Zappa.com

I know, I know, putting a new fucking graphic at the beginning saying something new would have been too much....
I'm still excited, don't get me wrong - but man, if I can run promos for my own band - you'd think they can do a little something there....
Ok <putting soapbox away> - now we wait!

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Current favorite new spin: Damian Marley's Welcome to Jamrock

Latest Fischer's Flicker press release
I Am Entertainment Magazine - 3.5/4 stars - REVIEW

can we read blue-ray dvd on a pc?

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Keep the great work!

Only if you have a blu-ray drive for it.

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You gotta give the people something good to read, on a Sunday

fuck yes! may have to actually get a damn Blue Ray now though. been putting that off for years...

Jeeeezzz... someone should finally teach Gail and the ZFT (or at least SOMEONE there) to speak HUMAN. Or simply english - it's just so stupid.

By the way, this 'language' reminds me of a thing we used to say when we were kids, its: [I will do this or that] "when red snow's gonna fall". The meaning of it was: "never"... This is what these promises mean to me, after all these years, with this - sorry - stupid 'language'.

I keep on listenning the albums and the bootlegs, and have fun - trying not to bother this group of people who seem to be the biggest enemy of FZ's music. Shame.

bye bye duckies.

Don't be too harsh. At least they just reissued the whole catalogue in the best possible quality. No "biggest enemy" would do that.

Th.

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Active forum member since 2005 - R E T I R E D from this forum in 2013

Well, maybe you're right, but... releasing 60 CDs just when the CD-age is over... releasing old material again and again when tons of unreleased stuff is still there... releasing unimportand stuff while there are tons of interesting Other Things to be released... banning bands and homepages... to me this is an "enemy-like behavior". Sorry, all these are old stories, but every time I see a "funny" announcement with just NOTHING specific in it (again and again and again), it brings out my older memories. All the bootleggers and the guys who polish and share (for free*) the AUD and FM and SDB materials do so much more for the Music, for the composer... Eh. Sorry.

*Of course I don't want official things for free, I'd like to pay (I always do) when it's something REAL. But the ZFT - it seems - hav no idea what to put out on the market. (Remember when they were talking about like "100 live shows in a year"?!?.. Just ridiculous.) Right now I'm listenning to an unofficial FM-originated material. It's just so good. NEW thing (compared to the albums), great thing - music!

It's best to just ignore Ms. Gail. She ain't sapping no power from me, not for years now, not ever.

I'm sorry, but I think FZ's lifetime releases are the most important things. I could pretty much live without most of the posthumous vault releases. There was not one thing that was really as good as one of Frank's own releases. With most of the posthumous releases I listenend to them 2 or 3 times and then never again.

With the reissues I can listen to those original albums freshly over and over again without ever getting bored. That is that much material for years of listening pleasure to come. What do I need more?

Th.

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Active forum member since 2005 - R E T I R E D from this forum in 2013

That's an interesting topic to talk about. My opinion, though, is just the opposite: FZ's original albums belong to the XX. century, to the top-quality medium of the time: LP and CD.

Now we are way ahead of it: we don't need to limit any release to ~40 minutes (70 minutes, etc), to album sides, there are plenty of other ways to listen to the music. New and undiscovered ways as well - my wish is to have releases on a multitrack DVD (maybe), on which I can select the parts, the instruments - and listen to them again, together. On a DVD you could release extended programmes: the music, along with pictures, with videos, whatever...

These alternative way would be excellent for the unreleased stuff: Chalk Pie, Crush All Boxes, unreleased solos, TV-appeareances, whatever - all those could be part of the original releases (extended versions, bonus discs, who knows?), or could be separate "albums" or releases.

But my main point "aganst"* the old albums is that in my opinion the main medium of FZ's music is NOT the album - that was only because of neccessity, so for years only few people knew what happened on the stage on a REAL koncert. Today there is nothing in the way of releasing full shows, representing whole tours for example, whole orchestral concerts - that would be just great. I truly enjoy recordings of shows (and yes, the ZFT is not the best in selecting them, but that's another story). WAZOO and Buffalo to me are real gems (so is YCDTOSA vol 5/2) - we should have at least 1 release from every tour, covering all the tunes played, showing as much (selected) guitar solos as possible.

Now we have "canned material", recicled old stuff, again. Would be great - if these were the ONLY material left from FZ. But that's simply NOT the case. Unreleased stuff, new (orchestral) pieces, festivals, online and downloadable stuff, conferences... all these would keep FZ's legacy alive. The old albums? For old farts like me, okay (though I have most of them, don't think I'd buy them again), and to all the rest of the world? - it would just seem as a kind of a musical museum. It should not be.

(That's the big mistake with Dweezil: he keeps on playing the "album versions". What a stupid idea - FZ (and any normal cover band) NEVER did this.)

*Okay, I'n not "against" them, but hey, we have those already (I surely do). Who will buy them again and again? They should be on the market, but that cannot be the ONLY way to be present.

I'm different. I'm fond of the idea that an album is a complete and limited work of art (you have to put a frame around something to know where the wall stops and the painting begins). And an album can and sometimes must be short of course. The idea of maximum quantity releases, to put as much stuff onto something as the capacity allows, is not my cup of tea. That approach doesn't have anything to do with music as an art form. Enjoying musical works of art should not be like watching TV.

Th.

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Active forum member since 2005 - R E T I R E D from this forum in 2013

We are different, of course. But even FZ did not think of those as a closed, finished-forever type of thing. And now I'm not only talking about the re-recorded stuff in the eigthies, but the extended version of the In New York album, the longer CD-version of Guitar or the Broadway albums, the longer version of the LSO double CD, etc. It's just great to have those in a longer version, right? To him (to me) it seemed so natural that if there is more space, than more music fits on it. It doesn't mean that it's endless and opened forever: Guitar is just a fine double CD, and it is a "closed" work of art, as it is. (I suppose you don't listen to the shorter editions of thes albums exclusively, just because those were released earlier, and those are the "original" ones?...)

So the existence of the albums doesn't mean that we can and will always know for example the '81 tour as we can hear it on the Mothers of Prevention album. An extended selection, a concert, releasing Chalk Pie would add to the image we (and the world) have. Releasing the whole september '75 orchestral concert would be marvellous. Listenning to Sinister Footwear I-II-III ('84 june) on an official recording would be pure extasy. Hm?

Wouldn't the main point would be to enrich our knowledge, to present and listen as much music as possible?... To me the answer is "yes", of course. (And not to freeze the oueuvre in an old-type form, just because it was released this way decades ago...)

This "as much as possible" approach is absolutetly nothing I would consider a good idea. I don't want as much as possible and I don't do as much as possible in any aspect of my own life.

Th.

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Active forum member since 2005 - R E T I R E D from this forum in 2013

That sounds strange to me - but hey, we're different, of course.

But a few question arise:

Original, shorter LSO LPs - extended CDs with the full recorded program?
Original Orchestral Favorites album - extended release with the full recorded program?
Original In New York LP - extended double CD version
having the original, released tiny segments of the '73 Sydney show - releasing the fantastic, whole Sydney, '73?...
etc...
original, digital releases of single tunes from '88 (Bamboozled, etc) - releasing (another)one coherent release from '88 - maybe a whole show, maybe a selection of unreleased or otherwise interesting stuff

In what case would you vote for the first possibility? Why would an extended version do any "harm" to the music of FZ? (Of course "as much as possible" is not the same as "releasing anything we find"... My main criticism against the new ZFT releases that those weren't picked with a careful selection, only with a "by the way" type of decision.)

I don't like the "language" of the news that gets posted either. Frank had a way with words, the family trying to emulate that always comes off as annoying and trying to hard to be clever. My only concern with the Roxy announcement is that they try to emulate Franks editing style and add weird optical effects or something. I mean, I love Zappa, but some of his movie stuff is a disaster. Since he's passed, let's hope they just present this material in a straight forward fashion so Franks genius and performance can speak for itself, warts and all.

As far as formats for presenting music: I don't know why every artist in the business isn't ripping off Neil Young and his Archive Blurays. You can just throw them on and just listen to the music in lossless fashion if you so desire, which sounds stunning. Or you can listen to the albums while looking at pictures, lyric sheets and other minutia from the period. Or click on a song and see video of a live performance or listen to a radio interview, alternate take etc. It's a great way to present footage and oddball stuff that wouldn't fit on a more commercial, stand alone release. There's a long clip on one of the NY discs of him confronting a record store on sunset strip in '70 or so who is selling bootlegs. I'm sure that an obsessive chronicler like Zappa would have tons of this type of oddball stuff in the vaults, it could all be presented in this format.

So for Roxy you could have a bluray set featuring the original album in lossless, the concert in video with a 5.1/7.1 mix depending on the stems, other footage intermixed, as available, for the 5 shows that appear to have been recorded complete in audio, also with lossless 2 channel mixes. RAdio promos, art galleries and backstage footage as bonuses. We wont get all of that of course, but we could!

So basically I'm asking the ZFT to re-release all his stuff as new project/object blurays!

Bye bye duckies, hello flying pigs! And pigs do fly, Pink Floyd proved that.

I agree with both of you guys. I don't think art exists unless you frame it somehow. Frank even said something to this effect "if you don't put a frame around it, what's that shit on the wall". I also agree that not much of the posthumous stuff surpasses what FZ released in his lifetime (I think WAZOO is terrific though and I really get a kick out of some of that Joe's Corsage, etc. stuff). But then again extended versions of Bongo Fury, In New York, etc. would be cool and in this day and age with technology what it is, making as much possible available makes sense too for those who want to download it for scholarly reasons or for those that just can't get enough.

Here's hoping "Road Tapes" will replace the Joe's 'blank-age' series!


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"The Enigma Of David's Toe" by Vincent Cannata
http://www.amazon.com/The-Enigma-Davids ... 1479227579
"A wild ride of conspiracy theories, reincarnation, and occult weirdness..... you know, a comedy."

I got the same email. Theatrical release of Roxy sounds interesting. I hope they inculde all 5 shows and all of the rehearsal footage.....after a mere 13 going on 14 year delay...

Road Tapes sounds interesting. If the hit the magic "100" titles by thew end of the year, besides the speculated lost interview, count me in!

I don't know if they'll release all if it to theaters. I'm no expert, but I think anything 3-4 hours would be a hard sell, unless it's some of the more "artsy" theaters.

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You gotta give the people something good to read, on a Sunday

I agree. I can't understand anything she says. It's really annoying. And apart from the message board the rest of the website is really annoying too. I bet ZFT sales are about 50% of what they would be if trying to buy something wasn't a fucking scavenger hunt. Just list what is for sale and what price. Yikes.

Also, the content that is being sold on the Zappa website is incredibly creative. There is no need whatsoever for the website through which you are selling the content to be creative. So there.

Gail seems to be using all the liner notes and this website to exercise her "creative writing jones". It's nice to have a hobby, but ...

ok ty

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Keep the great work!

I hope I'm wrong, but I'm thinking the "Road Tapes" will be downloads only.