The Zappa Thread

[Max Kuehnau]

Studio Tan is awesome. Frank is bitchin'. Music is the best.

Like OMG. Totally. (says his daughter, and us as well)

[Orbert]

Information is not knowledge.
Knowledge is not wisdom.
Wisdom is not truth.
Truth is not beauty.
Beauty is not love.
Love is not music.
Music is THE BEST.

[The Curious Orange]

Wisdom is the domain of the Wis, which is extinct.
Beauty is a French phonetic corruption of a short cloth neck ornament currently in resurgence.

[sneakyblueberry]

I felt like some Inca Roads the other night, so I watched a video of the Zappa Plays Zappa band.  Straight after, I watched the version from the Dub Room Special.  I always thought that ZPZ did a great job of performing Frank's music, but A/B'ing the two like that was eye-opening.  Zappa's band from that era, Chester, Ruth, NMB, George Duke, etc was sooooo tight and super untouchable.  The difference was clear from the opening notes - a lot of it came from Chester's drumming I thought - his groove and feel is impeccable, and I thought that was largely absent from the ZPZ performance.  Almost like the song was missing a little bit of that magic. 

[Orbert]

That doesn't surprise me.  The ZPZ band are great, but they are in a certain sense just a "tribute band" (for lack of a better word) and you're comparing them to the real thing.  The fire and polish of playing insanely difficult music for years just can't be imitated.

[Orbert]

I found this on another site.

Rachel Flowers with Zappa Plays Zappa

Rachel Flowers is of course the babe who stunned the world a few years back with her incredible covers of Emerson Lake & Palmer (and Emerson solo) on the keys, but I didn't know she also plays guitar.  And damn, she's good.  Dweezil lets her take the first solo in Montana.  It starts around 2:00.

Yep, no stage presence at all.  She's totally blind, has been almost since birth.  Doesn't matter.  I'm still madly in love with her.  Incredible talent.

[El Barto]

Speaking of chicks in ZPZ, I didn't know until yesterday that Cian Coey was no longer with them. She was an integral part of what they were doing. Dude's still got an amazing band, so it'll be alright, but it is a big loss. No idea why she split, although it's certainly possible she just wants to keep doing her various Vegas gigs.