the finer points of dental floss farming, mindless video drones, and poncho-wearing lotharios — all of it acting as a pretext for what was to come, not to mention cementing the odds that Zappa still had lots more to say.

:cool:

polydigm - 3-9-2023 at 02:20

I've given in on this one and preordered it direct from the Zappa Shop. The prices I'm seeing elsewhere are just ridiculous.

Calvin - 3-9-2023 at 03:43

Quote: Originally posted by polydigm  
I've given in on this one and preordered it direct from the Zappa Shop. The prices I'm seeing elsewhere are just ridiculous.


Good luck! I ordered Waka/Wazoo from them and I eventually had to cancel my order because they kept delaying and delaying, while the people who ordered elsewhere got theirs pretty close to the release date.

polydigm - 4-9-2023 at 14:33

Now I’m feeling really good about this.

Plook - 5-9-2023 at 16:47

I pulled the trigger on the last 3 releases just after release and received them rather quickly, I may do it again this time.

polydigm - 13-9-2023 at 18:41

@Plook From the Zappa Store?

Based on Calvin’s story above and advice from others, I cancelled my Zappa Store preorder and preordered it from a local store for the cheapest price I’ve seen. This is only possible because Universal now owns the vault and FZ is just one of the many artists they distribute. Previously, with the ZFT, distribution to Australia was awful.

Plook - 15-9-2023 at 21:13

Well that is great news I remember reading about the down under struggles with receiving releases...:)

tinkamok - 16-9-2023 at 19:01

Chanan Hanspal interviews little Stevie Vai , who loves to talk about his time with FZ.
This is great .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSOO4WRT_tw

tinkamok - 16-9-2023 at 19:03

An earlier interview with Mr Vai that is awesome imho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pmLtrOsZww&t=385s

Check out Chanan Hanspals youtube site for some very nice and insightful FZ stuff .
https://www.youtube.com/@ChananHanspal

Eddie RUKidding - 16-9-2023 at 21:01

^ good stuff

polydigm - 17-9-2023 at 22:59

I'm not a fan of Chanan Hanspal's music, but his videos are often really interesting. Though, I get the feeling sometimes, that his analysis is a bit too detailed, like trying to understand muscle movements by investigating the quark structure of the potassium nucleus.

tinkamok - 30-9-2023 at 15:54

Sadly "Over-nite Sensation " 50th has been delayed until Nov 17th .

Eddie RUKidding - 30-9-2023 at 20:40

Bummer, in the summer (downunder)

polydigm - 2-10-2023 at 06:49

Quote: Originally posted by Eddie RUKidding  
Bummer, in the summer (downunder)
Be a loyal plastic robot ...

My local supplier hasn't announced a delay yet. They are however sold out, so I'm really glad I pulled the pin when I did.

Eddie RUKidding - 2-10-2023 at 08:34

Will be my Xmas present, will probably order thru JBHiFI

Mrs Eddie can pay lol

tinkamok - 7-10-2023 at 10:37

More insight from Chanan Hanspal and Steve Vai - Alien Orifice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_EV83qhssQ

ursinator2.0 - 16-10-2023 at 14:17

Another one from the upcoming overnight sensation anniversary release:

Face Down ("I'm The Slime" Demo)

ursinator2.0 - 1-11-2023 at 19:22

Frank Zappa - Over-Nite Sensation Series (Ep. 1: A Conversation with Joe Travers + Michael Mesker)

Dirty Love (With Quad Guitar)

ursinator2.0 - 15-11-2023 at 20:06

Frank Zappa - Over-Nite Sensation Series (Ep. 2: Art Direction)

The ZappaCast Presents: The Over-Nite Sensation 50th Anniversary Celebration

ursinator2.0 - 26-2-2024 at 14:37



Available August 22, 2024 (new cover)

The saying goes that "God only gives you what you can handle." Well God didn't grow up in my atheist, Wiccan, fame-laden, oversexed, teetotalling, drug-free, cloistered, chaotic, non-communicative, workaholic, feral-feeling house.

For Moon Unit, daughter of musician Frank Zappa and his 'manager', Gail, processing a life so unique, so punctuated by the whims of creative urges, the tastes of popular culture and the calculus of celebrity, has at times been eviscerating. But it is her deep sense of humour and unshakeable humility that keeps her - and this memoir - pinned to the ground.

A child-star at age 14 after her accidental international hit single (recorded with her father), 'Valley Girl', turned her into a reluctant celebrity, Moon Unit Zappa's life has been utterly extraordinary from her birth in 1967 into a family that was already blessed/cursed as music royalty thanks to the acknowledged genius of Frank. But what are the consequences of growing up in a family who spend most of their time naked arguing about sexual/extra-marital liaisons and practising white magic in a free-for-all state of nonconformist, virtuoso abandon?

Earth to Moon is a reckoning with self-esteem, the ghosts of the past and a mother and a father who, in the process of leaving their mark upon on the world, scarred their first daughter on home soil. Brutally self-deprecating and funny as hell, it belies a rose-tinted perspective on the 70s and 80s west coast American scene, from within the belly of the beast of the rock and roll world. :cool:

BBP - 26-2-2024 at 20:31

Kind of interested in hearing what you think - as I couldn't get through America The Beautiful I'm not sure I'd buy it though.

Plook - 26-2-2024 at 22:51

Sounds interesting and a little cringe worthy at the same time.

ursinator2.0 - 3-3-2024 at 22:20

Quote: Originally posted by BBP  
... - as I couldn't get through America The Beautiful ...

What is the problem with that one? Doesn't she get you hooked by her writing style or don't you simply like the overall concept of transforming FZ into a semi-fictional character?
Regarding the upcoming book: I don't expect too much for the simple reason that FZ used to be quite invisible to his family - either he was touring or he barricaded himself in his basement laboratory. On the other hand it could be interesting to learn what exactly that did to his family.
:cool:

ursinator2.0 - 8-6-2024 at 07:43

West Hollywood to Declare June 10 as Frank Zappa Day



The City of West Hollywood has declared June 10, 2024, as “Frank Zappa Day” to honor the legendary musician, activist, and counterculture icon’s invaluable contributions to music and culture in West Hollywood and beyond.

West Hollywood Mayor John M. Erickson will present the proclamation to Ahmet and Diva Zappa, the children of Frank and Gail Zappa, during a ceremony at the iconic Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip. The event is scheduled for Monday, June 10, at 4 p.m. PDT.

Frank Zappa, renowned for his pioneering work in music and his outspoken views on social and political issues, left an indelible mark on the cultural landscape. His band, The Mothers of Invention, played a memorable three-hour concert at Whisky a Go Go on July 23, 1968. Although plans for an album release from that night were never fully realized, the performance will finally see the light of day with the upcoming release of “Whisky a Go Go, 1968” on June 21. The collection, produced by Ahmet Zappa and Zappa Vaultmeister Joe Travers, includes every note from Zappa’s three distinct sets that evening.

The proclamation ceremony at Whisky a Go Go not only commemorates Frank Zappa’s contributions but also celebrates the release of this historic recording, bringing full circle a moment in music history that has remained unreleased for over five decades.

“Frank Zappa Day” is a tribute to a man whose innovative spirit and relentless creativity continue to inspire generations of musicians and fans worldwide.

The Whisky has been called the first real American discothèque and it’s one of the most famous rock ‘n’ roll landmarks in the United States. It first opened January 11, 1964, in an old bank building that had been remodeled into a short-lived club called the Party by a former Chicago policeman, Elmer Valentine. The Whisky a Go Go opened with a live band led by Johnny Rivers and a short-skirted female DJ spinning records between sets from a suspended cage at the right of the stage. When the girl DJ danced during Rivers’ set, the audience thought it was part of the act and the concept of go-go dancers in cages was born. Rivers rode the Whisky-born “go-go” craze to national fame with records recorded partly “live at the Whisky.” The Miracles recorded the song “Going to a Go-Go” in 1966 (which was covered in 1982 by The Rolling Stones), and Whisky a Go Go franchises sprang up all over the country.

BBP - 8-6-2024 at 19:40

Whooooooo!

ursinator2.0 - 16-8-2024 at 18:05

WTF podcast with Marc Maron Episode 1564 - Moon Zappa

polydigm - 19-8-2024 at 06:11

WTF indeed. Who has the life to spare to listen to such things? I could feel myself aging while listening to it and closed it down not long after the actual talking between Marc and Moon finally started. I may buy the book - I may read it - I don't know - I'll wait and see until I get the results of my next periodic set of blood tests ...

Eddie RUKidding - 20-8-2024 at 23:29

Wish you well Poly

polydigm - 21-8-2024 at 00:50

Quote: Originally posted by Eddie RUKidding  
Wish you well Poly
I'm fine. I was making a joke.

ursinator2.0 - 21-8-2024 at 17:51

Some more stuff to get Poly bored - hope it helps ;-)

I Was The Daughter of a Rock Icon—Not all Cults are Bad (Newsweek article by Moon Unit Zappa)

Recently, while strolling in the depths of the San Fernando Valley, I saw a sidewalk stencil that said, "Not all cults are bad." I had to laugh. In my memoir, I revisited the old territory of growing up the daughter of a rock icon who I always saw as one part Spock and one part Jesus. I didn't just compete for his affection in my childhood home, I battled the fervent flock he ministered to, his fans, proselytizing to the feverish believers with his acerbic, satiric siren songs.

My family dynamic was not dissimilar to a cult. I willingly ate, slept, drank, and lived for our larger-than-life leader. Only ours was the good kind because I couldn't get enough of my father's gallows humor and unending output of creativity. Sign me up for that kind of isolation.

Each album in my father's vast catalog is a time capsule, each tune a memory generator transporting me to a fixed location in space and time. Sometimes I'm as tall as his tibia listening to playback in his makeshift studio in our basement in what would become our Laurel Canyon compound. Or I'm tucked in tight in my top bunk in the bedroom I shared with Dweezil, hugging my raggedy Ann and hearing his latest composition warbling through our intercom system. Or I'm suddenly nine and sitting atop a big metal case on casters on the side of the stage at one of Frank's shows watching my God-like father I idolized smoke and sermonize on his guitar, in a halo of magenta and chartreuse light.

I received my first journal when I was 5, with an inscription from my blood hero in Frank's beautiful block script in black ink. When I wasn't writing short stories about my imaginary camels T'Mershi Duween and Sinini, or drawing myself dressed as a nun, I was crudely sketching Gail and Frank sideways and naked, stacked on a mattress like pancakes from DuPar's. I reported what I saw or hoped to see instead. Or what I feared about UFOs and aliens since Gail told me her Naval officer father was murdered for what he knew about Area 51.

Later, in my teens, my journals became a record of my father's whereabouts and my subsequent complaints about his absence. Frank traveled all the time. In a touring cycle, he might stay gone for the better part of a year, with only the briefest returns, a bird alighting on a branch. Gail often took her loneliness out on me. This only doubled my deep longing for his time, attention, and affection. More accurately, I ached.

Who wouldn't? Frank was tall, charismatic, smart, funny, and wild-looking. Skinny as an eel and effeminate with long black hair, a beak of a nose, and platform shoes, but also masculine with his signature mustache, chest hair, smoking, cursing, and wearing ball-crushing sailor's pants. His presence, prolificity, and perfectionism demanded your full attention.

So yeah, early on I knew my family was different. Not just because our house was festooned with overflowing ashtrays, empty coffee cups, an Ouija board, raunchy comics and magazines covering everything from scientific discoveries to smut. No. other kids I knew could drop f-bombs, stay up late, watch as much TV as they wanted, and help themselves to a drawer full of Mint Milanos and Nutter Butters.

No one else I knew had a purple living room or a blow-up sex doll in their father's workspace. No one else had an adopted echidna that lived at the zoo. No one else's father brought a pancake home in his jacket pocket all the way from Europe for Gail to taste, reverse engineer, and recreate. And not a single adult I knew had a birthday party with their ice-cold pool decorated with more bobbing watermelons than I could count. We didn't celebrate Gail on Mother's Day, we celebrated the Mother of Invention. And not just one day a year, all of them.

My fatherly worship was baked into bones thanks to my namesake. Plain old Frank and Gail decided on Moon Unit for their firstborn, a daring act of nonconformity in a 1967 sea of sameness. "Unit" because my birth solidified us as a family unit, and "Moon" because Gail didn't like Frank's other suggestion—Motorhead.

It made international news. Just like that, family became the most important thing to me, and my father became the fiery star I'd revolve around, always reflecting his light, never seeing shadow—his or my own. Undoing that conditioning and placing myself at the center of my life would take some time—about five decades.

As a kid, I was mesmerized. I loved how he could seemingly play any instrument or know how to compose for them. I loved how every sound was a color in my father's palette, a tool for his experimentations and "air sculpting." I loved Frank's inside jokes and his made-up words like "Gream", the day between Thursday and Friday. I loved hearing about how far he had come from his catholic upbringing, eating "boiled hot dog water," playing with the mercury from a broken thermometer, getting in trouble for blowing up his high school's science lab with a homemade concoction, or how he once had a job drawing rude greeting cards.

Sometimes I would get lucky and I'd get to help Gail choose clothes for Frank in the women's section at IMagnin's at the open-air mall in the tree-lined flats. My father was like a tall, weird doll to me then. Gail said he preferred women's clothing, especially for stage wear, with its softer, drapey fabrics in better colors. I loved learning about a-lines and V-necks and how to tell the difference between polyester and cotton, wool and silk, expensive and cheap.

Frank and Gail liked expensive things. A nubby lavender-colored jacket with pockets got my vote, as did a long camel coat for his upcoming SNL appearance that I particularly coveted. After Frank had worn these items for a while, I loved breathing in his comforting smells of tobacco, sweat, and dandruff shampoo. I was proud I looked like him, inherited his long torso, and his passion for stripes.

Then he'd be gone again, just when I was getting used to having him around, and my heart would close up, and all the color left the world.

A technicolor remembrance is a time Frank took Gail and me to attend a live performance of Lily Tomlin. Well, Gail took us because she's the only one who drove. My father notoriously refused to renew his license as a protest against his requirement to stand in line at the DMV, so Gail was the only affordable and obliging solution.

On stage all by herself, Lily seemed like a giant—as big as the Statue of Liberty. To me, she looked a little like my dad, tall and skinny with a long face and wavy black hair. I was therefore doubly captivated. I liked how she moved her body and voice changed each time she became a new character. I especially loved it when she was a baby in a giant highchair and a snorting telephone lady from the 1940s.

Like Frank, she made fun of common things in an uncommon way. Unlike Frank, Lily had no need for an instrument or a backing band. The whole show was just her just talking! When I heard Frank laugh, really laugh, a rarity, a seed was planted. I wished I could make him laugh like that, too.

Eventually, I did. Entering middle school, I noticed and mimicked the voices of the popular girls I heard at my school or at a mall where we all socialized in the heart of the San Fernando Valley called The Galleria. I got some genuine and hearty laughs out of the man I worshipped. Between missing my father so terribly and this small encouragement, at 13, though shy and covered in acne, I felt brave enough to write a note and slip it under his studio door insisting we work together since I rightly deduced that is what he clearly liked doing most.

It worked.

Then fate intervened. A private father-daughter moment became a hit song with worldwide recognition and a press avalanche I neither sought nor wanted. I was suddenly eternally publicly linked with my father a second time and held on a fame and admiration pedestal alongside him. I got fan mail from girls as far away as Russia and Australia, Tokyo, and Nova Scotia. I was suddenly so known, I was paired with Frank in Sun Signs, Linda Goodman's book of astrology as a perfect example of compatibility between a Sagittarius and a Libra.

Though Frank and I were relentlessly heard on the radio and seen in magazines and on TV together for a solid stretch of time, a time when I had a lot of geometry homework I wasn't good at, my father and I got only a little bit closer.

In 1989 my father was diagnosed with prostate cancer and given a year to live he was 48 and I was 22. If I am honest, I found my reaction to his diagnosis confusing. Of course, I didn't want my father to suffer or leave this world with unfinished work or dashed political dreams when he had so much more to say. But, oddly, secretly, I also felt gratitude. I still lived for the possibility of uninterrupted proximity to my father and a chance to finally have my turn at an extended time with him. But to my extreme disappointment, he only became more obsessed with his work given how little remaining time he had.

As far as his prognosis went, Gail was the mouthpiece, often sharing information with me that she didn't share with him. Gail's reasoning was Frank was incapable of dealing with disappointment. Dutiful to a fault, I did not discuss my father's health or his feelings with him. Not my siblings, not Gail's, not my own. Besides, Frank had raised me to believe "Feelings are irrelevant," and "Happiness is not a goal." But also, "Anger is fuel."

Instead, we spent a lot of energy as a family trying to take his mind off of his situation through various attempts at amusing distractions, or by giving what comfort we could.

On one occasion, we somehow managed to convince him to see a movie in a movie theatre. But I was extra careful not to waste any of the time he could have spent in his studio so, to stave off any potential disappointment, I pre-emptively prescreened the film it to make sure it was suitable. Sure it meant I'd have to watch a sci-fi movie twice that I didn't even want to see once, but it was simply too risky to blow the outing on something sub-par. The film my family took him to was Total Recall starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. He loved it. Especially Kuato. Especially when the mutant baby bursts from the actor Marshall Bell's stomach. I was so relieved. And happy. Ish.

To alleviate the pain I was in, I had turned to spirituality as my best defense against the anguish and preemptive grief about losing my favorite person. When my self-identified atheist father found out he said, "If you're going to be a cabinet, be the best cabinet you can be."

I was awash with shame, but it sparked a conversation about beliefs—he had none—about any fear about dying—none, he just didn't think about it—and about what happens after. He said, "Nothing happens. It probably all goes off. Like a light switch."

A totally Spock response. I was shaken. Maybe he saw that. Maybe he was, too, because the next time I saw him, he surprised me with a picture he had drawn for me on the back of a large sheet of his butter-colored music paper.

It was a cross with two lines emphasizing energy emanating from the shining top and an arrow coming out of the center of the cross to the left. At the top of the page, in his beautiful block print, it said: "A picture of God for Moon." My eyes flooded with tears. This was such a loving gesture, but kind of a weird drawing. I asked him what it all meant. He pointed to the arrow and said, "That's the Kuato extension." Oh. It was visual satire and a loving gesture. That unstoppable humor and intelligence again. I laughed. He looked so pleased.

I left with that drawing and immediately had it framed like gilded religious art with royal blue velvet and an over-the-top gold frame. I brought it back to give it to him. When I showed it to him, it was his turn to laugh and my turn to be pleased. That art piece now hangs on my wall and remains one of my most prized possessions. Seeing his handwriting makes Frank materialize and strangely brings automatic comfort.

Recently I shared this story with my sister-in-law and texted her a photo of the art piece. She had never seen Total Recall, so the Kuato reference was lost on her. I looked the film up on the internet to and texted her the description I found: "Kuato is a minor character from the 1990's sci-fi movie, who resembles a deformed infant, fused to the stomach of his conjoined twin."

I read further. Dialog I had forgotten: "You are what you do. A man is defined by his actions, not his memory."

Mic drop. Another time capsule from Frank. This time a hidden message in a drawing he made, not a song, but the ink from the maestro's pen. A holy magic trick. No need to look back, it says, I live inside you, like a mutant conjoined twin. Now let's go make some art.

The very thing I needed to hear.

Moon Unit Zappa is an actress, singer and author. She is the daughter of Frank Zappa. Her book EARTH TO MOON: A Memoir, is on sale August 20, 2024.

All views expressed are the author's own.

:cool:

ursinator2.0 - 21-8-2024 at 17:53

And but also:
Frank Zappa - Apostrophe 50th Anniversary Series (Episode 1: Inside the Vault) :cool:

Eddie RUKidding - 23-8-2024 at 00:19

^^ Nice piece

polydigm - 23-8-2024 at 16:10

Of all the reviews I’ve read, this was the best for me because it’s like a sample of her writing and you can readily discern if you could handle reading more. I probably will buy a copy of her book.

ursinator2.0 - 24-8-2024 at 00:13

Judging by what I've read so far, the book is worth reading. I think she can deal with words and guide the reader in an interesting way through what she has to say - just my 0.50$ :cool:

Interviewing Moon Unit Zappa: in-depth and emotional about her memoir “Earth To Moon” 1 hour webcam interview

ursinator2.0 - 25-8-2024 at 00:34

Just another article on the new book by Hadley Freeman / the sunday times:

Frank Zappa’s daughter: I was a social experiment for my parents

Moon Unit Zappa was an anxious, pliant, hypervigilant child, the kind who would look for the fire exits when she walked in a room, because she had long ago learnt that the adults around her couldn’t keep her safe. After all, a parent who names their daughter “Moon Unit” is not one who prioritises giving the child any kind of normality or even anonymity. Yet she idolised her father, the legendary — and notorious — musician Frank Zappa, so when he took her and her younger brother Dweezil on a trip to New York when they were in their very early teens, she excitedly thought, “I want to savour every moment.” But that night in New York, Moon was woken in her hotel room by thumping and noises on the other side of the wall: her father was having sex with someone who was definitely not her mother. She cried into her pillow, realising she wasn’t her father’s priority on this trip, or ever.
“It felt like we were a social experiment that my parents were exploring,” she says. “I was being exposed to so much more than I was ready for.” When Moon was an adult she confronted her mother: why did her parents leave her naked as a small child with strange men and hand her over to babysitters who were so inexperienced she burnt her feet badly on a radiator? Her mother rolled her eyes and told her daughter off for being too uptight.
In the extremely large pantheon of celebrity children with eccentric names, the four Zappa offspring still put Brooklyn Beckham, Apple Martin and even Zowie Bowie in the shade: Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet and Diva. The names all have a very Zappa-esque rationale behind them. “Dweezil” was Frank’s nickname for his wife’s tiny toenails and, because his son had similar feet, that’s what he called him. Ahmet for Ahmet Ertegun, the founder of Atlantic Records and possibly Gail’s former boyfriend. Diva because as a baby she had a loud cry. But first, there was Moon Unit. “If you knew my dad’s softer side, you’d know my middle name, ‘Unit’, was bestowed upon me because my arrival heralds our foray into becoming a family unit. I will automatically feel an unspoken, steadfast, ferocious loyalty to my family — the Unit part — and, like the actual moon, [I had] no light of my own, just an ancillary object in the infinite, reflecting the light of the sun, aka, the light of my heavenly father Frank,” Moon, 56, writes in her lyrical memoir, Earth to Moon. It describes in evocative detail what it’s like to grow up the child of a famous person — a nepo baby, as people say today — when your privilege is counterbalanced with having to share your parent with the rest of the world, and the creative drive that made your parent famous will always take precedence over you. She also writes about why she and her once very close siblings have spent the past near-decade locked in a vicious battle over inheritance. “It’s been an interesting time, rethinking what family means,” she says, with wry understatement.
By the time Frank Zappa died in 1993, aged 52, he had released 62 albums. In the 30 years since, there have been a further 66. Originally a classical composer, he remains one of America’s most astonishingly creative musicians, as happy to write for his rock band — the Mothers of Invention — as for classical orchestras; in 1983, the Barbican hosted Zappa and the London Symphony Orchestra for a concert so celebrated it was restaged in 2022. His name is still legendary, his face — all dark moustache and wild black hair — iconic. And yet few can name a single Zappa song. “I’m famous, but no one knows what I do,” he laughed in an interview captured in the 2016 documentary Eat That Question: Zappa in His Own Words.
That’s partly because his music — funny, angry, discordant and seductive —was indefinable. One of his most successful songs, Bobby Brown, tells the story of rapist who has sex with a feminist, realises he’s gay and then gets into S&M. What genre do you file that under?
Zappa himself defied any easy labelling. Born in Baltimore in 1940, as a teenager he loved R&B music as much as classical and he composed avant-garde orchestral music for his high school band. When he was 23, he appeared on the popular 1960s talk show The Steve Allen Show, playing a bicycle as a musical instrument. Soon after, he and his band found a following in Los Angeles’s underground music scene. He moved to LA’s Laurel Canyon in the 1960s, just up the road from Joni Mitchell and David Crosby, but he was not part of that sunshine-and-songwriters scene. “I’m not a hippy but I am a freak,” he said.
In 1969, Time magazine described him as “a force of cultural darkness, a Mephistophelian figure serving as a lone, brutal reminder of music’s potential for invoking chaos and destruction”. This makes him sound deranged and out of control when in fact he was brilliant and brusque. Vaclav Havel, Czechoslovakia’s last president, adored Zappa so much he appointed him as his government’s cultural adviser and ambassador. Zappa was also vehemently anti-drugs, to the point that he sacked band members when he caught them doing drugs on tour. He saw narcotics as antithetical to integrity, clarity of expression and talent, three qualities he prized above all. Instead, his preferred recreational activity was casual sex. “The closest I get to drugs is taking penicillin on tour because I got the clap,” he chuckled to an interviewer, also from Eat That Question. This was less amusing to his wife, Gail, who stayed with him his whole adult life, and their children.
Moon is talking to me from her home in Los Angeles, which she shares with her 19-year-old daughter, Mathilda. “I love old-fashioned names with lots of syllables,” Moon says (she is divorced from Mathilda’s father, Paul Doucette, the drummer and guitarist in the band Matchbox Twenty). Despite believing as a teenager that she was hideously ugly, Moon is very pretty, with a warm face and an easy laugh. She adored her father but her feelings about him are, she says, “complicated”.
“I kind of bristle when I hear [my father described as] ‘genius’,” she says. “It’s so easy to make your kid feel safe, to give comfort, to be interested in what they are interested in. So how on earth did a genius miss it?”
What does she want readers to take away from the book?
“I want them to ask if being a genius is worth the collateral damage. Because I know my answer.”
Frank and Gail Zappa met in 1966 when he was 25 and had released his first album, Freak Out!, and she was a 21-year-old secretary at the LA music venue Whisky a Go Go. “They both had an aversion to religion, the status quo and being mislabelled as hippies. They both had a love of sex, civics and cigarettes,” Moon writes. They also both had peripatetic childhoods — Gail was third-generation German-American with a father in the Navy, while Frank came from an Italian-American family who instilled in him a love of music and his father worked in defence. They were also both raised Catholic, but they rejected that and identified instead as “pagan absurdists”. Gail in particular was interested in the wackier side of life: witches, UFOs, conspiracy theories.
From the outside, Frank and Gail looked unusually stable given his celebrity: they stayed married until his death and their four kids lived with them in California. Everyone from John Lennon to David Bowie wanted to meet Zappa but, unlike a lot of nepo babies, Moon did not grow up surrounded by celebrities because her father prioritised talent over fame. And, of course, there were no drugs in the house. But the family was not wealthy — whatever money Zappa made went back into his music — and their home was dirty and often full of strangers.
Young women were regular visitors. Once, Frank moved out of the bedroom he shared with Gail and into another room in the house with another woman. Gail would scream at her husband, put hexes on his lovers, get depressed and neglect to take the children to school. Moon describes her parents’ marriage as “f*** and fight and stay together or not f*** and fight and stay together”. When she was 12, Frank woke her up in the night: “Gail is on a rampage. I need you to hide the gun,” he told her.
Frank prided himself on not kowtowing to social norms. “There are no such things as dirty words. It’s a fantasy manufactured by religious fanatics and government agencies to keep people stupid,” he said in an interview from Eat That Question. This sounds good in theory, but less so in practice when he would discuss his preferences in breast size in front of his young daughter: “No one wants to ride an ironing board,” he would say, but also: “More than a mouthful is a waste.” During one of the many, many fights Moon overheard between her parents about her father’s chronic infidelity, her father retorted, “It’s just f***ing.”
Did her father’s sexual disinhibition affect Moon’s own sexuality?
“Are you kidding? Of course! I was the kid looking for turtleneck bathing suits because I felt so exposed. The messaging was so bad. I grew up thinking it’s terrible to be a girl.”
Between tours, Frank spent almost all of his time in his studio and Gail would send meals down to him. For such a counter-cultural figure he ran a laughably patriarchal home, in which he offered little affection to his family and saved all his energy for his work. “When I was a kid I would compare him to Jesus and Spock, because he belonged to another world and was logical to the point of being icy,” Moon says. “He was the funniest person and he could be wonderful. But it doesn’t feel good when your favourite person isn’t choosing you.”
When she was 13, Moon thought she had come up with a solution when she asked her father if she could make music with him. He agreed, and asked her to do her funny imitations of the Valley girls in her school that made him laugh. He put music to it, released the song — Valley Girl — and it became his only Top 40 single in North America. Moon — shy and riddled with acne — was wheeled out by her parents on a national publicity tour. At first this was exciting but, she writes, both her parents seemed infuriated with her and the song’s success. Her father, she thinks, was frustrated that he was “43 years of age with 35 albums to his name and here, with me, having his first mega hit. And worse, with a light-hearted ditty that in no way reflected the full depth and breadth of his work”. Even Andy Warhol noted Frank’s defensiveness. He wrote in his diaries that he complimented Frank on Moon’s talents. “Listen, I created her. I invented her. She’s nothing. It’s all me,” Frank allegedly replied. “If it were my daughter I would be saying, ‘Gee, she’s so smart,’ ” Warhol wrote. “But he’s taking all the credit.”
As for Gail, Moon thinks she was jealous. Suddenly there was yet another woman in her husband’s life and, worse, it was their daughter. The pair had always had a fraught relationship and it rapidly deteriorated. The book’s title, Earth to Moon, is what Gail used to shout, exasperated by her daughter’s complaints about their home life and desires to continue her education (Moon left after high school, as per her family’s wishes). “When your mother is your first bully, it’s hard to know where you go from there,” Moon says.
She drifted in her twenties. Like a lot of nepo kids, she was torn between wanting to be independent of her parents and believing they were the only thing she had to offer. She was thrilled when an art gallery offered to include her work in an exhibition but, just as the guests were about to arrive, the gallery owner whispered to her, “Thanks to your name, people will get to see the genius of the other artist’s work.”
“I had no idea that I was just a foot in the door for someone else,” she says. “That just reinforced the idea that I already had, which was I didn’t have any value.” She looked for guidance — from therapists, acting coaches and then a guru. “I never use the word cult [in the book], but it’s definitely implied.”
Moon found the cult in her twenties, and it took her to a Hindu ashram in Vermont where she chanted, meditated and listened to confusing spiritual guidance. Moon fell for it instantly. “I was already conditioned to put my needs aside and prioritise someone else in a position of power,” she says. She spent a lot of time there, escaping her confusing parents and the even more confusing real world. Then when she was 22, and her father was 48, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
This shouldn’t have been a death sentence, but Frank initially refused radiation because he worried it would affect his ability to have erections. Moon saw this as proof that he prioritised sex over staying alive for his family. In any case, he couldn’t afford it. “You cost us $200,000 to raise, so we need to sell your house to pay for your father’s cancer treatments because he has no health insurance,” Gail told Moon. So Moon sold her home and moved back in with her parents. Frank died in December 1993, surrounded by his children and his wife, and yet millions of dollars in debt. The 2020 documentary Zappa presents him as a creative genius who was humiliated by a music industry led by market forces, reduced to spending his own money — and money he didn’t have — to stage his elaborate rock and orchestral concerts.
“Things like that make me think, OK, he was a genius, if you say so. If ‘genius’ means a person being hyper-focused on what matters to them. But what gets left behind?” she says.
For all of Frank’s clear faults as a parent, it’s Gail who, Moon says, is “the villain” of the book. “I always knew there was an expiration date on her cruelty, plus I had empathy for her during her marriage. So I held a lot of conflicting feelings about her.” These feelings exploded in 2015, when Gail died from lung cancer at the age of 70, after Moon had nursed her for a year. Like her husband, Gail died in debt — partly due to her financial mismanagement as his music manager — and the only thing to leave the children was control over Frank’s music. It was assumed they would each receive 25 per cent when she died. But at the reading of her will they learnt that she left Moon and Dweezil only 20 per cent each, while Ahmet and Diva got 30 per cent, meaning the younger two were in charge and the older ones would need permission from the trust before making money from their father’s music. To Moon, this felt like her mother’s final act of cruelty.
For Dweezil it felt like the end of his career. For years he had been performing his father’s music under the name Zappa Plays Zappa. Now he risked a $150,000 fine if he played a song without permission. “I am not standing in the way of Dweezil playing the music,” Ahmet said in 2016. “He would just have to be in accordance with the family trust.” Instead, Dweezil renamed his tour 50 Years of Frank: Dweezil Zappa Plays Whatever the F@%k He Wants — the Cease and Desist Tour.
In 2019, an agreement of sorts was reached, in which Dweezil agreed to stop complaining about his younger siblings and his mother in the media. Moon refused to sign it, meaning she remains a beneficiary of the trust, but not a trustee. Like her father, she prioritised freedom of expression over money — and over her family’s desires.
Is she still estranged from her siblings?
“Since I wrote the book, there have been inroads to connection. You know, these are people I have a shared history with, and no one makes me laugh harder.” But she has not shown them the book yet.
It would be easy to write Frank and Gail off as bad, selfish parents: they neglected their children in life and then pitted them against each other in death. But, as always with Zappa, things aren’t that simple. None of the children ever suffered from addiction issues, making them rare among LA celebrity progeny. “Drugs were seen as an obstacle to clarity of vision. None of us was going to cloud that,” Moon says. They are all stable and productive: Moon is focused on writing; Dweezil is still a musician; Ahmet is a businessman; and Diva is an artist. As nepo babies go, they are success stories.
Moon is grateful to her parents for the unique way they raised her, but sad that they made — and left — such a mess. They tried to do something different, she says, “but they didn’t think about the impact of their choices on us.” Or, as she writes at the end of her book, in a passage addressed to Frank and Gail, “As a duo, you created the map and destroyed the key.”


‘I’m still mad about all the ladies who tried to steal dad’

My brother Dweezil and I are sitting on the floor of our living room. We are having as much TV and chocolate milk and fruit punch and snacks as we want because Miss Sparky, Miss Pamela, Miss Lucy and Jackie are over.They all smoke and twirl and flutter around and say, “Hi, doll,” to me. I can see them in the kitchen and half listen. Even though they are all around the same age as my mother Gail, none of these women seem as grown-up as her. They wear short skirts and silk slips and feathers and beads and see-through tops and different patterns of eye make-up. Not Gail. She wears dungarees and no make-up.Some of them are in an all-girl band, the GTOs, which means “Girls Together Outrageously”. Not Jackie. Gail said she is Frank’s manager’s girlfriend and “straight”, which means boring and not a performer. Miss Pamela and Miss Sparky smile the most and are the nicest to me. I have wiggly teeth. I am almost six.When the GTOs come over, the house smells like cigarettes and perfume. “A nose circus” is what my daddy calls rooms with too many smells. I want to go to a real circus. Gail usually only takes us to a stinky carpet store or to pick my dad up from rehearsal in the middle of the night.When the GTOs and other ladies visit, they listen to Gail because she is married and they aren’t. But I can tell they are jealous, especially Miss Lucy and Miss Mercy, because they get very wiggly around my dad, and they are frequently taking their clothes off and laughing when he pinches their nipples to say hi. I don’t think my dad is very nice to Gail when he does that, and I don’t think the ladies are very nice to Gail when they let my dad do that, but Gail keeps her face plain. She chain-smokes Marlboros and pretends everything is fine.I’m still mad about all the ladies who have tried to steal my father and break up our family. Gail would never do that and neither would I. I am not so sure about the GTOs, so I keep a close watch. It seems like the whole world wants my daddy.
© Moon Unit Zappa 2024. Extracted from Earth to Moon by Moon Unit Zappa (White Rabbit £22), published on August 22.

ursinator2.0 - 26-8-2024 at 00:15

Just another more or less interesting video featuring Moon and Ahmet Zappa as well as two other guys who don't seem to be their attorneys:
Moon Zappa - THE NEW BOOK

ursinator2.0 - 8-9-2024 at 20:30

Another episode of Ahmets call in show rocktail where he speaks some clear words about the uneven heritage and the tensions with Dweezil (browse to 25.47). Since this once used to be a controversial discussed topic in the now dead forum this might qualify as Zappa news too: Ahmet Answers Hard-Hitting Questions ROCKTAILS with Ahmet Zappa
There is also another episode out there featuring Diva, but it was so boring that i didn't attend it very long - probably the really cool stuff came after i shut off. You'll find it by yourself.
;-)

Eddie RUKidding - 8-9-2024 at 23:42

Just as bad as the Jimi Hendrix family :duh:

polydigm - 10-9-2024 at 23:16

I didn't listen to all of it, but Ahmet makes a very good point about having done a lot of work to hold the ZFT together.

Eddie RUKidding - 11-9-2024 at 00:15

I'm sure Ahmet did a lot of work but he had a great goods to sell, (Zappa music) and a large rapid fan base for Universal to sell it too. It just sad to see family issues aired out in the open like that. Charging Dweezil a buck to play Franks songs etc, he didn't say if the license was per song or the entire catalog- its just a power play by Ahmet and the Zappa plays Zappa thing is just petty, so Ahmet helped set it up- its along the line of Roger Waters getting all nancy after leaving PF over PF using the Pink Floyd name.........
We all understand that Ahmet is in charge now but he ain't doing the legacy much good.

tinkamok - 16-10-2024 at 15:53

Howdy all .
If any are interested i am in the middle of posting pics of my FZ collection on the Steve Hoffman site .
link here
https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/pictures-of-my-zappa-collecti...

Me is barfko lol in the Steve Hoffman world .

Eddie RUKidding - 17-10-2024 at 04:16

Nice collection