Eddei Jobson.....UKZ

I'm at home a lot these days, which is great,.

playing a lot, working on sounds, an endless battle with your ears and the concept of objectivity vs subjectivity.....but always headed towards a simpler way to ..have tons of options.

Getting ready musically for a little Project/Object run (more on that later) , a very historic tour with our old buddy Ike Willis, but also Frank's original synth player Don Preston, and longest-running band member Ed Mann, who toured with us in November. This is the first time these three have toured together..... damn!!

But before that --- I have a project I am proud to be part of -- the upcoming debut of Eddie Jobson's new band -- UKZ !. I am helping Eddie on the planning side , setting up local production and generally "tour managing" as I often do, except this is for only ONE DAY instead of several weeks...

Tickets are already on sale -For more details Check out www.eddiejobson.com
For info on this new band check out www.ukzband.com

Click the song title for their first ever video for the new song: RADIATION

Otherwise -- hoping your 2009 is at least ....a chance to start some new projects.

We plan to be out again with Mr Belew in Mid APril - Stand by for dates!!

Hello 2009/A Day In The Life....of the ABPT/more....

Well Happy New Year and all that.....we made it to another 'new year' whatever the imaginary gregorian/julian illusion may mean.

I started off as I have for, god, 25 years or so playing "New Year's Day" by U2...just to start the year on a severely silly note. But -- still a killer track...what the Edge is doing there --and those Voxy tones... a part of my DNA. Love it. Fuck all you U2-haters, LOL! They're doing something right...same exact lineup since August 1976, wow.

Anyway --Been home for almost 3 weeks, great to be standing still ! Re-designing my studio-space, working on guitar tones. I am back to the drawing board. After you work with Al Di Meola, Adrian Belew, Ike Willis and Derek Trucks... it's very hard to EVER be satisfied with you suck-ass tone. But -- I'm real happy with a very basic setup - Mesa Boogie Lonestar right into a Marshall 4x12...heaven. More on that later. Still searching for 'that tone'. Actually rehearsing a bit with the southern edition of DELICIOUS, and we played a very fun gig last saturday in town... stay tuned..

WHAT a year --- man oh man...a zillion flights it seemed ...and at least 15 countries. Fantastic time, dunno if I can top that in 2009, let's see..

SO -- I still had a bit of the OZ/BELEW trip to talk about so here we go:

A day in the Life - ABPT
Sydney -- a couple days before the last show....we had the morning off..everyone had the option to do a city-walkabout.
10:00am I did what i NEVER do... stroll around a downtown area and go shopping!! Wow... it's global-recession-bargain time!!

At some place called Hi Fi something or other they were doing a major DVD/CD blowout... for about $6.65 USD each I grabbed:
Jeff Buckley Live in chicago
AC/DC Live at Donnington
DEVO Live/De-evolution
Satriani Live In San Fran

and on CD for about $9.00 USD the new AC/DC Black Ice....(I'm glad I got this since back home you can ONLY get it at WalMart!) I don;t totally boycott them on principle, but try to avoid going in there..

So I was stocked up on music, and also grabbed some clothes, sneakers, great Global Economic Meltdown Prices..wherever you go!!

1:00 pm The Middle Eastern food is awesome here, as is the Indian, Thai and more. Quick cheap lunch at a food court, which generally are amazing in their choices and quality/cost of food. Vegan Heaven.
Back to the hotel in time for......

3:45 pm - Lobby Call for the 30-40 min ride to Cronulla, New South Wales
(Ah the Brits. They LOVED to attach English-City & Town Names to EVERY fucking place they rolled into and violently raped and pillaged...the world is littered with Queenstowns, New Londons, Georgetowns, Victorias, Perths, Liverpools, Manchesters, Kingstons, Lake Victorias, Yorks, Queens-this and-that...and here - NEW South Wales. You stick the NEW on there and all is well. Man they were some brutal fuckers. But - hey -- great schools.)


Anyway -- here is the band-in-the-van on the way down.....


The club is a SMALL one..dinner type theater (again)...this one with that pinnacle of stage-design genius -- the triangle-stage-in-a-corner. Great. Who ever decided to put the stage in a corner- SMACK !!! But -- we squeezed them on there.... all is cool. Julie is running only a 4x10 tonight instead of the usual 8x10, and Adrian has a pair of classic cabs -- older, mono 1960 Marshall Tweed 4x12s.

For monitors - we have merely...TWO mixes. This will be a little challenge, ideally this band uses FOUR mixes... but again , Adrian, being a very tolerant and flexible soul, allowed me to put his VG-99 guitar and Boomerang Loops in the front wedges, with his vocals. In this set, he never sings while he's playing the virtual-guitar stuff, so it works out cool..
5:30 pm Here's the trio soundchecking..as you can se it's a seated place, kind of mellow dinner theater vibe..

Soon they're done and off to dinner - this place feeds us , but not till after 730. So the band split to find some Japanese. I'm running a bit behind them as usual since I have to tweak a couple things, tape some pedals down and do some laptop-work. Cool little town, I think i'll split now and just walk the street a bit...and check out the new AC/DC......which of course, is GREAT 'cos it's...just like the older AC/DC. Actually, some nice new touches here and there, but it's Gibsons into Marshalls all the way. Nice.


cool..found another GREAT little indian place. Like the English, the Aussies love their curries...and so little "curry shops" are EVERYWHERE....

I was enjoying a very excellent combo plate, a Dhal, a spinach curry, mixed vggies, a pakora.. always so easy to find vegan indian... when a distinctive bald man hurrying don the sidewalk looked in, saw me, stopped and turned on his heel and greeted me with a smile,

He had arrived at the club early and they told him I headed out to eat... - it was the legendary CHRIS HASKETT.....Chris has released some amazing solo CDs out over the last decade or so, and is the longtime guitarist for, amongst other bands, the Rollins Band.

In my opinion, what Chris laid down in the late 80s and early 90s was part of the bedrock of post-punk hard-rock guitar sounds....his crushing "PRS into Mesa-Boogie" sound changed my life...we would go see EVERY Rollins Band show anywhere within a couple hours..in NY, NJ, Philly, whatever!
The intensity of Rollins' stripped down marine drill-sergeant vocal attack.....and Chris' Zen like calm as he created the most vicious squall of guitar madness, was something that hasn't been duplicated. Underpinning all of it -who could forget the thunderous bass of Andrew Weiss, (and later Melvin Gibbs), and the machine-gun-deep groove drumming of Sim "Sugar" Cain.

Again --Thanks to youtube, you can crank up the glory that was (and maybe will be again..) the Rollins Band. They reunited briefly in 2007?? 2006 to tour with the great X (Exene Cervenka and all original members), and who knows what the future will bring..but they are well documented.

If you scroll down to my Eindhoven NL entry you'll see we had a special guest show up to see the show: Theo Van Rock -- Rollins longtime sound man. It's all connected -- Adrian Belew appears on a track with Rollins on the recent William Shatner album.

And at Adrian's house - his studio alarm system is..a Rollins!!! Every time I go thru this door , I can't HELP but picture Henry Rollins crouched in the bushes, waiting for an intruder, so he can bellow " WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE, MAAAAAAANNN!!!! YOU ARE TRESPASSING!! YOU MUST THINK YOU'RE GONNA LIVE FOR-EVER!!!!!!!!!!?"


So Chris came in and we caught up nicely as I chowed, he had eaten already. Finishing my awesome curries, we were just about to leave and, looking out the door he exclaimed "Hey is that Adrian!?!?!" I whipped around and yes, It was Ade racing by, mysteriously.... We gathered our stuff and headed in his direction...he had disappeared, like the Mad Hatter. A mystery indeed. Turned out he had left his satchel in a Japanese restaurant and was rushing back over to retrieve it, which thankfully he did. Chris and I caught up with him in the square, after some intros we headed back to the club. Two guitarists who played with Bowie!! Cool.!
7:45 pm The place was starting to get a nice little crowd in there, happy fine-beer lovin' Aussies..drinkin'. chatting and eating. Ah this is the life. Soon it was time to start. I went to get the band from "the green room" which in this case was the beauty salon next door!! Hilarious but it worked...the hilarity continued at the set-break with Chris and Adrian promoting one of the waxing products in the place..

10:30 pm Really great show -- with only a couple left in the year you could feel it -the band had a sense of "let's go for it and shut this puppy down for 2008"..or at least that's how I perceived it...Adrian especially just played some really blistering stuff... really got out there on the improv solos.....

Post show the band did the traditional hang n' sign with some great fans. Here they are just as it was being set up:

People were fantastica and welcoming - and in general were amazed that we came to little, "remote" Cronulla, New South Wales, Australia. Folks, check your maps...Head a bit south from all this and ...you're in Antarctica!!

I'm fond of looking at the globe "upside down'. It's COMPLETELY ARBITRARY that we view the map of the world the way we do. Actually -- it's clearly the bias of the first global-map makers, perhaps the Chinese and then Europeans, perhaps the Vikings. Either would OF COURSE put their homeland at "the top" and the European explorers/map makers to follow had no argument with that . We have the POLES which are indeed a clear geometric way to describe the planet's motion - around an axis. But the concept of UP/DOWN or TOP/BOTTOM is meaningless in space - and aliens approaching the solar system would indeed react to the PLANE it spins on- with the SUN as the center/axis. They could approach from EITHER direction that we consider 'solar north' or 'solar south' but in actual fact the whole notion of 'top of the earth' or 'down under' is not rooted in ANYTHING , it' s simply cultural and imaginary.

Anyway look at how fucking close we were to the continent of Antarctica ( A Belew track, by the way) . For the hell of it here's the 'traditional' view. BTW all these pics are courtesy of the wonderful iPhone - which not only runs google earth amazingly but lets you do screen-shots of anything.

ADELAIDE GUITAR FESTIVAL.........

ADELAIDE GUITAR FESTIVAL

we flew on friday to Adelaide (check your maps now)...another city on the south east coast of Oz, where all of this tour is happening. There are a couple other coastal cities like Darwin on the north coast and Perth on the southwest... but -- otherwise...outback!!

Check out this sign in the airport - Damn!! there goes one of my fave things to do in a new city-- Drink the Toilet Flushing Water. Sheesh.

Adelaide was really cool, maybe my fave, cos quite a bit smaller, yet full on city with everything there..just a little more simple and old school. Incredible shops and again -- a ZILLION asian restaurants, just name the country and they had 4 restaurants. cool. This is also the home of COOPER'S BEER, who sponsored the fest..and dammit I never had one!! Not really drinking lately. I think -- after Russia -- where I was sloshed every fuckin day -- I decided to take a lil break! But I need to try a Cooper's.. I hear.

And how about this local honey?? Anyone wanna hazard a guess as to how they, um, make this?
I'm all for local ingredients and such...But --- what exactly is up here....? But, seriously, as a natural-food store shopper for 25+ years, employee for 15+ years, and owner for 10+ years, I went into one of the best stores i've ever seen anywhere, here in Melbourne, and one of the really impressive things is how strong of a local natural manufacturing base they have --Lots of great local organic items, and New Zealand, of course a massive source for natural foods..is one of the strictest places on the planet for organic growing methods, recycling, green industry, sustainable agriculture, etc. Good stuff.




So I knew I'd have a cool reunion in this town -- and indeed, we had just checked in when YONRICO SCOTT walked out of an elevator. He's the drummer from the DEREK TRUCKS BAND... I did a great 3 week tour with them this past Sept. It was incredible...watching Derek nightly was a joy and very schooling for me..The whole band and crew - really great players and people - check that band out! When that tour ended I knew that we'd all be at this Guitar Festival in december. Here's the Slicks & Rico moments after they met......

The band was to play a full set on Friday Night, then day off saturday to rehearse for Sunday ---which would be the AC/DC tribute (Isn't EVERY day a tribute to AC/DC??)

Here is the band rocking a nice outdoor crowd....We did lose quite a few people when the huge local pop-punk band GRINSPOON got done with their set..it was a weird pairing but hey - three cheers for diversity..


The trio brought it -- they always sound 'larger than life' on a giant stage with those outdoor systems....and there were some very happy locals....this was a real treat -- as ALL the gigs were, since Adrian doesn't get "down" here too often..People were really great after the show, telling the band how wild it was to even get this chance. One guy flew in from New Zealand for two shows..

I had a big surprise while looking at the program notes for this event.... the MC was none other than....WNYC's John Scheafer!!! Most of you are going...What???!..but if you live in the NYC or tri-state area, you'll know the very excellent WNYC, FM and AM, fantastic public radio, NPR affiliate stations. In the fall of 1983...i was studying in college, I ultimately got an As. Sc. in Computer Science. I got into the habit of studying with WNYC FM on...as they played great classical music. One night -- pretty damned stoned -- I came home and turned on my stereo-- which was still tuned to 93.9 FM...this...bizarre music poured out of it... I grabbed a cassette and started taping .. It turned out be Laurie Anderson's "From The Air"....more amazing music poured out of the box...Philip Glass, Keith Jarrett, Jan Hammer and Jack DeJohnette...maybe some Steve Reich...I was hooked!! In 45 minutes...the next direction of my life as a listener and lover of music took a severe turn.

I was listening to NEW SOUNDS with John Schaefer. At 18yrs old I was hooked on a ton of 'new' music all at once. The show was on nightly at 11pm...and John gets my eternal thanks for turning me onto so much amazing music, ..Popul Vuh, Penguin cafe Orchestra, George Winston, Michael Hedges, (in fact windham hill in general), Scott Cosu, Scott Johnson, the aforementioned Laurie, Philip Glass, Reich, and people I had heard of but never got to hear much - John Cage, John Zorn, on and on and on -- all the downtown NYC composers, Bang On A Can, etc. It was world music...ambient..electronic, experimental, japanese shakuhachi, Stockhausen..David Borden, Alvin Lucier, weird synthesiser music, you name it!!

This show CHANGED MY LIFE...I went onto minor in music and take a LOT of ancient music, world music and theory with Phil Corner..and electronic music/ tape-based musique concrete with Dan Goode...would I have done that without this crash course every night?? Maybe?? But I did -- and i thank john -- for being a HUGE part of who I am as a musical being..years later I met him when I toured with Don Preston - one of our stops was on the show - where Don performed solo and was interviewed. It was great..

THANKS JOHN

More Fun in Oz....

BACK IN BLACK --AC/DC's best selling album, the second best-selling album of all time, and
the biggest selling album by any band, with more than 42 million copies sold worldwide. In 2006 Back in Black was certified by the Recording Industry Association of America as the fifth best-selling album in the United States, with 22 million copies sold....
(wikipedia)


Australia's been really cool. I am bumming we are not going into the hinterland...the outback.....Melbourne was slightly diverse..but I see more black people in Germany!! Where are my aborigine homies!!?? Actually I saw a few aborigines around town -- I love their completyely unique, CRAZY big-curl afros. I have Ethiopian blood, and being on the east side, the highlands of Africa, perhaps early settlers came from the eats side. I gotta do more research there...but ourr TM here tells us what one would expect -- like the native tribes in what we call america today --- they get a raw deal here -- and lots of alcoholism, poverty and unemployment prevails. You'd be shocked to know that industry gets away with a lot more polluting and toxic stuff ...out where the aborigines live.

Sad shit. I hope to learn more about that.....bur for now we're here to spread...some music --After chilling for a couple days off in Melbourne we did the first gig there -- at THE CORNER.


THE CORNER HOTEL
a Good gig in general.....a few rusty spots....no gigs in a month but killin' energy. a really crazy crowd, maybe 350 or more people there...

Nice ROCK club..no damn SEATS...they were right up front STANDING, our best and biggest crowd thus far.... last time he was here a cpl years ago -- Adrian crowd surfed!! So--at the end of the show, he turned his back to the crowd and fell into their arms!! It was great, totally unexpected (well not TOTALLY) but very cool and wacky for him! (You can JUST see him in the live shot to the right)


Great high energy show... the sound in here a little high end , but it was dealable.

Melbourne: very cool city, got read more about the crazy history of this country.....

(RIGHT:CHECK OUT THE BANDS IN TOWN..if you squint, near the middle you can see the ADRIAN BELEW listing, right above "HOLY FUCK")

The stores in the downtown...one funny thing I noticed in all the rock / clothing type places.... THEY LOVE AC/DC !! haha you;d think that was a cliche, but ...maybe it's cos there is a new CD and tour, first since 2003...but EVERY music oriented/fashion place had AC/DC mugs, shirts, banners, even calendars in some cardshop in a mall I ducked into (relax, I was looking for an Apple store, and saw some geek walking in with a Mac keyboard...)

Lunch one day was some amazing Indian, in a tiny little place with a few seats. The kind of place Anthony Bourdain is always in. I love that guy, even tho' he hates vegans, or at least tools on us pretty constantly. It's cool. When I get to meet him I'll put things in perspective for him.

LEFT: Great Indian food!! REALLY great stuff here ---As good as ENGLAND, yes, where I've had the best Indian food in my life. Go ahead - laugh -- you've been totally lied to about food in england -- it's stunning if you get your ass out of cliche fish n chips shops. And - like here - IT's ACTUALLY FUCKING SPICY -- unlike what has happened in the USA - thanks to crybaby, pussy americans who keep fucking up EVERY spicy cuisine with their decades of WHINGING about "It's too spicy ..! waahhh!!"

THEN DON'T COME IN HERE THEN!!! THIS IS SPICY FOOD!! STOP Wrecking it for the rest of us!!

God.! where was I...?

Alright, alright, i know. Of course you can fidn good Indian in the US -- it shouldn't take so much looking, tho'.

Anyway --Of course!! -- here in Oz...we're basically in the same time zone as much of Asia! So -- consequently you have TONNAGE of Asian restaurants... Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Cambodian, Vietnamese. This little Indian place was awesome, of course it's a good thing I love Asian food, very easy to get 100s of animal-free dishes....thanks to poverty, consistent interpretations of buddhism, hinduism, islam and also sheer practicality most asians eat LOTS of vegetarian foods daily, whether or not they also eat animal flesh.

(LEFT: Wherever you go, whhatever country you;re in...some one has taken a shopping cart far away from it's store. Classic, global phenom...)


Off to Sydney, and THE BASEMENT
another historic city.. Umm.. there AREN'T many cities here, mate! So -- you get done with Aussie -historicc city travel VERY QUICKLY.. there's 21 million people on this island/continent..NY state has 19 million. This place is HUGE, actually bigger on dry land than the contiguous 48 states.

this club is kind of a jazz/songwriter place....maybe like the bottom line (NYC) in a basement. Small cap , maybe 200-250 PACKED?? we had a nice crowd of around 150-175, again -- the seated/tables thing is always a little un-nerving...show #2 so the band really started to hit their stride, the tour company we are hooked up with is awesome, Charney our local tour manager is totally cool and has done some great tours all around the globe. They have been getting exactly the backline we asked for, whch is rarer than you may think!

Great show. great watching the crowd from the side, You can really see how special it is..to live this 'remotely' and when you get artists you love playing here, so special to them. But -- I don;t wanna OVERPLAY that -- just about EVERY artist comes here at some point - certainly all the majors and tons of punk rock and inde bands.... they LOVE music here and with afair amount of festivals and a good economy, bands can afford to make it happen. If you;'re in a band GO TO OZ!

blogging from iphone??

hello there...
This just a shoutout from sidestage at the 1st Belew Australian gig in ages... And 1st with the power trio.
This is a tech-nerd experiment to see if I can indeed blog from my iPhone...

Let's see. Stand by for some pics and more info on how the tour is doing..
Cheers!!

In Australia at last....

G'day mates!!

Well, I couldn't resist. Get ready for TOO MANY silly puns and references..... sorry in advance.

Left: Here I am Rockin' IN AUSTRALIA to AC/DC's "whole lotta rosie" from the crushing live album IF YOU WANT BLOOD...

It's great to be here..wow...what a DAY (literally) of travel.... I started with 3 or so hours of air travel from Asheville NC to Nashville TN, then a short drive to BelewCentral, where I crashed in the Fripp Suite, then packed up Adrian's remaining fly-gear, and caught a 3pm flight to Denver, then LA. In LA I met up with the Slicks, and we hopped on the United flight for FOURTEEN HOURS to Sydney Aus, then hung about in that fine airport, until we flew to Melbourne, where we'll be for the next 3 days or so. TIMEWARP!! We left the USA on saturday...now it;'s MONDAY afternoon, we got here around 1130am...weird...

OF course in typical style I had to crank up some AUSTRALIA connected music for the flight over, mixed into my playlist - unrelated to OZ -was lotsa Fiona Apple (Tidal, Bootleg:Orpheum Theater Boston '97), the new McCartney album as THE FIREMAN, fantastic, not as spacey as the earlier stuff but plenty psychedelic/acoustic bluesy folk (of course), Steve Hillage "Green", lotsa Zappa music (incl. Lather, Sheik, Orch Faves, Mothers of Prev., and some great Zappa/gear interviews...) and of course AC/DC..the mighty rock champs from down under....

How much do I love these guys ??.... let me count the ways. Let's start with THEY ARE THE FIRST BAND I EVER SAW ONSTAGE at a real concert...I was 14, it was Madison Square Garden, (summer 1979) they opened for Ted Nugent...tickets were about $10....as were the T shirts and programs...wow! It was ..incredible... Somehow my mom let me go to that one..inexplicable. But it kicked my ass....and here I am. An unapologetic rocker, thru and thru.

Plus BON SCOTT was still alive...man oh man. Tragically he would die 5-6 months later...
Well - I went on to see them with Brian Johnson 2 or 3 more times thru the years...and will attend a show pretty soon on the SOLD OUT USA tour going on right now.

My fave Angus Young story - true or not (??) - is when some journo asked him:

"Angus..you've been accused of making the same album eight times..what do you say to that??"

Angus replied with a snarl:

" Tha's a durrrty lie !! Ah've made the same album TWELVE TIMES !!"

Ah yes. they are PERFECT. don;t ever fix it. I had the joy of running rehearsals for the AC/DC show when I worked at School Of Rock, Bergen NJ...what a blast that was.

Anyway -- of COURSE I also had to rock some MEN AT WORK (because I'm the corniest, silliest man alive..) As i was listening to them -- I came upon a store..and guess what they had for sale: Yes , the infamous yeast spread of Australia: VEGEMITE. Some of you may only know of it from the MAW song "down under"..it;'s a STAPLE here, as MARMITE is in the UK..similar stuff. Think of a combo of
Miso paste and peanut butter, perhaps??? A salty, yeasty conccoction they eat here with EVERYTHING...especially toast and cheese. Altho' our tour liasion suggested 'toast, avocado and vegemite' ..Hmm.. will have to try that, I've already rocked some on flax crackers - fantastic!

So - mark me down as Idiot Tourist. There I was in an airport natural food store..buying Vegemite while Men At work was on. I dare you to do something more stupid.






Hmm.. Then THIS stuff caught my eye.... Um... guys...what is this cheese MADE OF, exactly..?? "Tasty"..huh??

I love finding words and signs in other lands...that would mean crazy stuff back home...or vice versa, or viva voce, or whatever.

But wherever I go , it's a chance to see how fucked up humans are in their quest to torture, maim, abuse and then SLIT THE THROATS OF innocent, or even not so innocent animals. Today's entry in the "Slow To Evolve" sweepstakes is this little display of various JERKY products..including Emu, Kangaroo and Crocodile. Poor little bastards never saw it coming. Emu??? I thought they were ..endangered? Guess not. And - of course if someone "farms" them ..then they can hide behind that I guess.. Well...lotsa work to do...at least it's a few steps better than factory -raised, drugged up, irradiated cows, chickens and pigs, as in your typical all-american egg/cheese/ham breakfast ....BON APPETIT!

We're OFF today and tomorrow (Tues) as well...Adrian arrived in Sydney a few days before us to do press, he gets here (Melbourne) tomorrow some time....and our first gig is Wed in town. I dropped Allan Zavod a line, hopefully he gets it in time and can make it out to the show... Allan played keys for many great bands, his own jazz, classical and fused projects first and foremost, but also for the great 1984 Zappa tour ("Does Humor Belong In Music") video from the pier in NYC... and also some great Ponty tours and albums.


If you are in Oz or know someone who is.....

ADRIAN BELEW POWER TRIO
DEC 2008 - AUSTRALIA

03 WED Melbourne, The Corner Hotel
04 THU Sydney, The Basement
05 FRI- 07 SUN Adelaide Int'l Guitar Fest.
08 MON Newtown, New South Wales The Vanguard
09 TUES Newtown, NSW, The Vanguard
10 WED Cronulla, NSW, Brass Monkey
11 THU Bulli, NSW, Heritage Hotel

Back from the PROJECT/OBJECT tour....

(Ike Willis talks to P/O keyboardist Eric Svalgard at rehearsal, Wilmington Delaware, 13 Nov 2008)
Ah yes, a fun and fine time was had by all.... despite the OBSTACLES and attempts to stop what we do.... (more on that in a bit)

But -- Suffice to say ...it was fun, musical, and HISTORIC (Ed Mann and Ike Willis have not done an extended Zappa-music tour since....1988..!) We just did an 8 city tour (It was 9 until problems were visited upon us), and the fans out there ...you are so amazing, all of you!! thanks again...

Ed and Ike are the longest-running Zappa alumni, ever, and it's our distinct honor to have worked with both of them for so many years. Stand by for video links etc as things get put up..















Ed Mann sets up his gear, then meets some old fans - JAZZ CAFE', Wilkes Barre, PA 15 Nov 2008