Few bands down the years have attracted as much media attention in one way or another as Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention, and another potted history of the band is about as redundant as replicating reissue£ album sleeve notes in a glossy magazine and calling it a headline feature. That's not our style; and it would be insulting the intelligence of our readership to suggest that they don't know the broad details of the band and their history already. However, the recent news that Billy James of the band Ant Bee was working with several ex-Mothers and Grandmothers caused a flurry of interest at Terrascope Towers on two counts, initially that such a fascinating current-day artist (and the subject already of a feature in the magazine) should have linked arms with such legendary figures as Bunk Gardner, Don Preston and Jimmy Carl Black with a view to creating new music very much in the freeform avant-garde Mothers-day way, and secondly that here was a chance to chat to each one of them in an informal way and perhaps bring out a few points that the historians had missed in their endless reworkings of features, books, articles and magazines. (read more)

Source: slime.oofytv.set 

Last issue, we commenced a mini-series of interviews with former members of the Mothers of Invention with a fascinating insight into the life and times of drummer Jimmy Carl Black. Regular readers will have been looking forward to the sequel with some anticipation; for those of you new to the magazine though, what we've set out to do in this series of fireside chats is not build up a' complete picture of the Mothers, which has been documented ad infinitum in innumerable other specialised publications, but rather profile the careers of various individuals concerned – right up indeed to the present day, where several of these GrandMothers can be found playing with the remarkable Ant Bee (a.k.a. Billy James), which is how we managed to track them down in the first place. Thanks, Billy. (read more)

Source: slime.oofytv.set 

Continuing the series of interviews with former members of The Mothers Of Invention organised for us by Billy James (of the band Ant Bee, who has been recently recording with various ex-Mothers and Grandmothers). This issue it's the turn of keyboard and bass player Don Preston – a man whose career with Frank Zappa spanned the period 1966 to 1974, with time off for good behaviour in between, effectively from the LPs 'Absolutely Free' through to 'Roxy & Elsewhere'. Add to that stints with artists as varied as Carla Bley and Nat King Cole, Leo Sayer and Jack Bruce, the Fraternity of Man and The Residents and you have one prime target for the Terrascopic treatment: so without further ado, we'll skip to sunny Los Angeles for the Don Preston interview (courtesy of the patent Terrascope Self Interviewing Technique, no strings, mirrors or artificial stimulants used throughout ... ) (read more)

Source: slime.oofytv.set 

An overview of all the Zappa albums reissued on CD by Ryko.

Source: slime.oofytv.set