Category: Music

XBMC Frodo

Updated to the latest XBMC beta. It messed up most of my show icons and watched/unwatched status, and for some reason defaulted my sound output to a virtual device instead of the output I'd had it set to previously, but I've got it mostly-fixed now.

There really is a lot to love about XBMC -- it's certainly the best software I've found for easily indexing a video library -- but man it sure is fiddly.

But hopefully this version will fix the previous "stable" version's habit of locking up my system and my video output and forcing me to log out and back in to fix it.

Freak Out! A Day with Cal Schenkel by Pauline Butcher

Via uploader paulineharrisonbird (née, presumably, Butcher):

Cal Schenkel, artist/designer of early Frank Zappa albums, Freak Out, Absolutely Free, We're Only In It for the Money, and others is seen here hanging out with Pauline Butcher, secretary to Frank Zappa and author of Freak Out! My Life with Frank Zappa; Squidget, Gail Zappa's younger brother (not Midget as annotated) and Casey, caretaker to Frank and Gail Zappa. 'Anything' was written and is sung by Ray Collins (from Ruben & the Jets).

Ms. Butcher Bird is the author of the book Freak Out! My Life with Frank Zappa. I expect I'll be getting back to her at some point...

(And yes it's a little past midnight and I'm cheating on the timestamp again. Ran late with that Who post. And here I didn't know what I was going to post about today...)

Stern '85, Part 1

Zappa's first visit to The Howard Stern Show, 1985. A bit of talk about the Porn Wars, and his concern about where the money from Live Aid was going. Uploaded by fruhko.

"Have you ever heard of a service charge on a ticket?" Happier times.

Peefeeyatko

A documentary by Henning Lohner. Uploaded by, yes, tomtiddler1.

It's a fascinating look at Zappa and his passions -- the mad scientist/monster movie angle is a good choice; Zappa notes in The Real Frank Zappa Book that his first impression on seeing a picture of Edgard Varèse was that he looked like a mad scientist. Zappa was a mad scientist too -- and really this documentary is devoted primarily to his experimentation with new technology, and his determination to reach perfection unattainable by mere mortals and their human error.

That and just making crazy noises.

Slonimsky

Description by uploader barun432:

Nicolas Slonimsky talks about his association with Frank and his daughter Moon Unit in a public discussion organized by Charles Amirkhannian. He also talks about Zappa' music, about Edgard Varese and the Synclavier

Synclavier

Black Page, Synclavier version. Uploader timmo1782 says "early 80s I'm guessing"; I'm inclined to agree.