petebrunelli

Category: music

  • Cosmic Convergence? Or just Stuff That Happens?

    In the midst of all of the machinations, emails, phone calls, decisions, and other whoop-de-doo involved in making this Rochefort gig happen, something really wild happened.  The point person for getting this “Roy Replacement” thing going is Napoleon Murphy Brock, who is one of the most recognizable frontmen ever to work with Zappa.  If you have heard Roxy and Elsewhere, Bongo Fury, or YCDTOSA Volume 2, for example, you have heard his singing, sax playing, and comedic timing in full effect.  He is a hard working guy (understatement alert), and you never know where he will turn up.

    On Monday, as we were breathing a sigh of relief that the travel plans were going to be resolved, he mentioned that he was on the road and had just played a gig in… South-ing-something, in Connecticut… with the Ed Palermo Big Band… at some golf course or something….

    He was in Southington, Connecticut last Friday, which is my hometown, and where I still live, and he played a wedding at the Aqua Turf, 5 minutes from my house.  The Aqua Turf is one of the premier event sites in Connecticut, and the place is booked way out in advance.  Think weddings, charity events, galas, and such.  Apparently a lawyer with much FZ themed ink and a real lust for Zappa hired Ed Palermo Big Band to play his wedding, and Napoleon officiated the wedding ceremony, as well as playing with the EPBB.  Which makes it probably the most badass concert ever to take place in Southington.  being a private affair, I had no idea about it and neither did most anyone else…  whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

    Two things spring to mind:

    1. It would have been good to know this ahead of time because we could have dome some actual communicating instead of rushed phone conversations with me at work and Napoleon in an airport somewhere.  It is just the nature of bid-nezz that we were not exchanging a lot of details about our itineraries during phone calls about the travel issues surrounding Rochefort.
    2. and, the Aqua Turf thing is kinda hilarious because back in the day it was a “swim club” with a 9-hole chip and putt golf course.  I had family with memberships there so I swam in the old concrete and sand “ceee-ment pond” and used to catch lunker bass in the golf course ponds!  It was very much a redneck scene as far as I remember it.  How the place became a major event destination is a tribute to the Calvanese family…. but I do miss the bass fishing.

    BTW, if you are, or know of, who the FZ-mad lawyer is, drop me a line!  Love to know the missing link to this story.

  • Burn That Weeny!

    OK… I think we are at the end of the BWS saga. One more post when the thing gets released on CD. More or less. The mission: create an homage to Zappa’s Burnt Weeny Sandwich album in 5 minutes or less. My additional “special ops” task: create a 21st track form all 20 official tracks. A sort of megamix sample mashup.

    At Zappanale 18 I was approached by Andrew Greenaway about this project. Usually Zappanale is, for all it’s charms, almost hostile to the older Zappa material. The Flo & Eddie band is almost entirely ignored. The original mothers are lauded, but their music is not heavily exposed. I was shocked to hear Andrew dare to speak of something that came before Roxy! The NERVE! Perhaps we should find a quiet spot so as not to be detected? I digress… But, he also hit on my soft spot for this album, and of the excellence of that version of the Mothers.

    It’s no secret that I enjoyed working on this project. Burnt Weeny Sandwich (BWS) was a revelation to me when I first heard it some 30+ years ago. I always saw it in the shops and had formed some expectations that it would be like a more modern version of Freak Out or something… That was easy to do when access to the audio on the vinyl disc meant either knowing someone who owned it and would lend it, or coughing up the cash for your own copy. I had borrowed Apostrophe, and I had bought a used copy of Absolutely Free, and I had heard Freak Out at some parties in my neighborhood. The more modern, arena rock (if you will) sound of the albums from the Ralph Humphrey band onward was what I was hearing. It turned out that the later efforts of the Mothers was what I needed to be hearing. BWS is a wide ranging melange of chamber music and guitar solos, bracketed by doo-wop numbers. It has great compositions, above average recordings (maybe as good as it got for the original Mothers), and overall it has excellent symmetry.

    One of the most beautiful things about the Zappa catalogue is the way you can hear Frank learn, improve, mature, push boundaries (his and ours), and consistently forge ahead, whether the audience (or sometimes himself, I believe) was ready. The mix of concert audio, chamber/orchestra, and studio material was almost unheard of. FZ pulled it off like it was de rigeur.

    So yeah… I was in. He had me at “weeny”.

    Some months ago, about 18 or so as I count it, I finished my contribution to the 21xBWS compilation, titled Radioveture. It is impressionistic, heavily influenced by the musique concrete techniques that I was introduced to by Zappa, and featuring some of my dearest friends’ musical input. I was one of the first to complete a submission, and I thought that we would be finished tracking in early spring of ’09, and seeing a CD in Summer ’09. I think Andrew Greenaway did as well. One year later we are back on schedule, and it has really been worth the wait.

    About a month ago Andrew did something really cheeky to me. When he sent me the other 19 tracks for the “special ops” project he didn’t send me the names of the tracks! Just 19 numbered files and a small batch of “outtakes”. I played along. I gave the whole batch an audition in numerical order. I was, as I hear the kids say… gobsmacked. I heard the other contributors using some of same the textures I had used, some of the themes, some of the humor, some of the love… It was like BWS had transmitted a kind of intrinsic musical DNA that was leaking through the various projects. Of course it does, as all great music does. Still, it caught me by surprise.

    On the megamix track I left some of the samples are out in plain view. As well, some are so mutated that they are reduced to subliminal textures. My guide star was the feel of Civilization Phaze III, but not in a direct way. I also received, at the 11th hours and 30 minutes, a bonus piece of spoken-word/sprechstimme from my bestest cosmic amigo Gamma. That was crucial because I wanted to have something to tie it all together and provide a layer of continuity. Thanks, Gamma. You came through in the nick!

    The track is titled Weenyization Phaze 21 and I’ll put up a link when it goes live to the public (special bonus track to the official release is what I hear brewing).

    I have a plan to use the techniques from the BWS and IBS projects as the foundation of a full length release, but more on that as/if it comes to fruition. So, that’s a ramble through some of the background and concepts that have been running through my cranium lo these 18+ months. Hope some of you get to dig it when it comes out.

    Later, and Cheers.

  • So Many Burnt Weenys!

    Andrew Greenaway dropped a load of tracks from his 21xBWS compilation on me. 19 of them I have never heard, one I composed, and now I will dissect those 20 tracks and create an abomination to be known as THE BONUS TRACK THAT ATE HACKENSACK!

    The idea, as it was explained to me, is to create an homage to Frank Zappa’s glorious Burnt Weeny Sandwich in the space of 5 minutes or less. That kind of idea really grabbed me and I was happy to be involved (still am, oddly enough!). I’m two tracks in and already I am shocked at how consistent some of the elements are. I’m enjoying this.

    Here is an early draft of my contribution Radioveture

  • Musically speaking…

    I took a sabbatical from playing music (instruments that is, not listening) during 2008. I really wasn’t feeling it, and felt that my job and family needed the additional focus. I’ve taken breaks from it before. This time I had other “old guy” concerns… my hands are kinda trashed from early arthritis and years of rock climbing, construction, cooking… They take a lot longer to get limber, if at all. I have a very different approach (not like Les Paul, gritting out beautiful playing with two claws for hands, but I was never that good and will never be that good) but that’s the way it has been going lately anyhow. The more time I spend around music the more I focus on the structure of instrumentation, arrangement, form, interplay, rhythmic elements… as being the “forest”, and I am less concerned with the trees. While my enthusiasm for playing has picked up, the intent has changed. Whether I can make that audible is another issue entirely.

    I’m in the process of planning DOOT! performances at Zappanale 20, this August in Germany. Meanwhile DOOT! is collaborating with our international band of mystery, developing some kind of group cohesion for a performance which might have one rehearsal associated with it. I LOVE that kind of stuff. Here’s to the forest!

  • Happy Festivus

    Every year it gets harder to really celebrate “the holidays”. I’m all for any good reason to get together with family and friends, but something (me, probably) really has changed. Part of it is probably that the “Thanksgiving rule” for when to start Christmas music commercials has gone the way of the dodo. I heard the first one of the year back around Halloween. Fuckers. If you remember “Hey Now” Hank Kingsley (played by genius actor Jeffrey Tambor) from the old Larry Summers show, then you know where I’m coming from on that. Fuckers.

    Anyhow. These things happen. It is a time for the kids, and I spoil the kids in my life pretty well. Not all the time, but around the holiday season I can get away with it under the banner of holiday cheer. I’d like to wish the best everyone who I won’t get to see over the next month or so. I do that most of the year anyhow, but this time with feeling.

    So gather ’round the aluminum pole, air grievances, explore the feats of strength, and don’t feel like you are beyond marking your own holiday tradition. Speaking of which, my pal Nate sent me a link to his pal (my iPal on Myspace, etc…) fossilapostle and his groovy new holiday sensation: Zappadan Ain’t it funky now?