Music Meridian

So I was all set to schlep on over to my local record shoppe tomorrow to pick up the new Zappa album "Trance-Fusion". Unreleased live guitar solos. Hotcha!

But, I started reading the Zappa.com bulletin board and apparently as of tonight, it's been delayed!!

The thread starts getting interesting/annoying here

Apparently during the day today, the release date was changed. ONE DAY before it was suppose to be released. What kind of B.S. is this??

There's varying reports of when it will be out now. Nov 7th or later (most likely later) is the looks of it.

I've also pre-ordered the Making of Freak Out 4CD set, which has been delayed since September. Apparently that's been pushed back AGAIN too, with no offical release date in sight.

This blows and I'm pissed.






I stopped into the Tower Records in Lincoln Park this weekend to see how their going out of business sale was going. I expected deals. I got nothing of the sort.

Everything is 20% off right now, throughout the store. At first glance this sounds great. But the prices of pretty much every single CD is either $16.99-$18.99. So after "discount" the price of the CDs are $13.60-$15.19. Not exactly rock-bottom prices. I searched the store far and wide for a hidden deal, and found none.

Surprisingly, the store was pretty crowded. Lots of people had shopping baskets full of CDs or carrying huge stacks of them. Why?!?! Are they duped into thinking these are good deals somehow?

The sale is suppose to get better as the weeks go by. I guess I'll check back in eventually. Especially if I can get that Albert Ayler box set for dirt-cheap.

After I left the store, I walked a mere two blocks down the road to Hi-Fi Records where I bought 5 CDs for about $20. Now, that's a deal my friends.

Stumbled across this website:

Ask Professor Flo.

The "Florescent Leech" AKA "Flo" AKA Mark Volman, who sang in the Turtles as well as with Frank Zappa has his own music business consulting service. For a mere $125/hour (payable by PayPal!) you can have a one-on-one consultation with him about your musical career.

How weird right? Well, not really. He is REALLY a professor. He has a Masters Degree in Fine Arts and teaches at Belmont University in Nashville.

I wonder what kind of nuggets he shares in his consultations. I wonder how I can take a class with him as a teacher.

He has sample questions you can ask him in his FAQ page, one of them is "What was it like working with Frank Zappa?". Pretty wild stuff!





There have been all kinds of reports around the internet that Nov 21st will be the release date for Guns N' Roses much-delayed album "Chinese Democracy". Still no word on promo-releases or anything like that, so it seems iffy. Although, Neil Young recorded an album and got it in stores in about a month or so with "Living With War" so it's not impossible.

However, my attention was drawn today to a bootleg called "Whenever It's Done", supposedly containing demos for the upcoming album. You can find it on your favorite underground mp3 source most likely...

I'm grabbing a listen now, and I actually like it quite a bit.
The songs sound pretty full-sounding to me with effects on the vocals, drums etc. It's definately Axl singing. Not sure who else is on the recordings....A couple of the later tracks sound like just live recordings with the crowd noise filtered out. (Madascar and Rhiad and the Bedounis). So this is obviously some sort of hodge-podge collection from a variety of sources.

It'll be interesting to see how this compares to the actual album, if and when it's actually released.

Hunt it down if you can.

Here's the track listing:

1. Better
2. IRS
3. There Was A Time (T.W.A.T.)
4. Catcher In The Rye
5. Chinese Democracy
6. The Blues
7. Madascar
8. Rhiad and the Bedounis
9. Oh My God
10. Silkworms

I just got word from someone close to the source that this is going down:

Dec 16, 2006
Philly Prog Convention
Dysrhythmia
Zs
Ocrilim
Stay Fucked
Archaeopteryx
+ more!
(links go to the band's myspace pages, where you can hear kickass songs)

They're not sure where exactly in Philadelphia it'll be, but it's an amazing lineup so far. I will try my best to attend and get a full report on the site.

Also as far as the Ocrilim portion of the show, Tony from Archaeopteryx will be on bass along with the amazing Mick Barr...rumor is they will play the entire Anoint album. That will totally rule!!!

Just doing some surfing tonight in the iTunes music store I noticed something shocking.

You can download TONS of Magma albums off of iTunes. And not only that, they're incredibly cheap!!

Some examples:

Opera de Reims 1976 (Live) - $3.99
BBC 1974 Londres - $3.99
Retrospectiw III - $3.99
K.A. (Their latest studio album) - $3.99
Retrospectiw I & II (two disc set) - $7.99
Attahk - $6.99
Mekanik Kommandoh - $3.99

Others like Udu Wudu, Live, etc are standard $9.99...which is still much cheaper than getting the imported CDs from France.

Commence downloading now!!!

In a surprise announcement over at Zappa.com, the Zappa's said that Trance Fusion will finally be released on Oct 24th. That's 2 weeks away! Woah!!!

And it's not just mail order only, either. It's suppose to be in stores near you.

I double-checked on Amazon.com, and sure enough, it shows up on their site with the same release date. Complete with album cover, which I think looks super cool.

For those of you who forgot, because this release has literally been waiting to release for probably 5 years, Trance-Fusion is a bunch of unreleased live guitar solos. More information on the track listing and personelle can be found here.

Plus, the 4CD Freak Out! Sessions will also be out in the coming weeks. It's gonna be a Zappa-filled winter!

It's offical. All Tower Records stores will be going out of business. They will have liquidation sales...starting right now.

Read the article here.

I have fond memories of many tower record stores. They always had tons of hard to find stuff. Plus, I remember a great many meet-n-greets and live shows. Here's a list of who I saw at a Tower Records off the top of my head:

Mickey Hart
Phish
Urge Overkill
Local H
The Smashing Pumpkins
Joe Strummer (just before he passed away)
Hank III

Not to mention all the fun I had attending Rhino Musical Aptitude Tests there in years past.

I'm going to be keeping my eye out for the big sales that are sure to come as they slash prices to the bone.

I met up with a bunch of old friends at The Note last nite to watch Estradasphere. Charlie, Patrick, Diego. It was a good crew. And we were dazzled by Estradasphere.

Although the soundcheck took forEVER. We literally waited over an hour as they soundchecked a huge amount of instruments. Even after all that the guitarist had problems with his monitor early on and expressed his disgust.

They played two sets. The first set was mostly jazzy stuff. I didn't really recognize most of the material, but Diego informed me one song was a Chopin piece and another was a tune by Raymond Scott. He had a good ear last nite.

The first set seemed a little ragged. Not nearly as ragged as the last time I saw the band. Last time I saw them, the show was pretty ramshackle. John Wooley (goofy saxophone hippie-guy) was still in the band, and they didn't have the Shamasen player. They sounded like a loose jam-band. Not this time, however. They were all focused. Studying their sheet-music closly as they played through the tough material. It just seemed like they were getting warmed up.

They took a short break and returned to play their new album, Palace of Mirrors, in it's entirety. It was mindblowing. It was obvious they rehearsed this like crazy. It wasn't totally flawless, but they were super-tight and was able to pull off a seemingly impossible feat. All the quick changes in tempo and volume were nailed. The complex arrangements and tricky time signatures were spot on. And their new drummer was a machine (especially during the more death-metal/grindcore parts...he wasn't wearing an Origin hoody at the beginning of the night for nothing).

While they played the album, they had a video projector displaying some sort of movie, starring the band behind it. It must have been some sort of concept for the album, but it was hard to follow. Especially when you're also watching the live band.

They followed that up with a brief encore of 2 tunes. One of them being a song by Fanfare Ciocarlia, the amazing bulgarian gypsie band. Alltogether a great night of music.

Afterwards we had a quick word with the guitarist and he seemed very proud of their new direction. We expressed how much we liked them playing the full album.

On a slightly related note, I heard that Iron Maiden is playing their whole new album "A Matter of Life and Death" on their current tour. How cool is that!! People online at blabbermouth and pissed for some reason (I guess because they wanna hear "Run To The Hills" and "Aces High" for the 12 millonth time) but I think it's great. Especially when Maiden is currently in the mist of a great comback album trifecta that started with "Brave New World". They are definately back, and their new stuff kicks ass. Would love to see the show and how they pull it off.

I just read the press release over at sickdrummer's myspace page. Pretty psyched. Sean Malone won't be playing bass with them on the tour, so it's not the full "Focus" lineup, but it still sounds like it'll kick ass.

According to the release....

Long-defunct Florida-based band CYNIC, whose 1993 album "Focus" is regarded as a landmark release in the field of technical/progressive metal, has confirmed plans to embark a reunion tour in the spring/summer of 2007, beginning with possible U.S. warm-up performances and culminating in a number of festival appearances across Europe

So, without further adeu, you can order the Nels Cline (Wilco etc)/Zach Hill collaboration at Temporary Residence. The group is called "Damsel" and the CD is called "Distressed" (Clever, eh?)

They have a sound sample there, which is quite promising as well.

4 tracks, all improv. Recorded in one day.

Johnathan Hischke (ex-Flying Luttenbachers) also appears on the album. He'll also be on the upcoming Zach Hill & Holy Smokes CD, which I think is out later this month.

Still waiting for the new Hella studio album (I guess coming January 2007 on Ipecac!) and the Zach Hill/Matt Cameron/Janet Weiss drum CD. Of course, when I find out anything, it'll show up on this site.

In the meantime, I'm still listening like crazy to the Mick Barr/Zach Hill "Shred Earthship" CD as well as the Hella acoustic CD. Label me a Zach Hill groupie, I suppose.







4 CDs of all new material?? Who does he think he is? Frank Zappa? I'm intrigued to say the least. From the press release:

In an unmatched outpouring of virtuosity and energy, Vince Gill has created These Days, a 4-CD set of 43 new and original songs to be released Oct. 17. The collection features the new single "The Reason Why" and is an artistic tour de force that displays Gill's mastery of lyrics and musical styles, ranging from traditional country and bluegrass to jazz and rock.

"I started looking at all these songs I had," the amiable superstar explains, "and going, 'Shoot, I want to record that song, and I want to record that song.' I just kept checking with the other musicians to see if they were available. I had no deadlines, no rules or anything like that. So I just kept trying songs."






Before you get too excited. It's not the 70s prog Genesis. It's the 80s trio pop Genesis. Collins/Rutherford/Banks. Maybe they'll focus on stuff from "And Then There Were 3" or "Duke" but I won't bank on it.

Should still be a cool tour. I'll probably check it out.

Read a little more about the reformation here

Very cool concert going down at Northwestern University in Evanston tomorrow night:

Steve Reich's 70th Birthday Celebration. Includes lectures, pre-recorded works and live interpretations.

"Noise" fans take note, this will be a rare performance for sure:

The program will include a rare presentation of Pendulum Music (1968), performed by generating feedback from swinging microphones suspended from the ceiling above several loudspeakers...

Awesome! Also included in the program will be:

• Clapping Music (1972) for two musicians clapping, amplified
  
• Piano Phase (1967) for two pianos
  
• New York Counterpoint (1985) for amplified saxophone quartet & tape
  
• Violin Phase (1967) for violin and tape
  
• Nagoya Marimbas (1994) for 2 marimbas
  
• Eight Lines (1983) for amplified large ensemble
  

Read the full press release here.

If it's going to be anything like the Xenakis concert I witnessed at Northwestern earlier this year, I'd have to say this is a "can't miss" concert event. See you there?