Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween all. Some of you might know I am a huge Zappa fan and this was his favorite holiday. He used to do a week residency at the Paladium in Washington Square in NYC every wear. My friends and I would go to every show. It was like a pilgrimage for many. I miss him a lot and what could have come out of him had he not passed. A musical genius and superb musician/composer as well.

Take a little time today and listen to some Zappa. Here's a cut from Halloween Night in 1997 called Black Napkins. One of his signature tunes also featuring Adrian Belew, Terry Bozzio and his wife Dale. Extra points if you can name the band Terry and Dale formed after Working for Frank.

Enjoy...

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Tom

Here's a cut from Halloween Night in 1997 called Black Napkins.

...looking good for '97 , I know you meant '77

Do you know the brand of that toy police car?

thx for the tunes...a classic!

The band is "Missing Persons". I saw Terry later with Jeff Beck.

edg

Thanks Tom, another big Zappa fan here. Only saw him once in 86’ but fantastic show. Was on a cross country flight twice this week and Delta has some Zappa selections on their play list now, (3 road trip cd’s, Yellow Shark, Mystery disc, and the Lost Episodes, so I was listening to lots of Frank.

Happy Halloween to ya all!

thanks for the video, Tom. Like Sam, I got to see Frank once, in Des Moines, 1984. Quite memorable.
was right before this album came out. i'm fairly certain they did play their version of whippin post that night.

I was lucky enough to see Zappa with the original Mothers of Invention a few times in the '60s.

Also lucky to see this show--Zappa and the Mothers with Zubin Mehta & the L.A Philharmonic ("200 Motels" live U.C.L.A, 05/15/1970).

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Missing Persons! I met them in Miami back in late 1989. They kept it tight...

Zappa! My fav, for obvious turkey reasons: Village of the Sun - "Out in back of Palmdale where the turkey farmers run..."

That's right Elwood. 1977 not 1997. That truly would be a "Halloween" feat.

Yes, DR. There are several versions of Whipping Post on Zappa recordings going back a while before his death. He did a number of amazing covers. Songs such as Stairway To Heaven, Happy together, Bolero, Ring of Fire, Purple Haze, Sunshine of Your Love, No, No Cherry, God Bless America, and America the beautiful. There's many more too. My favorite is the cover (so to speak) of Happy together. This song was originally written and performed by The Turtles, who, due to contractual reasons, performed and recorded with Frank for several years under the name of The Florescent Leach and Eddy, or commonly referred to as just Flo and Eddy. Their real names are Mark Volman (Flo) and Howard Kaylan (Eddie). Every time I hear some conservative company or even political candidate use this song I laugh my ass off. Do they not do any research about the theme song they pick? No offense because I believe them to be absolute geniuses and vocal masters, but they are some of the most deranged performers to have ever stepped on stage. Just watch or listen to an album or the movie :200 Motels" and you will see exactly what I mean.

Anyway, hope everyone had a Happy Halloween, We have never gotten a single trick-or-treater in our house in eight years due to a space neighborhood and the house is set a bit off the road and down a hill in the dark. It's too bad really cause I always gave out full size candy bars, but, their loss eh?

Tom

I’m no connoisseur but I like him. Hot Rats; Peaches en Regalia & Son of Mr. Green Genes are prob. the standouts to me. We had Shut up and Play Your Gutiar Vol. Whichever, and Thing Fish on our dorm rotation in college, but the 2000s prob. wasn’t really in the spirit of it.

For years living on four acres we got no Trick o Treaters. I can’t imagine the terrible sort of parent who would send their kid marching through the desert a quarter mile at a time between each house, prob. took five minutes to get down our driveway alone. Live in a more aggregated area now and we get them - But there are much larger houses across the street. Kids see them and walk around us

...but i'm going to see Dweezil Sunday night at The Queen in Wilmington, DE.
Should be good. He's a capable guitarist and usual surrounds himself with some righteous players.

...but i'm going to see Dweezil Sunday night at The Queen in Wilmington, DE.
Should be good. He's a capable guitarist and usual surrounds himself with some righteous players.

Who else is on the bill that you know of? Sometimes other Zappa band mates just show. Would love to hear a report. He used to always come out to meet the hardcore fans downstage at the venue. So if you hang out it's a good time for photos and he really is a cool person. Stays till the last fan leave usually, and you might also meet some other famous musicians. Have fun.

Tom

They played 3 hours. Sure was an amazing show. The complexity of the music, the stellar musicianship, exceeded my expectations. I only have 5 Zappa records, mostly 70's and 80's stuff, so my knowledge of his catalog is pretty limited. They covered a fair number of late 60's Mothers' tunes, like king kong and suzy creamcheese. zoot allures was cool. The set list i included was from the beginning of the tour, and was somewhat different than last night. They also played the Torture Never Stops, and a version of Sleep Dirt. I was pleased they played "Ship Arriving too Late...".

I didn't see any old Zappa camp luminaries hanging around, except for the crowd, we were definitely a vintage crowd! There was a long line to meet the band so we didn't stick around for that afterward, but it's cool that they do that.

Nice set of encores. Thanks for the report John. How many different guitars Did Dweezil Play? That's Franks famous like, '61 SG DZ is playing in the pic. A great and heavily modded guitar. I think DZ once tried to sell it for a million bucks.

Tom

He had 3 SG's on stage. They looked similar with 2 mini-toggles mounted on the pickguard. Neck pickup looked unusual, but I couldn't tell what it was. Two had a white headstock and the other had standard black. That one had 1/2 frets beneath the EAD strings and fretless beneath GBE. That guitar sounded really cool, especially with solos, but he only played it on one song. The sax player's husband (Gonzalez) came out and played guitar with him on one tune, he was amazing too. Female sax player Gonzalez was AMAZING. The other female singer was quite good also, higher voice, did 50-50 really well, from overnight sensation, one of my favorite FZ records.