Zappa.com

Glad you like your avatar, jeddy. Did you have a good drink, too?

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If I'm not alone... How long have I been asleep?

you know
"absinthe makes the heart grow fonder"

New Topic: Should people be banned for really bad puns?

I'll be listening to this a little later this afternoon.

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

Enigma ties this to BWS in my opinion. Sleazette is jarring and oh so good. I put this in FZs top third of total releases - and he didn't release it. 2013 could be a great year for unheard Zappa stuff.

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If we're dumb . . .
Then God is dumb . . .
(An' maybe even a little bit ugly on the side)

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I really dig most of disc 1, especially Frank's solos in Sleazette, The Old Curiosity Shoppe & Uncle Rhebus. But to be honest, disc 2 is almost pointless, apart from The Subcutaneous Peril. While it is an essential release, Finer Moments shouldn't have been a 2 disc set...

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ONE NATION UNDER SOCIALISM



Because of Obamination's spending & socialist BS, America and much of the world will endure one of the worst depressions in history in 5...4...3...2...

just when you thought Disco Douche couldn't get any stupider...

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Make your checks payable to QUENTIN ROBERT DeNAMELAND, Greatest Living Philostopher Known to Mankind.

Agreed. Disc 2 has some alright moments but all the best stuff is on 1.

So sue me if I don't like the farting noises that fill up most of disc 2.

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ONE NATION UNDER SOCIALISM



Because of Obamination's spending & socialist BS, America and much of the world will endure one of the worst depressions in history in 5...4...3...2...

To each their own; I'm conveniently giving this a play on Spotify now and am diggin the more experimental, abstruse stuff/progression in evidence on disc 2 . I can sense the ensuing Subcutaneous Peril complementing it nicely for me too (this is only my 2nd listen to album thus far).

I really like disc 2: the hilarious "Big Squeeze", the experimental/ambiental/Varesian percussion sections, the basement experiment of "Pumped And Waxed" and the great ending with "The Subcutaneous Peril". The only thing that annoys me is Estrada's vocalizations in "Squeeze It", but I have listened to that track so many times during the years that I am almost able to completely ignore it.
I find myself listening to "Finer Moment" a lot more often than I'd first thought.

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Look, percussion sensibility has always attracted me to Frank. Some of the figures repeat themselves. Nonetheless, Arthur is so disciplined.

Frank should have released some of Finer Moments. If he edited it down to a single LP ( disc) in 1973, I bet he would have jettisoned some of the soloing and some of Enigma.

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If we're dumb . . .
Then God is dumb . . .
(An' maybe even a little bit ugly on the side)

I was quite shocked by this article, and to think I used to rate Grant's often astute observations in his regular sunday column. I think he really missed the boat on Frank's life's work. I would like to know what cd's the record company "sadist" provided. I have e mailed Smithies a list of books and cd's to aid in his research, but I think he may be one of those people that just doesn't get it, and probably never will......

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Thanks for the music Frank.

Well I'm about to get sick from watching my TV

This double-album is only about 3 minutes longer than the length of a single disc. I sure wish they had put sides A, B, and C on Disc 1 and loaded Disc 2 with side D and about an hour of bonus tracks from the vault. A lot of recent releases have been on the short-side lately and that is disappointing.

The liner notes list Dave Samuels as playing vibes on "There Is No Heaven..." [aka "You Call That Music?"].
However, the IINK site credits read "unknown guest soloist" on vibes. IINK lists Samuels as only playing with FZ on Dec. 26-29, 1976.

Born in October of 1948, Samuels would have been only twenty years old when "There Is No Heaven..." was recorded. And it doesn't sound like an overdub.
Can anyone shed some light on this mystery?

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Good writing is clear writing.

Samuels has said (in email correspondence with Andy Hollinden who has taught college courses about Zappa) he did not play on "There Is No Heaven..."/"You Call That Music?" and that he wasn't even playing vibraphone yet in 1969. I guess no one brought this to Joe or Gail's attention, so they repeated what FZ wrote in the credits of YCDTOSA 4.

I had a theory it was David Friedman (who was playing with Tim Buckley in 1969, and later had a band called Double Image with Dave Samuels) but Friedman has said he wasn't on this track either.

Impressive deductions, pbuzby! I can only add that I'm positive it was not Yoko. <rusty trombone slide> <rimshot>

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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

I'm not going to say exactly how I went about acquiring this, but...suffice to say I'm fkkn glad that no money changed hands! Because if I'd paid for it I'd feel extremely ripped off.

The nearest things to "revelations" are that interesting through-composed (?) percussion piece and the musique concrete that follows (though the latter doesn't have the musical substance of, say, "Zolar Czakl" despite being three times its length).

Out of context, the Albert Hall radio scan jam is a bit "so what" (and not in the MD sense!). "The Old Curiosity Shoppe" is nice but not outstanding as `Mountain jams' go. The Carnegie Hall stuff is already redundant.

And the rest - the "possibly History Box related" stuff? It overlaps with the Stage Series, the Mystery/Episodes discs, or the Acetates - but these edits aren't even as long as the acetates, let alone "authentic"/"exactly as it happened".

And another frustration is that "Uncle Rhebus" (btw: shouldn't that be "Rhesus", given the "King Kong" konnection!) doesn't actually prove that "Baked Bean Boogie" is the end part of the Meat/Kong medley. It's entirely possible that after Buzz's (monster of a) solo, Frank started a solo but gave up quickly because something was wrong with his guitar/sound equipment, gave the keyboardist (who sounds more like Ian than Don, to my ears) a cue to solo, and then when he was through, took another solo which turned into "Baked Bean Boogie"...but because of the gap between The Ark and Finer Moments we've no proof!

Is this in anyway related to this:

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The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true Art and Science. - Albert Einstein

That's what I took it as - a tip-o-the-hat to that speech...

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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

Thanks for the info!

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Good writing is clear writing.

It's interesting that you can hear Lowell George yelling "Hands up!" on the Albert Hall recording on disc 1. I always thought Lowell was out of the Mothers by June of '69. That is him though, isn't it?

I liked Road Tapes better, but this is a fine recording.

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

I see the IINK site credits JCB with the "hands up!"s on YCDTOSA 5.