Dr. Demento knows what Frank is: he's a Serious Musician who's dismissed as a novelty act. I think he asks mostly good questions and Frank's answers are, as usual, edifying.
Category: TV
Pioneer of Future Music
I posted a bit of this about six weeks ago, specifically the interview with Denny Walley. Anyway, here's the whole thing:
I thoroughly enjoyed it; do yourself a favor and watch the whole thing. All at once if you've got an hour forty-five to spare; parceled up or as background music if you don't. Whatever suits your idiom, it's well worth hearing in its entirety.
Larry King Interview, 1989
I've got to admit, part of the charm of Larry King is that he doesn't do his homework and, frequently, has no idea what the hell he's talking about. And he does not disappoint in this interview: right off the bat he gets the title of the book wrong. Three times.
Still better than watching Piers Morgan.
Vai Christmas Card
Not directly Zappa-related, but here's a Christmas card from The1stGunner, featuring a Steve Vai cover of Christmas Time is Here.
And if you're interested in other tangentially-Zappa-related covers of songs from Christmas specials, check out Dweezil and Ahmet performing You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch (which I posted a few months back on Chuck Jones's birthday).
Cavett, Part 3
I've always loved the nuance, the sort of duality, to Zappa's philosophy on music: he's certainly got strong opinions on what he likes and what he doesn't and that the industry is a bottomless cesspit, but he also believes the bottom line is that people like what they like and that's okay. He writes deep, complex music and lyrics -- but sometimes he writes silly stuff like Dancin' Fool, and he thinks people who overanalyze Jim Morrison's lyrics are missing the forest for the trees.
Ultimately, he's a Serious Musician who has the good damn sense to understand you shouldn't always take music so seriously.
Cavett, Part 2
The comment that Moon is 12 years old places this in late '79 or '80, about where I figured between the fashions and the Jewish Princess controversy.
Another abrupt cut -- from the bad old days of YouTube limiting videos to 10 minutes. (As opposed to the bad new days, where YouTube automatically flags infringing videos based on pattern-matching algorithms, whether they're actually infringing or not.) To be concluded!
Doctor Who: Inferno
Originally posted brontoforum.us, 2008-12-28.
Inferno, it turns out, is another great Pertwee serial that is available through Netflix (disc only, no streaming).
Essentially, it's like Mirror, Mirror, except instead of Spock with a goatee, it has the Brigadier with an eyepatch.
It's a little long (could be one episode shorter -- he spends the entirety of the first episode in the parallel universe trying to explain to everyone that he's from a parallel universe), but really it runs at a great pace overall and has a whole lot more action than most Who from that period.
The parallel universe is used to good effect, emphasizing characters who are much different (the Brigade Leader is a coward hiding behind his gun and his rank) as well as characters who are more or less the same (the pompous Professor Stahlman, who would doom the world rather than take a blow to his ego, and the dashing Greg Sutton, who defies him), with companion Liz Shaw somewhere in-between.
The best device, IMO, is that in episode 4 or 5 the Doctor outright tells the parallel cast that they're screwed and past the point of no return and there's nothing he can do for their world, but that he can still save his own, leaving several episodes for the parallel cast to come to grips with their certain impending doom and react accordingly.
The "there are some things man wasn't meant to tamper with" premise is stale, but works well for an apocalyptic "Earth ends in fire" story -- the ending of the penultimate episode, with a wave of lava coming toward the cast, is cheesily green-screened but nonetheless makes a striking image.
The finale is another episode that could safely be chopped in half, but it mirrors the events of the parallel world, with slight changes, satisfyingly. The ending is vintage Third Doctor, with the Doctor and the Brigadier butting heads and then one of them forced to eat crow.
The transfer has all the usual flaws I've now come to associate with Pertwee-era serials, an often-grainy picture and occasional wavy lines. I watched one episode (3 or 4) on an SDTV and it was a lot less noticeable.
There's also a second disc with extras on it; I assume they're neat but I'm not going to bother.
All in all, classic Who; worth renting, worth buying. (It does help to have a cursory background knowledge of the Third Doctor's setup, that he's been exiled by the other Time Lords and trapped in 1970 London, and that at this point he's trying to fix his TARDIS so he can travel again. Probably good to check out Spearhead from Space first, and maybe The Silurians. The Ambassadors of Death, the serial immediately preceding this one, is out on DVD now too, but I haven't seen it yet.)
Cavett, Part 1
Zappa on Dick Cavett, part 1 -- pardon the rather abrupt cutoff; I'll get to part 2 tomorrow. Uploaded by buruglen. I didn't catch an exact year but it's clearly late '70's or early '80's.
Mid Day Live
Bill Boggs interviews Zappa about New York City, disco, drugs, and showmanship. Yet another fine upload by tomtiddler1.
Joan Rivers
Zappa on The Late Show with Joan Rivers, 1986(ish?).
I'd definitely say his conspiracy theories on AIDS are a swing and a miss, but everything else is pretty solid -- and hell, given that this would have been right around the time Iran-Contra broke, I can't say I blame anyone for believing the Reagan Administration was engaging in sinister and wildly implausible dealings.