Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

“You may leave here for four days in space,
But when you return, it’s same old place.”
– by P.F. Sloan, sung by Barry McGuire, Eve of Destruction

Welcome back to planet Earth NASA space shuttle Discovery STS-121. Mission accomplished!

Meanwhile, here at home, despite the fact that every day is a gift that Earth gracefully gives us, foolish humans cannot help themselves from their selfish goals of destruction.

P.S.  NPR ran a radio story about PF SLoan’s new CD and tour on August 20, 2006.  Link here.

Via and Zappa photo by mudshark.

Saw the ZPZ show tonight at the (Civil) Warfield Theatre in San Francisco. There were so many battered, long haired old timers creaking up the balcony steps with the aid of canes and crutches, it looked like a Civil War Veterans gathering. The Warfield’s lobby contains a large enshrined photo portrait of Jerry Garcia, so you can well imagine the creaky soul survivors who have fired up many a fat joint in this old time theatre.

It was the last show of a lengthy tour and Dweezil deserves a lot credit for pulling this together from the extensive Frank Zappa discography. Opening with Montana video footage from Frank Zappa’s great Roxy club performance, the entire night had an eerie emotional vibe, a battle between the energies of the living and the memories of the dead. It truly must have been traumatic for Dweezil and the Zappa family to witness free spirited Frank being prematurely aged and taken away by cancer. In a touching moment at the close, Dweezil brought his mom, Gail, out onto the stage and thanked her for helping put the tour together. They plan to rest up and return to touring again in October, including a Halloween New York City show.

Dweezil’s playing is quite good and faithful to his father’s music, and he’s found some fine new band members in addition to the veterans, to spice up the mix. They play over three hours of strenous music, which took it’s toll on Terry Bozio’s bicep a few days ago in Las Vegas. Still Terry appeared on stage and livened things up with his hilarious singing poses and gyrations on I’m So Cute and two other Punk Angst theme songs.

Napoleon Murphy Brock’s voice is in great shape, and his added choreographic antics were true to the roots of Frank Zappa’s humor in music tradition. His theatrical voice provides authenticity to the songs, such as The Idiot Bastard Son, Cheepnis and Oh No since they sound pretty much the way he performed them while touring with the FZ band in the 70’s and 80’s.

Steve Vai is an excellent technician and carved strong, sweet notes on Peaches En Regalia, stunt sounds on Zombie Woof, and great power on Sofa. His stage presence is different from when I saw him play with Frank Zappa’s band. He’s now a virtuoso star, with a theatrical presence not unlike a David Copperfield stage magician. I’m not up on Steve’s solo work and would like to hear more of what Steve does on a sweeter melodic side, rather than losing the melody of a song such as More Trouble Everyday in a high pitched guitar screamfest with Dweezil. I would love to hear his rock guitar treatment of compositions by John Dowland, Beethoven and Copland.

There are ZPZ tour blog stories, tons of great photos and a few videos at the Zappa Plays Zappa web site. Music is the best.

Beware of Captain Spamheart’s jabbering beefcakes, the shiny beasts of thought! They’re out there. Little Captain Beefheart Trekkie types who discuss WWBD… What Would Beefheart Do?

It’s all at Fireparty, the next best thing to spam, a Beefheart e-mail list server.

Important topics such as whether or not The Beatles and Rolling Stones are up to Beefheartian snuff, music that Beefheart fans like, and does Beefheart give a shit? are all discussed. As Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart) said, “Someone’s had too much to think!”

Some interesting news does get disseminated, such as bootlegs and a recent Swedish TV interview and performances by Frank Zappa band member Denny Walley and Magic Band members Drumbo, Rockette Morton and Gary Lucas.

Perhaps long ago adoring fans of great violin or piano players performed mimicries of their heroes, but today we have The US Air Guitar Championships. In my recollection, this rock peculiarity was popularized by Joe Cocker seen above in the first of many of my rock concert photographs. Fortunately Cocker’s primary talent is singing, but in his early days his convulsive spasmodic reactions to his band’s music (Leon Russell on real guitar and piano) added to the entertainment. To be just an air guitarist is to build a profession out of pretending, kind of like some folks we all know in Washington DC who professed they knew about fatally dangerous WMDs in Iraq.

Just received my copies of a newly released CD, Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band Amsterdam 80. This is an extremely clear 74 minute recording of Don Van Vliet and his band performing live at The Paradiso in Amsterdam on November 1st 1980. The CD album jacket includes 6 color photos I shot of a Beefheart show from the same tour in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on December 10, 1980. For more details about that fateful December show, looky here.

The CD jacket also includes some fine shots of Don by photographer Deborah Feingold. As the man says, This could be the best batch yet.

A recent SF Chronicle article highlighting New Orleans paino great James Booker led to my contacting Bill Roberts, who took part in the Maple Leaf Bar’s weekly Sunday afternoon poetry readings along with Everette Maddox. Bill recalled Booker playing there frequently, and related a story.

While waitering at Commander’s Palace Bill worked a party for the upper crust of New Orleans society: bankers, judges, and business owners. They made a special request for James Booker to play at the party, and Bill describes what happened…

The piano keys under the spell of James Booker had unleashed such powerful, raw blues on the psyches of the elite of New Orleans, members of the old line secret Krewes (Rex, Comus and Momus) of Mardi Gras, that it decimated their sense of decorum.

James Booker was oblivious and indifferent to their transformation. He just kept pounding away on the keys, and would not free the ladies and gents from his enchanting grip.

The place went crazy. They were dancing wildly and bumping into each other. They became unravelled, they came apart under the influence of Booker’s playing. A judge was even dancing around in his official robes.

When the party was over I found the judge’s robe on the floor. I didn’t know what to do, so I brought it home, and then brought it back to Commander’s the next time I worked there. They almost fired me over it.

Mayor Landrieu was still in office, the last white Mayor of New Orleans.  Maybe the event portended the seismic shift in political  power in the Big Easy.

If one subscribes to the belief held by the Black Clergy of the Mississippi delta during the 1920’s,30’s and 40’s, that Blues was the Devil’s music; then truly I declare that it was Mephistofiles himself playing that night to Dr. Faust.

Neil Young is prolific indeed, writing and recording LIVING WITH WAR, a ‘metal folk protest’ album in 9 days. Nothing stirs up the creative juices like righteous anger over an unjust war. The Neil Young fan news site, Thrasherswheat.org has all the details, including outside opinions on his new album, including a song, “Impeach The President”. Thrilling, blood boiling stuff from a man who is fully alive, ringing that bell of freedom with musical hammers of justice.

Earlier this year I was contacted by Sony BMG Music’s London office in a request to use one my photographs of Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart found on this web site. I was curious about how they were going to use this photo for a CD, since I don’t consider it as one of my best. It was a surprise to see the result (below) when it was recently released. The fisheye lens motif is an echo from the original Safe As Milk album cover.

Captain Beefheart apparently has a faithful following in Great Britain, since this is the third British Beefheart album cover publishing one of my photos. A fourth is due to come out later this Spring.

Part of the fun of this has been getting back in touch with my friends who are in this 1980 photo, Jeff and Mike DeMark. We went to that show toether, and they’ve written their recollections of the Beefheart performance and lounging around with him in the hallway of his hotel after the show when the photo was taken. Click here to begin reading about the strange evolution of this CD cover.