Tag: Frank Zappa

Channel 4 Zappa Obit

Well, bit of a downer, but a pretty good rundown of the man's life and career.

Plus the anchor looks like Bill O'Reilly and is named Jon Snow.

Miss you, Frank.

Royal Festival Hall

London, October of '68. The poster calls this the Orange County Lumber Truck Medley and describes it as a "4th generation soundboard fragment"; that first bit is Let's Make The Water Turn Black.

Colour Me Pop

British TV, 1968. (Another fine video from tomtiddler1!)

King Kong and a second number which, according to globalia.net, is called O, In the Sky. (A commenter on that page disputes whether it was Colour Me Pop at all and suggests it was Late Night Line Up.)

Twinkle Tits

Decided not to go with another interview after all; continuing the tenuous Olympic connection with a performance from the Olympic Auditorium in LA, March 1970.

Someone in the comments says the animation in the beginning is by David Firth. And he's British, so there's your British/Olympics connection, audience.

Newsnight

Another interview, preceding the London Symphony Orchestra concert.

I particularly like his comments that Valley Girl is just as serious as an orchestral piece that takes six months to write, followed by his explanation that he paid out-of-pocket to put this concert together, that he can do so thanks to his fans, and that he's converting that money back into soundwaves.

This video and last night's are both on a YouTube playlist of UK interviews uploaded by a user named hazzaroonee; there are a couple more where this came from and I'm tempted just to keep going with them. How long is this Olympi-thing, again?

London Plus

TV interview, September 24, 1984. (One week before my second birthday!)

The absurdity of Serious Music, and a couple of news folk who quite obviously don't get him but at least seem pretty good-natured about it.

Strictly Genteel

Lord, have mercy on the people in England
For the terrible food these people must eat.

Performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, 1983; album released 1987.

You know, sometimes I idly wonder how long I can keep up the Zappa-post-a-day thing without repeating myself, or starting to just dump every concert video I find on YouTube, or generally start to lag.

Truth is, I think I could sustain this for quite awhile just restricting it to things I can tangentially tie to London and/or the Olympics.

Interview

More Zappa in London -- this time an interview on Capitol Radio. He discusses Sheik Yerbouti, his frequent band changes, being a connoisseur of stupidity, sexual repression, stupid love songs, and his contempt for everyone and everything.

Beatles Medley

Guess this kinda fits the very loose Zappa/Olympics theme, right? Zappa covering some tunes by some boys outta Liverpool?

Not that the last two were terribly topical either.

Olympiahalle

Continuing the Olympic theme, here's a show at Munich Olympiahalle, 1980.

And if you found this page doing a search for Munich Olympics, I can pretty much guarantee that it is the happiest, most upbeat thing in your search results. You're welcome.