Q

Q is a music and entertainment magazine published monthly. Founders Mark Ellen and David Hepworth were dismayed by the music press of the time which they felt did not cater for the generation of older music buyers who were buying the then new CD technology from artists other magazines would ignore such as Paul Simon, Level 42, or Dire Straits. Modelled after Rolling Stone, it was first published in 1986 and set itself apart from much of the other music press by being produced monthly and with higher standards of photography and printing. The magazine was billed in the early years by its sub-title, "The modern guide to music and more". Its name was originally intended to be Cue (as in the sense of cueing a record, ready to play) but was changed to avoid being mistaken for a snooker magazine. (wikipedia)

1989 December

No. 39

Frank's Wild Years
By Andy Gill, pp 88-91, 93

At dead of night, behind barred gates and video security cameras up in the Hollywood Hills above Los Angeles, a tall, angular man with neatly trimmed hair and moustache sits at the console of his home studio. He wears a tracksuit and trainers and looks young for his age – he'll be 49 by Christmas – but every now and then his kidney stones give him a painful reminder of mortality. Frank Zappa is busy remixing his past. The digital editing suite adjoining the lavishly appointed studio has shelf upon shelf of master tapes of every performance by The Mothers of Invention since Zappa's original engineer Dick Kunc first started recording their gigs with a 2-track analogue mixer and a portable Uher recorder back in 1969. One of Frank's current projects is the compilation of a 13-hour, six double-CD retrospective series of live performances culled from these tapes, called You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore. It's a typically gargantuan undertaking from a man who, in 1984, released a triple-album (Thing-Fish) a mere month after a double-album (Them or Us), and who has already issued both a triple-album and a double-CD comprised solely of guitar solos. Frank's a virtual one-man cottage industry now, figurehead and creative engine of a network of companies with piquant Zappaesque names: Barking Pumpkin Records, Barfko-Swill, Munchkin Music, 818 Pumpkin and, perhaps most unusual of all in its directness, Zappa Records. (read more)