Music Meridian

The latest issue of Relix magazine has a huge section of features on Frank Zappa.

There's interviews with Dweezil regarding the upcoming tour. Plus accounts of tours past from Steve Vai and Mike Keneally. There's also some "how to buy/get into Frank Zappa" articles that sum up his more popular albums. But the real gold is in the interview with Gail Zappa and Joe Travers (the man who is going through Frank's vault of unreleased recordings). Looks like this is going to be a big year for new releases from the aformentioned vault. Some highlights:

Q: Frank Zappa had several albums ready for release when he died. What is their status today?

A: ....Trance-Fusion, Dance Me This and The Rage and The Fury waiting to see the light of day. Trance-Fusion is a guitar record like Shut Up N' Play Yer Guitar...Dance Me This is a Synclavier record like Jazz From Hell And The Rage And The Fury was the Edgard Varese Project......I decided that when the ten-year hold back period was up [now] we'd just start putting things out"

More on releases a little later:

...there's stuff we can announce, like the Roxy and Elsewhere DVD....Trance-Fusion should be the next Zappa Records release.....We turned over the 1974 KCET concert to Frank Filpetti [to produce] and we'll release the Token Of His Extreme DVD by the same band.

Even more new release info later in the interview!!

Two or three other Joe's Corsagas will come out this year

Boy am I excited by the prospect of all this new stuff!! I'll be keeping an eye on Zappa.com for the details.

If you want more info go to yer bookstore and pick up the latest issue of Relix.








This weekend I attended a drum clinic for 15 year old drum sensation Eloy Casagrande. Let me just sum it up in one word: amazing!

At only 15 years old he can totally drum circles around drummers twice his age. He played a few drum solos he wrote himself (with crazy cross sticking patterns and absolutely blazing double bass chops). Plus he played along to backing tracks of popular songs by Van Halen, Rush and Toto. He nailed everything.

Check out this video of him from last year's Modern Drummer festival if you're not convinced.

Perhaps the most amusing part of the show was the question and answer period. Since he's from Brazil and is still learning english lingo he struggled a bit but was ok for the most part. Except when someone in the crowd asked him how fast he could play a blast-beat (Seriously!). He never heard the term before. "Blast-beat? What is blast-beat? I don't know". But he did proceed to rip out some blindingly fast runs moments later.

Very inspiring. Back to the woodshed for me.

UPDATE: I got my tickets!!! See you there?

Saw an ad in the RedEye today. Zappa Plays Zappa is coming to Audiotorium Theater downtown on June 17th! Tickets are on sale this week.

This should be the next best thing to seeing the man himself. Picture it: Dweezil and Ahmet Zappa. Terry Bozzio. Steve Vai. Napolean Murphy Brock. Now, I've seen Project/Object quite a few times but this will take things to a whole new level!

It's like a dream come true. I'm totally stoked!!







today i opened a new cd i got, an electric storm by the white noise. it's not at all what i expected.

knowing the whole album was created using sounds from the bbc radio phonic workshop, i was expecting something along the lines of the dr. who theme, all whooshing noise and proto-synth lines. it's true, this was made from recording sounds from tone generators and other sources, then manipulating and cutting the tape and splicing it back together to create songs. this is a difficult, time-consuming process, one which makes live performance impossible, and i thought it would generate a collection of weird, spacey sounds. the album was released in 1969, so why shouldn't it sound like experimental electronic music?

it turns out it sounds like psychedelic rock on synthesizers, not too far from what pink floyd was doing, or what faust and krautrock would do soon after. the lyrics and singing are rudimentary and don't always make much sense, while the songs are pretty conventional. it's interesting, but i'm not sure it's something i'll spend much time playing.

if you can find the cd, and you're into this sort of thing, go ahead and get it--it's not bad by any means--but don't pay a whole lot for it. no more than $15, i'd say.





last night i saw a movie called metal: a headbanger's journey. it's an interesting, if biased, look into metal. created by an anthropology major, it attempts to discover why metalheads like metal, and why other people don't. more specifically, why people fear and even hate metal so much. some may dispute the way it organizes metal, and others may complain of certain glaring omissions (no metallica), but the overal idea of the film is great. as an introduction to metal you could do much worse, and the interviews and other footage are really amazing. metallers are much more eloquent and thoughtful than most people expect--witness dee snyder tearing tipper gore and her pmrc a new one--as are many of their fans. about the only weak moment for me was the interview with mayhem (which prompted the director to quip 'beer and interviews don't mix'). it's showing at the siskel film center through the end of the week. it comes out on 2-disc dvd may 23.

see it.

You may recall last christmas season, Garth Brooks released a box set, only sold at Wal-Mart. It was relatively "cheap" for a box set, but it really only had 1 CD of new material. "The Lost Sessions" everything else in the box was old albums his fans already had. So to get the new songs they had to rebuy all the old albums.

Now, Garth has done it again. He's released "The Lost Sessions" CD as a standalone CD (also only at Wal-Mart). So you think..."Maybe he's letting fans who don't want to buy the old CDs still get the new songs". Not really. He's pumped up the standalone CD with 6 ADDITIONAL tracks that weren't in the box set!! So if you bought the box set, you still don't have all the songs and need to buy the single CD to get everything!

So Garth made all his fans re-buy all his old CDs just to get 11 new songs. Then he had them re-buy the new CD less than a half a year later to get 6 more songs.

And they say he's "retired". Maybe from playing shows, but he's still scamming his fanbase.

According to Aquarius Records weekly email, May 9th brings us:

Zach Hill & Mick Barr "Shred Earthship" cd on 5RC

The drummer from Hella and the guitarist from Orthrelm. I can't see how this could possibly not kick ass.

UPDATE: Here's a press release on the album.

Apparently there's a tour in the works for the duo as well.

Plus, there's this doozy of a quote:

"For myself, it's definitely the best playing I've ever captured on record on my instrument. That record tops any level of playing I've ever done on a record, physically and spiritually." -- Zach Hill

Can't wait!!

I just bought "Undone" by Lozenge used off of a seller on Amazon.com for 1 cent. You heard me.

With the shipping it was $2.

There's still someone else selling it on there for 4 cents if you want to get in on some cheap tunage.

eagles of death metal at eagles ballroom

the sound at eagles ballroom is atrocious, though earplugs help. somehow they filter out the mud and you can hear the vocals again. eodm, despite the crappy sound, rocked like nobody's business. we didn't stick around for the strokes because i wanted to get home, but i can't imagine they were nearly as good. dude, they don't have any songs about kissing the devil's tongue. how can you rock without one of those?

well, i suppose plenty of bands do, but not the strokes.

we got to the rave a good hour before doors, with on idea what to do. my partner wanted gum, so we drove up what i think was 27th until we found a gas station that didn't look dangerous (that side of the rave is definitely unsafe-looking). then we drove back toward the rave. we noticed these domes across the valley, and i said what the hell, let's check them out. eventually, after passing several depressed-looking shops and a drug deal, we crossed that bridge and reached mitchell park and their resident 'the domes'. my partner wanted to find a bathroom, so we got out and walked around the park--which is nice, really, very enjoyable--but the park had no public bathrooms. thus we went back to the rave and waited for the doors to open.

now, i've parked in some iffy neighborhoods before, and i've walked to the train from the hideout, but she was nervous about this neighborhood, and it was making me jumpy. i decided to fight that and park behind the rave, where my friend said, and we went in. however, they wouldn't let me take in a camera, so when i went to put it back in the car i moved around to the side, just outside the door they were having people come in. i'm sure the car would have been ok, but the new spot was almost guaranteed safe.

i like the oval ballroom, it's pretty cool looking. cutting a triangle stage into one wall looks silly, and i could tell right away it would mess up the sound. the angles are all wrong, and the space behind the band can't help. we stood in the gathering crowd not far from the stage for an hour and a half before eagles came on. at least they started on time.

the crowd was mostly strokes fans, with some who also knew who eagles are and a few who came wearing fake mustaches in emulation of the singer's grand stache. i could tell the strokes fans who didn't care because they weren't rocking, but eventually even they caught the bug. it's tough to avoid this band's enthusiasm. however, some of the songs felt tired, though that could be because of the venue's sound. especially when he sang in his falsetto, the songs sounded hollow and forced. despite this, it was a good show.

getting home was a bit of an adventure, though. construction to i-94 made getting back on the interstate going east difficult and confusing. we followed the detour, but, and maybe i read the signs wrong, it turned us around and we ended up going west anyway. so i went west past the construction and got back on going east. then, where 94 turns south, we essentially had to exit, follow local streets, then get back on later. after that things were ok, but getting there was a bit of a challenge.

even if the roads and traffic improve, i don't think we'll be back to the rave any time soon.

I went to the WLUW Record Fair this morning. I was skeptical going in because a lot of times these fairs can be lame with just overpriced vinyl and shady guys trying to sell you overpriced bootlegs.

But I was pleasantly surprised. There was only one aformentioned shady jerk there and most of the records were available on the cheap.

Highlights I picked up for $1 each were Donald Fagan's "The Nightfly", Santana's "The Swing Of Delight" (w/ Miles Davis's amazing 60's backing band! Tony Williams, Herbie Hankcok etc), and an amazing find....a Luke Van Acker (RevCo, Ministry) side project record called "Danceable Weird Shit". All this on vinyl.

I also found a box set by The Band from a few years ago ("Across The Great Divide")...3 CDs for $9! A steal. Plus I picked up a cool Dazzling Killmen collection (7"s, b-sides, live stuff) on Skin Graft. Classic.

This is getting me excited about this Nov's WFMU Record Fair in NYC that I plan on attending. Supposedly this is one of the best in the nation. And since I pledged to WFMU this year, I get discount entry. Whoo hoo.

Hope some of you other record hounds made it out to the Fair and got some good deals.