Showing posts with label The Mothers of Invention. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Mothers of Invention. Show all posts
Friday, October 22, 2021
Saturday, September 11, 2021
Wednesday, September 1, 2021
Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention: In the 1960s (2009)
Critical review of the classic rock band, focusing on the band's musical output in the 1960s.
This Australian production comes without any credits to its makers, although this is a remarkably extensive and informative documentary which assembles a vast amount of rare original material and some good interviews.
Saturday, May 1, 2021
The Movies I Watched in April
Alien (1979) 8
Alien: Covenant (2017) 7
Alien³ (1992) 6Alien: Resurrection (1997) 7
Aliens (1986) 7
Amarcord (1973) 7
Arrival (2016) 8
Blade Runner 2049 (2017) 8
Detour (2013) 6
A Dog Called Money (2019) 7
Fear No More (1961) 6
Four American Composers (1983) 7
4D Man (1959) 6
Frank Zappa 1969-1973: Freak Jazz, Movie Madness and Another Mothers (2014) 7
French Water (2021) 6
The Godfather (1972) 10
The Godfather, Part II (1974) 10
The Godfather, Part III (1990) 7
The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968) 5
Hellraiser (1987) 7
Kronos (1957) 5
Majo no takkyûbin (1989) 7
Moonrise (1948) 7
Next of Kin (1982) 7
One Night in Miami... (2020) 7
One-Eyed Jacks (1961) 7
Polytechnique (2009) 7
Prometheus (2012) 7
Radioactive (2019) 5
The Serpent (2021) 6
Siu ngo gong woo: Dung Fong Bat Bai (1992) 6
Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015) 6
Stranger Things, Season 1 (2016) 7
Time (2020) 7
Valley of the Dolls (1967) 5
Why Did You Kill Me? (2021) 7
Wild (2014) 6
The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959) 7
Zappa (2020) 7
Saturday, May 4, 2019
Monday, May 7, 2018
Thursday, April 5, 2018
Tuesday, July 18, 2017
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
Sunday, April 23, 2017
Roxy the Movie (2015)
A concert movie showing a performance by the much-loved 1973 incarnation of the Mothers of Invention.
Straightforward concert film offers a great occasion to see Zappa and his top-notch band on stage; the complex music and the virtuoso performance are a treat, not just for die-hard fans.
Friday, March 10, 2017
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
Wednesday, November 25, 2015
Friday, November 13, 2015
Sunday, June 8, 2014
New Stuff: Frank Zappa & The Mothers
Essentially an early version of their Roxy & Elsewhere album, these recordings showcase some of the same titles in interesting, but not always convincing early variations.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
New Stuff: Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention
Well, not really new, but I lost the cd, so I got me this recent reissue.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Songs in the key of my life: The Mothers of Invention - Uncle Meat
For a long time in my teens and beyond I was a huge Frank Zappa fan, still am today, but at one time most friends and acquaintances would see me as that Zappa guy. Only recently I visited a used record store and the guy behind the counter came right up to me to ask a specific Zappa question, although I didn't know he was!
My luck was that I had a very bad start with Frank Zappa. Inspired by Raoul Hoffmann's book Zoom Boom on innovative rock music that was a great help to me finding inspirational music I bought the soundtrack 200 Motels. Besides having heard some (sensational) titles by Zappa on radio this was the first album I actually purchased. It was quite a shock and gave me nightmares for at least 3 days. I hated it and even tried to sell it, in vain, of course. I still don't cherish the album that much, but I worked myself through the album piece by piece, bit by bit, until I understood it musically. To make a long story short, I was not done with Zappa yet.
So I got the Uncle Meat album, another recommendation from a book, Siegfried Schmidt-Joos' and Barry Graves' Rock-Lexikon, one of my first 'bibles' on music. It was on their list of the 100 rock albums essential to a collection (till 1976, that is), and I was immediately taken in. This was to me an ingenious collage of all kinds of music, very much in the style of the creepy pop-art cover. There are so many surprises, so much humor (musically and lyrically), wonderful melodies set in almost as throw-aways and powerful atonal passages, it's overwhelming. I still love to listen through it, at best in complete (it's a double album). At the time my family took a vacation in a small mountain town in Austria, and without a record player I quickly copied the 2 records on cassette for the trip. All through that rainy foggy horror week in the Alps I spent every free minute to listen to Uncle Meat, I even learnt to play the Uncle Meat theme on piano, although I couldn't really play piano. Most of the main melodies pop up in my head every once and while even today, especially the main theme and King Kong.
Interestingly, Zappa used a lot of the music from here and integrated it into his The Yellow Shark composition which was performed with a classical orchestra here in Germany. I can only recommed that album as well.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
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