...this has to be AI, right? I mean the cover art clearly is, but what I heard of the music makes me think it's also AI generated? No musicians listed, the "BBC Contemporary Orchestra" is not a thing that exists, and his bio on Discogs is clearly a work of fiction. Anyone else seeing this?
I have the B&W negatives from the first Mothers show in LA and I am interested in selling them. I also have a couple of 45 demos. Should I contact an auction house?
Several weeks ago I ordered an Ike Willis album. I didn't realize I bought it from someone in SLOVAKIA. They messaged me and told me they shipped it, but there was no tracking information. I was at work on Monday and was upset about the news regarding Ike. I got home, started all of my routines and my wife told me, "You got a strange delivery today." I had almost forgot about it, but the album arrived just in time. Thanks for the music Ike.
Theres a spongebob sounding instrument at 11:16 that comes in after the surfer guitar bit and i just want to know what it would take to get that noise
Has anyone just been listening to something by Frank for the 100th time and get struck by something that never struck you before?
It just occurred to me that there is, in my opinion, a parallel between The Black Page #1 and A Little Green Rosetta (the version from Joe's Garage).
If you know those two, you might be thinking, "What? They're completely different from each other." Let me explain.
The Black Page #1 maintains a steady tempo and is in 4/4 the whole time, on top of which the drums and other instruments are playing extremely complicated rhythms with nested tuplets and all, but all coming together in synch with the 4/4.
A Little Green Rosetta maintains a steadily repeated musical fragment and lyric throughout the song, "A little green rosetta, a little green rosetta, a little green rosetta," yet the time, tempo, rhythms, fictional meta caveats like playing it in the 3rd world, and all kinds of weird extra-musical ideas, but all coming together with "A little green rosetta, a little green rosetta..."
Does that make any sense at all to anyone?
"A Central Texas venue erupts in frenzied bongo fury."
Sad news. Ike was a major voice. I was in touch with Ray White recently - a deep and spiritual man - and they both resided in Las Vegas I believe. Two guys from similar roots in the most unlikely band in the world. Ike was 70, Ray's older. I trust he's doing okay and that he heard the news surrounded by people who love him. God speed to both.
What an incredible artifact, it's like a time machine back to 1966. The sonic quality of a 60-year old reel-to-reel recording is amazing.
My friend asked me to explain 200 Motels before we watch it.
----
200 Motels is a 1971 opera about a contemporary rock and roll band going so insane while touring, with drugs(and lack thereof), with staying at boring Centerville (the mean average of all boring American small towns), with the literal devil, with local town groupies, and with the lack of beer, fame or money to get back home; that a government edict rules music to be wholly illegal, both for production and for consumption, commercial or not.
Experimental re-orientation facilities are constructed to turn musicians into useful members of society, and if that fails, there are concentration camps, or worse.
The musicians are to be lured to the re-education facilities with fake dick/breast enlargement ads.
This is all visually told in a stagy form, where the actors, musicians and performers interchange, and interact. Sets move. Stagehands can be regularly seen. The symphonic orchestra is made to sing an oratorio about dog-soup.
Ringo Starr appears as a guitarist, who's dressed like Larry The Dwarf who is dressed like Frank Zappa. The most sexist white man in history is sung as “Cowboy Burt”, but performed by a Native-American. Or as said in many other Zappa albums, “I’m Jimmy Carl Black, and I’m the Indian of the group". Keith Moon is a harp playing nun, while Theodore Bikel plays both the devil, and the presenter of the tv show that is inside of the band’s warped mind.
Their reality collapses upon itself, and the government drags them away to the camps. Bringing back some order and security to Amerika.
For a coda the whole cast sings a thank you anthem to all who worked on the production, especially as most of them are well unlucky to live in Britain, "and all of the food these people must eat".
Credits.
This is all shot and edited on some of the earliest video technology in history. The editor goes mad with rudimentary but very analog special effects. It’s not the tech we know from later commercial use of video as it’s still in its prototype phase.
Lets watch!
Ike Willis (November 12, 1955 – May 16, 2026) RIP. Another passing of a great musician
Check out this amazing version of Mo by my friend Filip Fjellström!
Mine doesn't actually have the hot spots ads, I assume they just googled it online and assumed it had it. I'm too afraid to play it but it visually looks like it's in great shape with no dirt or scratches!
Plenty of low quality videos of it exist, and at one point it was available on Arte and Qwest TV, but they're long gone now. It's a fantastic album made even better by the performance, and it'd be a shame if I couldn't find a place to watch it. Pretty please.