Zappa.com

I was talking with Ed Seeman through email about the Zappa footage he filmed. He said that the 14 Hours are in Zappa's vault and he would like to get it out there for the fans but ZFT hasn't been sending any responses. He said he spoke with Don Preston who said he would get the original MOI to record some new music for it.

http://www.edseeman.com/

I'm sure there's a lot of fans that would like to see it including myself. Is there a way to let the ZFT know that there is an interest?

The ZFT wouldn't touch Don Preston with plastic gloves, and the chances of seeing those 14 hours of footage unedited are very slim. The Zappas always want to make some kind of genre piece out of the given material. They don't seem to believe much in documentation for its own sake, unbiased history or even reality itself. Which is a pity, because the patriarch himself had extremely vivid sensory perception and the capacity to mediate very full pictures of outer and inner reality.

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We make a special art in an environment hostile to dreamers. Frank Zappa, 1971

I could think of about 50 things that should and will most likely be released before a 14 hr Uncle Meat film. They haven't even reissued the Honker Vid yet, and I'm sure they will at some point.
Sounds to me like this Ed Seeman guy wants a paycheck out of it. I wouldn't want to hear Don Preston or any other original Mothers today contribute music for a project like this. I saw the Don/Bunk show open for P/O ten years ago, and their new material wasn't very good.

The only outtakes I would truly be interested in is footage from the 1968 Royal Festival Hall show.

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"Voodoo Butter Underpants...
heh, heh... the pants that
nearly broke Tommy Mars' neck."

From the 1975 Zappa/Beefheart/George Duke lecture:

http://bonny.ploeg.ws/lecture.html

The movie has been referenced to more often in numerous sources. I found one while translating the Leeuwarden Courant articles. From around the same time in the same faits divers column comes the news that Zappa "recently left London with somebody else's luggage"... the newspaper was printed on 18 Dec 1971 and Zappa would have been in London at that time due to circumstances beyond his control. As we say out here, it comes from people with long thumbs.

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Yep. I barely made it through the 90 minute version of Uncle Meat. The idea of a FOURTEEN HOUR cut makes me shudder.

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Stay with me flagrantly and we'll have ecstasy for all eternity.

Ah, 14 hours of footage... is not a 14 hour movie. Would it include concert recordings you reckon?

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There is concert footage, but not with sound. As with "Uncle Meat", this 40 min. version is clips and pieces strung together (including a just-born Moon Unit). I would expect the original 14 hours would have uninterupted concert footage, but likely without sound.

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Stay with me flagrantly and we'll have ecstasy for all eternity.

Agreed. The Uncle Meat movie is the biggest waste of space, time, and money that Frank ever produced. I don't understand why he was so enamored of it.

Indeed!

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"Everybody in this room is wearing a uniform, and don't kid yourself" - FZ
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His vision would've been completely different from the end result... like with 200 Motels.

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Was the whole show filmed or just the play?

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Bear in mind..."Uncle Meat" was not shot that way. It was edited together to be that way. No one says the original footage has to be edited in the same frantic manner.

_________________
Stay with me flagrantly and we'll have ecstasy for all eternity.

I used to drool over the UM film right from those opening shots in the bathroom with the UM Variations piece playing right until the fade out of Holiday in Berlin when Zappa exits the bathroom. After that it was just all sh1t really.
I was fairly young (about 18) when I bought the video and I can remember watching it a half a dozen times or so simply because I was taken away by the weirdness of it all but never in one sitting.
I also like the footage used for the Mother People video simply because it was of the old Mothers. Nothing like seeing JCB and Buzz Gardner crossing the road "stuck together" and Arthur Dyer Tripp III rearranging the dress of a small plastic doll.

I would imagine that the whole Festival Hall show was filmed. Why would they only pay for the 'play' to be filmed?

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"drums are too noisy, 'n you've got no corners to hide in"

You just reminded me... Back in the late 90s, all of the Honker videos had been out of print for years and were just about impossible to find. Some kind internet person was nice enough to dub me a bunch of FZ stuff including all of the movies, a bunch of TV appearances, and some interviews. Getting that big box in the mail was incredibly exciting. Uncle Meat was the only real dud out of the bunch.

I'm still curious if any of the other old Honker stuff will make its way to DVD.

Yes Madcow, these were out of print but I think it was 1995 or '96 that I managed to phone HMV's Birmingham store and get them to order me a copy. Birmingham, England that is!
I even paid them a couple of quid extra and they posted it out to me when it arrived at the store.
(It didn't have the 3D glasses though)

It doesn't seem like there is a great deal of appreciation for the Festival Hall section from the UM film on this forum. It's always been right up there for me. I used to watch it over and over again.
It's not just the stupidity and humour of the early Mothers that I love but also watching the BBC members with the 'talented' members of the band performing Zappa's orchestral pieces.

Madcow, you have also provided me with a new name for my wife

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"drums are too noisy, 'n you've got no corners to hide in"

I would like to se those 14 hours as they are, not as a "thing", but as documentation. I would especially like to see the footage from the Garrick Theatre, if it's in there.

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We make a special art in an environment hostile to dreamers. Frank Zappa, 1971

With a few more margaritas and the right company.

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I'm not bald; I'm taller than my hair.

The Garrack Theater is the main interest for me as there seems to be very little of that footage around and virtually no audio. Is it included in the film according to Ed Seeman who shot it. The RAH video would be great to see too.

Can't they just sync the Royal Festival Hall concert film to the sound tapes that the "Mothers: Ahead of Their Time" CD is sourced from?

_________________
"Voodoo Butter Underpants...
heh, heh... the pants that
nearly broke Tommy Mars' neck."

I agree would love to see this!

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The way I see it Barry, this should be a very dynamite show.

I think the film is awesome up to the bit where Zappa leaves the bathroom, after the fade out of Holiday in Berlin and the footage of the Mothers on stage in Germany.

I particularly like the packing sequence (almost as much as JCB appeared to)

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"drums are too noisy, 'n you've got no corners to hide in"