Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JOSibNi-RAg&mode=related&search=

Whatever you do, don't do a Youtube search on Flo and Eddie!

I didn't recall Zappa doing the Purple Lagoon on SNL. Thanks for that.

Her are The Mothers on the BBC 1968:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ew3Dq82Q1bQ&mode=related&search=

FZ live 1974:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=kf8TM4CIk5g

I loved the Mothers of Invention, especially Freakout! their first album, was recorded in 1966 way ahead of it's time.

And no one ever believed me in 1967 when I told them all that FZ did NOT do drugs. Just looking at the album cover for Freakout! would make anyone think they were acidheads. In fact, the rest of his life he never did drugs. Sex, yes, lots of it and weird. But never drugs

A fine musician, I loved Apostrophe/Overnite Sensation later, too bad cancer took him where it really hurts...

He really did ride his pygmy pony, into the dawn of Montana (figuratively)

Yeah he always insisted that, I still have a hard time believing it though after listening to Help I'm a rock several hundred times on acidy substances when I was a kid.

Yeah, I used to know the exact count of how many HIAR he did. That was too many brain cells succumbing to Bong ago

Or Captain Beefheart, the thing about rubbing rigid unguents on his forehead....

Do you remember the performance on Saturday Night Live in spring 1976, when they did Slime, and they actually cut to a studio monitor with realistic-looking FX slime dripping down across the tubeface? FZ opened by saying that there would be too many people trying to sell you Bicentennial junk on TV that you didn't need and shouldn't want, and thus it was the Slime. Of course, the show was a TV show.... Lorne Michaels knew what substances HIS audience stoked up on before watching SNL every week

And to think, that rant became "Poofter's Froth, Wyoming Plans Ahead!"

Try to play a Zappa composition stoned..I don't think so!

I agree. FZ was nothing if not highly technical. His scores and performances rate "very hard", right up there with some of the Yes stuff, or some of the better Jazz artists. In his day, almost no one else on the alternative AOR was doing stuff that required such musicianship and skill.

Love this thread. I have no problem believing in his disdain for drugs. They were substances that, in his assessment, turned people into A-holes. True enough! "I'm really just a phony, but forgive me 'cause I'm stoned!"

Doesn't take drugs to be avant garde, does it?

The day will come when Zappa is recognized as one of the best 20th Century composers, in the same breath they mention his strongest influence, Varese. It will take a few generations before we are able to unwrap him from the hippie disguise, and all it supposedly connotates.

And by the way, try playing him Not Stoned, on your best day. Best of luck!

I miss him.

I tried to play Keep it Greasey and almost dislocated a finger 3/4 of the way thru.

"Suzy Creamcheese, what's got into you?"

They were indeed the best band you never heard of in your life

Another great example of how fantastic this forum is. I went through a period many years ago, where I listened to Frank Zappa a bit (though never really seriously). After this thread though I'm rediscovering Zappa and just loving it. Such fantastic music. Funnily enough, Zappa is one of my first TV memories. I'm 38 now and - I think - I remember hearing the Mothers of Invention on SNL. I'm not sure but I remember being totally blown away by this "freaky" band on TV, completely unlike anything I had ever heard. It's stuck with me because my Dad was ranting about the "weird" musical guests on the show who didn't even play an instrument! Anyway, thanks for this thread!