frank zappa Archive
29 Jul 2022
Music to Your Ears: Jim Fielder

You might not know Jim Fielder’s name, but it’s very likely you’ve heard him play. A key fixture of popular music beginning in the late 1960s, he lent his expert, expressive bass and guitar work to recordings and live performances by important artists both underground and popular. As a member of unclassifiable art-pop artist Tim
31 Mar 2022
March Through Time: Frank Zappa

Even before his untimely death in the 1990s, Frank Zappa’s body of work was staggeringly large. And it was certainly intimidating to the novitiate: Where to start, especially in light of the fact that Zappa’s music changed wildly throughout his career? Rather than attempt the unwieldy task of discussing all of his releases up through
03 Feb 2021
Album Review: The Ed Palermo Big Band — The Adventures of Zodd Zundgren

Frank Zappa’s body of work is massive. Even if one limits oneself to the music released during his lifetime, it’s a lot. Me, I have his first 45 or so albums on vinyl, and scattered post-vinyl-era releases as well. And for those who appreciate his work, it’s possible to focus on specific styles and/or eras
30 Dec 2019
Deliciousness: Frank Zappa’s ‘Hot Rats’ at 50

By the time of the release of Hot Rats, his second solo album, Frank Zappa was well established as an important force in pushing the boundaries of pop music. Not that much of what Zappa was doing could reasonably be termed “pop,” but his work flirted with the fringes of the pop world. The debut
27 Feb 2019
Frank is Sleeping: Zappa’s ‘The Yellow Shark’ at 25

By the time The Yellow Shark appeared on record store shelves in November 1993, fans knew that the end was very near for Frank Zappa. The iconoclastic composer-musician who often quoted the words of one of his heroes, Edgard Varèse (“The present-day composer refuses to die!”) would succumb to prostate cancer a mere month after
18 Nov 2016
Outside Now: A Conversation with Dweezil Zappa, Part 2

Continued from Part One … While Dweezil Zappa‘s tour will include a few tracks from Via Zammata, most of each show will center around performances of Frank’s challenging material. And Dweezil’s band follows the late Zappa’s onstage approach of building improvisation into the songs. “That’s one of the unique things about Frank’s music,” Dweezil observes.
17 Nov 2016
Outside Now: A Conversation with Dweezil Zappa, Part 1

Last month I interviewed Dweezil Zappa; I wrote three features based upon that interview: one each for papers in Chicago, Richmond and Pittsburgh. But even with that, a great deal of our conversation remained unpublished. Today and tomorrow I present this feature, which combines those three and adds additional content from our interview – bk.
17 Mar 2016
DVD Review: Frank Zappa and the Mothers — The Lost Broadcast

For an artist who seemingly documented nearly every moment of his live and studio performance – and, not unlike John Lennon and Yoko Ono, considered the entirety of it as a single body of work – the early work of Frank Zappa‘s Mothers (of Invention) was, surprisingly, not as extensively captured and saved as one
25 Jan 2016
Hundred-word Reviews January 2016: Archival Live Albums

It’s time once again to take a stab at clearing out the massive backlog of worthy CDs clogging my inbox. Today, it’s quick reviews of five archival live albums, all previously unreleased. Cheap Trick – Auld Lang Syne By the tail-end of the 1970s (this show was recorded at Los Angeles’ Forum on New Year’s
06 Jan 2016
Album Mini-review: Dweezil Zappa — Via Zammata’

File next to: Frank Zappa, Primus, Tenacious D Today, Dweezil Zappa might sound like a chip off the old block, but it wasn’t always so. On his first release – 1982’s single “Crunchy Water” b/w “My Mother is a Space Cadet” – he sounded like a reasonably talented kid who owned some Van Halen records.
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