Ray White joins ZPZ

The news for the Zappa Plays Zappa tour is that Ray White will join the band.
This is how Dweezil puts it on www.zappa.com:
"I am extremely excited to be able to present some new songs to you in our setlist this year, aided by the talents of our special guest vocalist, Ray White. I have personally always been a huge fan of the sound of his voice. Hearing him sing "Illinois Enema Bandit" and "Doreen" at rehearsals has been a lot of fun. But hearing him on other songs I've never heard him sing has been even more fun. I'm sure you all will agree when you get your chance to hear him for yourself."
The two shows in the Netherlands will be on sale on June 2. The tickets for Lund and Stockholm will be available on June 4.

40 minutes of Kate...

One of the ideas behind running an Internet "radio station" like Radio Dupree is of course the chance to play favorites that rarely will be played on mainstream channels wherever you live.

Right now we've added the second half of Kate Bush album Aerial released back in 2005.
It came as two CD's although it could've fit into one single CD if they'd worked at it. Kate said that the album should be separated into two.

We ended up with two CD's and have added the second part named A Sea Of Honey that you - according to Kate herself - should be listening as one single piece and not a set of songs.
So right now we're playing the suite containing Prelude, An Architect's Dream, Painter's Link, Sunset, Aerial Tal, Somewhere In Between, Nocturn and Aerial.

Is it wise and fine to add a 43 minute set to Radio Dupree? Add your answers in the comments and we'll act accordingly..

Steely Dan: New CD with old songs in June + book on Aja

It's a first: Donald and Walter pictured on the front of a record cover! The Millennium Collection scheduled for October has been moved to June. A smart move to get it out while the group is out on a world tour. No info on what songs will be on this collection, but its a mere 11 months after The Defintive Collection went on sale.

Added My 29: According to dimension skipper (see comments) the collection will feature the following tracks:
Josie, Rikki Dont Lose That Number, My Old School, Do It Again, Third World Man, Reelin In The Years, Only A Fool Would Say That, Deacon Blues,Time Out Of Mind and Any World (That I M Welcome To).

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Also look out for Aja in the 33 1/3 series of books written about albums and artists.

The writer is Don Breithaupt who interviewed musicians including Donald Fagen.

It's on sale now and on Radio Dupree's list of books to read this summer.

(Thanks to Gina/Mizar5 for the heads up re the book!)

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And finally a Weekend Music suggestion to Carolyn Leonhart-Escoffery and Cindy Mizelle:
If they ever get tired of doing Dirty Work they could perhaps add a cover of this great disco classic to the Heavy Rollers tour?

Zappa Plays Zappa plays Europe

Zappa Plays Zappa will do a European tour in the fall. That is announced by www.zappa.com
In case you didn't know ZPZ is a band led by Dweezil Zappa, playing his father's music. (They do it damn good too!) Here are the dates for the European tour:
Sep 25, 2007: London, UK - Shepherds Bush Empire
Sep 26, 2007: Tilburg, Netherlands - 013
Sep 27, 2007: Amsterdam, Netherlands - Melkweg
Sep 29, 2007: Fribourg, Germany - Le Fri-Son
Sep 30, 2007: Munich, Germany - Circus Krone
Oct 01, 2007: Frankfurt, Germany - Jahrhunderthalle
Oct 03, 2007: Stuttgart, Germany - KKL Beethovensaal
Oct 04, 2007: Erfurt, Germany - Messehalle
Oct 05, 2007: Paris, France - Grand Rex
Oct 06, 2007: Antwerp, Belgium - Elisabeth Hall
Oct 08, 2007: Arhus, Denmark - The Music House
Oct 09, 2007: Stavanger, Norway - Venue To Be Announced
Oct 10, 2007: Bergen, Norway - Peer Gynt
Oct 12, 2007: Oslo, Norway - Sentrum Scene
Oct 13, 2007: Lund, Sweden - Olympen
Oct 14, 2007: Stockholm, Sweden - Cirkus

Jon Herington's working on a new album

Jon Herington's been the featured guitarist on the past few Steely Dan tours and records. He's released two solo albums and one collaboration with Michael Leonhart.

Jon's been working on his new solo record. Read more on his blog. You can also listen to some of his music on his MySpace page.

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And Steely Dan added two more dates to the current tour:

June 27 - Auditorium Theater - Chicago
June 28 - Summerfest/Marcus Amp. - Milwaukee

Weekend round-up

Some Steely Dan bits & pieces:

They've added a couple more dates to the tour this week. It's Summerfest, Milwaukee on June 28 and North Sea Jazz Festival in The Netherlands July 14.

The t-shirts and stuff for this tour is up on steelydan.com. But you can't buy it through the site, you have to get to the shows.

Talking of the Steely Dan Heavy Rollers tour: Gina's Mizar5/Rumpus Room site gives us short surprise snippets of songs as captured by video/phonecam by that roving attendee "ß". Right now it's Godwhacker.

And, finally, some "Weekend Music". We from time to time link to a video of not necessarily Radio Dupree-type of music that you may/may not enjoy. We do we know. Enjoy it, that is.
This time we went with our previous post about British singer-songwriter Nerina Pallot and her cover of Peg. No video to that one yet, but her minor hit from 2006 has one; Everybody's Gone To War:

"Peg" + Nerina = A summer hit?

Nerina Pallot is a British Singer Songwriter who got a radio hit last year with Everybody's Gone To War. Now she's back with a cover of Steely Dan's Peg, predicted a summer hit by the website Popjustice, where you can hear a preview of the track: Listen here. There's a better sounding streaming link on her homepage.

It's also no coincidence that the first name she list under Influences on her MySpace page is ... Steely Dan!

Popjustice: "The song is a cover of a Steely Dan (ask your dad) track and is produced by Richard X. We think this sounds like a Top 3 single. We think your mum will like it. We think your brother will probably quite like it too. We also think that people who are off their boxes on ecstasy will find it quite agreeable while they sit on beaches in Ibiza. It is, essentially, a 'summer hit'."

What do you think? Give the version a listen and make up your mind. Feel free to comment here.
At the very least Nerina's Peg will help spread the name Steely Dan and perhaps even recruit a few more young Dan fans.

The single will be out early July.

Walter Becker's CD is here!

Nope, not the new one, but the Mose The Fireman CD released back in 1994 and out of print for many years. A children's story published by Rabbit Ears and you can read more about the upcoming incomplete version due for re-release over on the Radio Dupree homepage this month!




When you go searching for Mose The Fireman what you find is most often just the book without any audio whatsoever, the cassette or the video. If the CD pops up for sale it's usually quite expensive. So we at Radio Dupree were happy to finally find a cheap used copy that arrived today after a quick trip across the ocean from New York.

And it arrived in mint condition! Still shrink-wrapped and a joy to listen to. Although it's not for the casual Steely Dan/Walter Becker fan, but the completist and curious hardcore fan.

The CD has a 22 minute story told by actor Michael Keaton followed by seven instumental tunes in a happy, jazzy vein. Mostly short numbers that add upp to around 15 minutes of music. Mose The Fireman is set for re-release in June of this year. But check out Radio Dupree's homepage to learn why you shouldn't buy that if you want to hear the music.

Here's a link to Tomas Boberg's Steely Dan site. It features a Real Audio file of one of the songs; King Of The Bowery. Where you'll hear the rest? On Radio Dupree of course!

Showtime!

Today marks the start of Steely Dan's big tour. Beale Street Music Festival in Memphis today and New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival tomorrow.
Fan's pages are filling up with positive vibes and want lists of what songs they like the band to play live this time around.

Radio Dupree predicts that come Monday as sure as the there is day and night, yin and yang, the moaning will begin about "boring setlist" and "why didn't they play THIS song or THAT song" as well as "I paid xx amount of dollars for the tickets and demand to get my monies worth!"

See you at the shows...

Zappa's Buffalo = Great!

The brand new release from Vaulternative Records is probably the company's best product so far. It's a 2 CD set featuring an entire concert from October 1980. Until today some fans have not been too enthusiastic over that particular band: No percussionist and few intrumentals were some of the reasons for that.

It's my guess that many of those fans now will change their opinion, because this album is a killer! It features a well chosen set of songs and the musicianship is excellent. The mix is really great although one can hear changes in sound when the multi track tape runs out and the producer has used another source. When recording the concert they were probably using a multi track machine and covering up the tape changes with a cassette or reel machine fed with a 2 track mix.

Drummer Vinnie Colaiuta and Frank are the stars of the show.

I will listen to Buffalo a lot. Finally here is a message to you who would like to hear it too: BUY this product instead of downloading it. Thereby you will support future products of the same standard.

/Siggy

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And if Siggy says so it's good enough for us! Buffalo is our Album of the Month in May.
More on Buffalo as well as a Walter Becker re-release plus some other stuff on the updated Radio Dupree homepage.

Fagen's Nightfly trilogy cover and autographed

This is what the cover of the upcoming Nightfly trilogy looks like. You can also pre-order it over at donaldfagen.com. The first 100 copies signed by Donald himself!

Ubuntu!

We've been busy trying to get some life into our notebook that stopped working a few weeks back.
Now, where did we put that restore-CD? It was long lost and after being able to save stuff from the notebook using a linux distribution called Ubuntu we thought we'd give Ubuntu a try rather than buying a new Windows XP or Vista or getting a pirate version.

It was easy to install, easy to get online and fairly easy to set up the sound handling software. Easy enough to help us get a couple of tracks converted and uploaded to Radio Dupree today using Ubuntu/Linux.

What's next? Getting that USB wireless connection working ... and getting the monthly update of our website done and published. News about our Album of the Month plus the regular stuff. Oh, we even have some news regarding Walter Becker! Check out the homepage towards the end of this week.