King Crimson: Great sample from upcoming album

"Easy Money" live in Japan - an excerpt from King Crimson's forthcoming album - "Radical Action to Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind" - a triple CD and BluRay set available from 3rd September. Sounds great, right?

More information on the album and the upcoming European tour here.

Ex Turtle dislikes Republicans' use of "Happy Together"

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-turtles-gop-convention-happy-together-20160718-snap-story.html

Fifty years ago today...

Today on July 27 it is fifty years since the release of Freak Out!, the first album by Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention.
A ground breaking album in several ways; the collage technique in the music, the satirical lyrics and attitude, the idea of a concept album.

Listen to the album here:
https://play.spotify.com/album/6qfS5de8GAy1G5tk7tyiof

Listen to Sveriges Radio's celebration of the 50th anniversary of Freak Out! (Not sure if the link works outside Sweden though):
http://sverigesradio.se/sida/avsnitt/734110?programid=767

Catch the Steely Dan Marathon on Inside MusiCast Radio!

The Inside MusiCast Radio Steely Dan Marathon, hosted by "Steely Danologist" and Monkey House frontman Don Breithaupt started yesterday and will run for a few more hours. If you miss it there's other fine music on the station. And a lot of audio and text on the site for you to enjoy.

http://www.insidemusicast.com/

Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words

A new documentary on Frank Zappa has premiered. It's 90 minutes long, titled "Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words" and directed by Thorsten Schütte.

https://www.facebook.com/eatthatquestion.frankzappainhisownwords/

It's getting good reviews and here's what brother Bob thinks about it.

Dweezil Zappa on the Zappa vs Zappa spat

The place to hear it is comedian Mark Maron's WTF-podcast. Link here. Interview starts seven minutes in.

The Zappa name has been in the news lately thanks to, errrr... "diverse opinions" regarding financial matters among the Zappa siblings. Add a few lawyers and you get a downward spiral of a mess.

Zappa fans might find this interview interesting, even heartbreaking. Go give it a listen.

Celebrate Midsummer with Radio Dupree!

It's that time of year again. Midsummer. Next to Christmas the most important holiday of the year. Here's a surprisingly true video of the whole weekend:

Swedish Midsummer for Dummies from Sweden on Vimeo.

Swedish Midsummer – a holiday devoted to eating, drinking, dancing and assorted pagan rituals. This is a guide to making the most of it.

Read more about Midsummer in Sweden: https://sweden.se/traditions/midsummer/

Pink Floyd albums back on vinyl again - and on UK stamps!

Pink Floyd Records has begun the reintroduction of the group's catalogue on vinyl for the first time in over two decades. 
The first four records are ‘The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn’, ‘A Saucerful Of Secrets’, the soundtrack from the film ‘More’ and the 2 LP set ‘Ummagumma’.

More here: www.pinkfloyd.com/vinyl

Also, Royal Mail in the UK is celebrating Pink Floyd with the release of special Pink Floyd stamps. 

Release date: July 7.
Details here: royalmail.com/pinkfloyd

"Circus Money" 8 years old today

It was June 10 back in 2008 that Walter Becker released his second solo album; Circus Money.
Here's hoping the third one will appear before June 10 2017! ;-)

(While we wait we'll give Circus Money a few more listens...)

Two new Frank Zappa albums

What a surprise! We just got Road Tapes #3 and now there are two more CD's on there way. 
The Crux Of The Biscuit seems to be the most interesting one. It was created in conjunction with the 40th anniversary of Zappa's highly rated 1974 album Apostrophe ('). It contains rare alternate mixes, live performances & studio session outtakes.
The other one is called Frank Zappa For President. Seems to include some 80's material, but maybe other stuff as well. You never know what is behind those titles.

Track lists to both albums here.

Unboxing Jon Herington's Adult Entertainment (Special Edition)

Hot on the heels of our first unboxing video in September last year comes this, our second, featuring a light brown box with a few CD:s and t-shirts. Enjoy!

More over on jonherington.com

Rickie Lee Jones joins Steely Dan for October shows

Steely Dan has just announced the by now traditional run of New York shows to the 2016 tour.
Ten nights at the Beacon Theatre with four of the band's albums getting one night each; Aja, The Royal Scam, Gaucho and Countdown to Ecstasy.

There's also the usual Greatest Hits night and the By Popular Demand night. Four of the ten shows will have Rickie Lee Jones as a Special Guest. Can we expect Steely Dan to join during her version of Show Biz Kids?

Tickets go on sale June 10 with an American Express Pre-sale starting June 2.

Oct 12……The Royal Scam - Plus Selected Hits

Oct 14……Special Guest - Rickie Lee Jones

Oct 15……Special Guest - Rickie Lee Jones

Oct 18……Aja - Plus Selected Hits

Oct 19……By Popular Demand

Oct 22……Gaucho - Plus Selected Hits

Oct 25……Special Guest - Rickie Lee Jones

Oct 26……Special Guest - Rickie Lee Jones

Oct 28…… Countdown to Ecstasy - Plus Selected Hits

Oct 29…… Greatest Hits

More (including the June 7 - July 17 summer dates):
steelydan.com
facebook.com/steelydan

Zappa's Road Tapes #3 on Spotify now

Today is the official release date of Road Tapes venue #3, and the music is also available through Spotify and Apple Music. 

In fact all three volumes in the series can be streamed through Spotify now.

This one, like the previous ones, is a 2 CD set. We get one show per disc. Yes, there were two shows that evening at Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.

We expected to be a bit tired to hear yet another recording of the Flo & Eddie band, BUT this is actually surprisingly interesting. The later releases of the Flo & Eddie band have actually featured the 1971 line up. This is with the 1970 band at an early stage. That means we get to hear George Duke on keyboards and Jeff Simmons on bass.

Although the band had not been together for more than maybe two months they had managed to rehearse a rather big repertoire: two different shows with around a dozen songs each. No more than three songs are played twice.

At this time Zappa chose to play many songs that were already released, which wasn't the case when the old Mothers of Invention were around. Here we get several songs from Uncle Meat as well as We're Only In It For The Money. Actually, all of them do not sound that great, Mark and Howie's harmonies does not always match and on other places the p.a. system eats it,

There seem to be two sound sources: the better of them is probably a multi track recording (the ol' four track?). where they have set up several microphones on the stage. Quite a lot of stereo effect. It is not our impression that this is a line recording.

There must have been some recording problems during the 1st show since the other source cuts in here and there. And the second source sounds like an audience recording.

Now, if you put on a pair of decent ear phones you will hear a strange thing. During the "audience recording source" there is a leakage of (orchestral ?) music of unknown origin. We first assumed that there was another event going on in the venue and that the sound leaked through, but after listening again we think it is from the tape. The tape used must have been a badly erased one, so the earlier recording remained on the tape to some degree. Something like that. A little disturbing.

Overall this is actually quite a gem. The highlights are the instrumental pieces, the epic version of Chunga's Revenge that ends the 2nd show for instance.

And you hard core fans are probably very curious to find out how the track The Nancy & Mary Music was pieced together. It was recorded during these shows and released on the Chunga's Revenge album.

Listen to Road Tapes #3 here.

Jon Herington giving us some Adult Entertainment

Inspired by the 1960's pop/rock music and with echoes of Beatles, Stones, Motown, Stax and even countyry and reggae. That's how the brand new album Adult Entertainment is described.

A long time guitarist with Steely Dan since 2000 Jon has released a few albums under his own name along the way. Adult Entertainment is the latest.

Listen to it here and read more over on jonherington.com. That's also the place where you can order the signed, special edition pre-release version.

Dylan, McCartney, Young, Waters, The Who and Rolling Stones go on a Desert Trip

Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Roger Waters and The Who all on one three day festival? Yes it will happen October 7-9 this year.

The place? Indio, California.

But what about ticket prices? we hear you ask. They should be astronomical with this kind of line up.
Well, general admission three day tickets start at 399 US dollars. To get reserved floor passes you have to cough up between 699 and 1 599. And then there's the grandstand passes at 1 599. As well as the cheap one day option general admission passes selling for 199. Plus fees.

More here: http://home.deserttrip.com