Articles

Daily articles carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. Read our popular and future articles.

RADIO October 4, 2019

Zappity-Doo-Dah

To be perfectly Frank, the boys don't know all that much about rock and roll's prickliest, most demanding composer/conceptualist/guitarist/ideologue, so they look at a couple of recordings by the maestro himself and a couple by other musicians paying homage to the man with a mustache. Burt Bacharach meets Hal Wilner's tribute to Thelonious Monk in a prize-winningly eclectic pop matters sequence. (No actual prizes were awarded). Playlist Discussion of Frank Zappa's album Roxy and Elsewhere (DiscReet Records) ...

LIVE REVIEW May 2, 2019

The Bizarre World of Frank Zappa Tour at The Paramount

By Mike Perciaccante

The Bizarre World of Frank Zappa Tour The Paramount Huntington, NY April 24, 2019 Frank Zappa was one of the most eclectic and influential musicians for the 20th Century. The musician, composer, activist and filmmaker's work and career exemplifies nonconformity, improvisational musical themes, sound experiments and technical musical virtuosity. Satire of the American experience and culture played a huge part in Zappa's oeuvre. Zappa's career was lengthy, lasting over 30 years. He composed and released ...

RADIO April 4, 2019

I Sing the Lineup Eclectic

By Patrick Burnette

Cool organ, hot tenor, acapella movie theme and third-stream oboe musings—this episode has everything but a theme. While the albums discussed span the era from 1972 to 2014 the insights are timeless-probably. After that wide-ranging exploration of jazz and jazz adjacent fun, pop matters explores Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden as well as releases by Frank Zappa and Pulp. Playlist Discussion of Oregon's album Music of Another Present Era (Vanguard) 2:48 Discussion of Bennie Wallace's album The Free ...

RADIO December 26, 2018

Frank Zappa's Jazz Legacy Refuses to Die, Part 2

By Ludovico Granvassu

This week we continue the retrospective dedicated to Frank Zappa's complex relationship with jazz, through a mix of the jazzier compositions performed by Zappa himself and countless tributes to his music paid by jazz musicians. As Frank Zappa loved to say, quoting Edgard Varèse, “the present day composer refuses to die" and the music featured in this show provides plenty of evidence that he was right. Happy listening! [The first part of this Frank ...

RADIO December 13, 2018

Frank Zappa's Jazz Legacy Refuses to Die

By Ludovico Granvassu

Frank Zappa may have said “jazz is not dead, it just smells funny" but looking at his life and music one does not get the impression that he really believed that jazz was decomposing or dying a slow death. On Freak Out, one of the most impressive debut albums of all times, he included a list of 179 people that had influenced him, including jazz luminaries like Charles Mingus, Cecil Taylor, Eric Dolphy and Rahsaan Roland Kirk ...

FILM REVIEW March 5, 2016

Frank Zappa: The Lost Broadcast - The Full Performance

By Glenn Astarita

Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention The Lost Broadcast -The Full Performance Gonzo Multimedia 2016 There aren't many videos floating around of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, but The Lost Broadcast should be received with welcome arms by loyal Zappa enthusiasts and others who still have a burning interest in his legacy. Recorded in 1968 at the Beat Club in Bremen, Germany, and broadcasted for a German TV station in 1970, the ...

BOOK EXCERPTS September 15, 2015

Zappa and Jazz: Did it Really Smell Funny, Frank?

By Geoffrey Wills

The following is an excerpt from “Chapter 2: Early Encounters with Jazz" of Zappa and Jazz: Did it Really Smell Funny, Frank? by Geoffrey Wills (Matador, 2015). When, at the age of fourteen, Zappa entered Mission Bay High School in jny: San Diego in 1955, his first exposure to the elitist snobbery of a certain type of jazz fan occurred. It was like a red rag to a bull, and was no doubt the source of all ...