More Zappa

The prices were already very high...and they're getting higher???

Haven't bought any post-lost episodes Zappa (except wazzo) and it don't looks like i'll start buying them soon.

It's discussed here:

The ZFT is a worry reading from DZ's site its nasty nasty nasty. 

Michael P. Dawson wrote: People did nothing but bitch about Gail being too stingy with releases of archival FZ. Me, I'm delighted to see the floodgates open up a bit.

This exactly.  I'm a huge, huge Zappa fan.  I have been since the mid 70s. (I was born in 1962.)  I saw him live on 70 different days, and most of those days had two shows where I went to both.  I own every Zappa release and hundreds of bootlegs.  I've got a huge pile of books, magazine articles etc. about him--everything I've been able to find basically.  As a musician I've played with people who played with him.  Zappa and his music have been a big enough influence on me that I can't remove it from my own work. If there was any possible way I could have afforded it, I would have bought their house when it was on the market recently.  They were actually asking a decent price for it--$5 million--but I can't afford a $5 million house.  I'm a musician whose work is heavily influenced by Zappa after all.  (Well, I also do a lot of journeyman/studio musician etc. stuff, doing other folks' music, too, but I don't make enough in that capacity to be able to afford a $5 million house.)   So that's how big of a Zappa fan I am.  My biggest "absence" was that I never had an opportunity to actually meet Zappa.

I'd rather see a crapload of releases, even if some seem superfluous or of lesser quality, than to see releases just trickle out.  Again, I have hundreds of bootlegs.  Plenty of those have questionable sound quality.  But I'd rather be able to hear those shows with bad sound quality than to not be able to hear them at all.

Re all the Zappa Plays Zappa/Zappa Family Trust/etc. bickering that was going on, I never really understood all of that anyway.  Maybe Gail/the ZFT owned/owns the "Zappa Plays Zappa" name somehow (that seems dubious since Dweezil came up with it, but I suppose it has to be the case for any of this to make sense), but there's absolutely nothing that can stop Dweezil from playing Frank's music and not having to pay any significant amount of money for doing so.  You're allowed to perform whatever cover songs you'd like to perform.  You're allowed to do this both live and on recordings.  You do not need permission to do so.  There are compulsory licenses for this.  The only issues would be if Dweezil were trying to use recordings of Frank's music that Gail/the ZFT owns the rights for, and selling merchandise with Frank's image, or the moustache and goatee logo, etc., on it, since Gail/the ZFT would have a trademark for those.  Dweezil could simply name his band "Zappa" though and there's no way he could be stopped from doing so, since that's his legal name.

One article on the familial quagmire says, "It remains unclear why Moon and Dweezil were excluded as trustees, nor is it known why, as the New York Times claims, Gail ‘defied’ her dying husband’s instructions to sell his master tapes and get out of the music business upon his demise.

Edited by Terrapin Station - November 07 2016 at 07:10

Terrapin Station wrote: Michael P. Dawson wrote: People did nothing but bitch about Gail being too stingy with releases of archival FZ. Me, I'm delighted to see the floodgates open up a bit. This exactly.  I'm a huge, huge Zappa fan.  I have been since the mid 70s. (I was born in 1962.)  I saw him live on 70 different days, and most of those days had two shows where I went to both.  I own every Zappa release and hundreds of bootlegs.  I've got a huge pile of books, magazine articles etc. about him--everything I've been able to find basically.  As a musician I've played with people who played with him.  Zappa and his music have been a big enough influence on me that I can't remove it from my own work. If there was any possible way I could have afforded it, I would have bought their house when it was on the market recently.  They were actually asking a decent price for it--$5 million--but I can't afford a $5 million house.  I'm a musician whose work is heavily influenced by Zappa after all.  (Well, I also do a lot of journeyman/studio musician etc. stuff, doing other folks' music, too, but I don't make enough in that capacity to be able to afford a $5 million house.)   So that's how big of a Zappa fan I am.  My biggest "absence" was that I never had an opportunity to actually meet Zappa. I'd rather see a crapload of releases, even if some seem superfluous or of lesser quality, than to see releases just trickle out.  Again, I have hundreds of bootlegs.  Plenty of those have questionable sound quality.  But I'd rather be able to hear those shows with bad sound quality than to not be able to hear them at all. Re all the Zappa Plays Zappa/Zappa Family Trust/etc. bickering that was going on, I never really understood all of that anyway.  Maybe Gail/the ZFT owned/owns the "Zappa Plays Zappa" name somehow (that seems dubious since Dweezil came up with it, but I suppose it has to be the case for any of this to make sense), but there's absolutely nothing that can stop Dweezil from playing Frank's music and not having to pay any significant amount of money for doing so.  You're allowed to perform whatever cover songs you'd like to perform.  You're allowed to do this both live and on recordings.  You do not need permission to do so.  There are compulsory licenses for this.  The only issues would be if Dweezil were trying to use recordings of Frank's music that Gail/the ZFT owns the rights for, and selling merchandise with Frank's image, or the moustache and goatee logo, etc., on it, since Gail/the ZFT would have a trademark for those.  Dweezil could simply name his band "Zappa" though and there's no way he could be stopped from doing so, since that's his legal name. One article on the familial quagmire says, "It remains unclear why Moon and Dweezil were excluded as trustees, nor is it known why, as the New York Times claims, Gail ‘defied’ her dying husband’s instructions to sell his master tapes and get out of the music business upon his demise. The Zappa Family Trust was not Frank’s idea. When Frank was gravely ill in 1993, he told his wife that he wanted her to sell the rights to his recordings and to forego the music business entirely." Knowing Gail and his kids, Frank may have forseen the mess that unfortunately arose.  For their sake, it's too bad that he didn't sell the rights to all of his recordings prior to his death.  He should have sold them to someone under particular contractual conditions for releasing stuff posthumously.  (Although if he'd sold the rights to a company like Ryko, it would be ironic that the Ryko catalog is now owned by Warner Bros.)

I picked up "The Crux of the Biscuit" - "Apostrophe" is one of my all-time favorite bass performances, and there is an unedited version which makes the disc worth it for me. There are also a couple of other tracks with Jack Bruce - as well as other alternate versions from the Apostrophe album. Will have to look into some of these new releases...