Week of Fun shit

Busy as usual, although I've had a lot of fun the past week.

as a warning, this next part might be boring if you aren't into Frank Zappa. You might wanna skip ahead if you don't want to hear about the concert I just went to in excruciating detail.

Wednesday, Greg and I drove down to Providence to see the Zappa Plays Zappa concert. I mentioned it last post and I can truly say it was the single most impressive display of music I've ever experienced in my life. Having been born too late to see Frank perform, watching his son, Dweezil, and three of the original band members perform a incredibly long list of his material. It probably helped that the three original performers- Steve Vai, Terry Bozzio, and Napoleon Murphy Brock- were probably some of the most charismatic and talented players Zappa toured with, but the younger talent recruited for the tour was spot on as well. Each musician was featured prominently at different points during the show, just as Frank used to do with his band mates.

Napoleon, despite being old and balding (and maybe a little fat), was still dancing around like a maniac during the entire show like he did in his 20s. Bozzio didn't seem to be in top form and was showing his age a little bit more, but he still wowed everyone with his 60+ piece drum kit, and even performed Punky's Whips. Vai was Vai. Not a whole lot needs to be said as he is still the greatest modern rock guitar player of our time. He had plenty of jaw-dropping shit to keep the audience screaming at the top of their lungs. Dweezil tore it up unbelievably. He must have practiced a whole hell of a lot as his performance of Black Napkins was absolutely perfect. The entire band was on top of its game, really, with the "kids" playing all of their parts perfectly and looking like they were having the greatest time ever doing so. I think it was great that I got to see this show so late in the tour as the band has been playing together now for months and has had a chance to really get the material under their belt. Even if they had a year to practice that monstrous volume of ultra-dense music (they didn't), there's no way they could possibly have had it entirely "down" when the tour started. I can imagine they weren't quite so proficient for the first couple shows back during the summer.

What really made this show so incredible, though, was that they did everything a hardcore Zappa fan could hope for. So much of the best material was covered from all different eras of Zappa's career, and every time I was thinking "it'd be cool if they did X song," 10 minutes later they would break into it. There was even some audience participation like Frank used to do. Something that also impressed me was the way they took some songs and modernized them, putting their own spin on them. I'm the Slime was the best example as it's still a wonderfully pertinent song that sounded as if it was written as recently as this year. They heavied it up, making it sound borderline metal. It almost felt more appropriate for the subject matter than the original scoring did.

Finally, possibly the most impressive aspect of the show was how they played for over 3 and a half hours without a single real break. There were breaks that were sort of worked in for individual musicians over the course of the show, but there wasn't an intermission. The longest we went without hearing music once the show began was the 2 minutes between when everyone left the stage before coming back on for a very long encore. The whole thing was extremely unpretentious and was nothing but a pure display of ultra high-quality musicianship. I think Frank would have been proud and most certainly approved at his son's handling of the music.

The crowd was interesting, as it was composed mainly of people my parents' age with a smattering of 30-somethings. I found there to be very few people my age in the crowd. I liked how there was a large handful of young kids present with their parents (I saw a few that couldn't have been over 8 or 9, no kidding). It was also great to see that these young kids were dancing their asses off, having the time of their lives. It's reassuring to know that there are parents that are wise enough to bring their children to such a great concert and helping to make sure that the music of Frank Zappa is still finding new audiences.

Sorry if that was a bit of shameless rant, but I do have just under 100 hours of Zappa on my computer (yes, that's over 4 straight days of MP3s) so I guess I'm what some might call a bit of a fanatic. Seeing this show has been an incredible culmination of the last 4 years of my life spent avidly collecting and listening to Frank's music, all of which has been incredibly rewarding to wade through and begin to understand.

So moving on, Eric came to visit this weekend from Colorado. He's never seen Boston (or the east coast for that matter), so it was fun to show a complete New England virgin around. I never fully realized how much there is to do and see here when it's all new to you, as I've slowly built up knowledge of the city over the last 4 years. Friday we went out to some bars, eventually meeting up with a group of Starbucks girls to celebrate some birthdays. Saturday night was the Belgian Beer Festival which was amazing. I have some pics that I'll get up on Flickr eventually. There were over 200 beers to choose from and you just walked around with your little sample cup moving from table to table. I tried lots of beer that night and it was a great reminder of my time spent in Brussels. The wonderful benefit of drinking such good beer is the fact that you don't get any sort of hangover the next day. Today, I showed him the Garment District's awesome $1.50 per pound clothing pit. We watched the Colts/Broncos game this evening before Eric had to leave to catch his plane.

So now I'm left with a project to finish tomorrow morning and a midterm to study for (which I'm definitely not feeling confident about) that I gotta take tomorrow night. Thursday I need to present a long presentation to the class about anything Argentinian of my choosing. So far, I've put zero minutes into this, and am feeling more than a bit of apprehension about the whole thing. I'm hoping it doesn't turn into a train wreck for me. Unlike the test that I ended up getting an A on unexpectedly, I can't bullshit when I have to stand up in front of the class and talk. I also can't whip out my dictionary when I need it to look up that key word I'm missing either. Ack.

Yeah. So I'm gonna just try to get through these next two days and then we'll see what happens after that. Mmkay?