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Dweezil Zappa

Dweezil Zappa brought his show to The Plaza Live in Orlando last Saturday, as part of his 50 Years of Frank tour. Last year marked the 50th anniversary of Freak Out!, Frank Zappa's first album with his band The Mothers of Invention. The show (and tour) is Dweezil's way to pay tribute to this album and to the prolific career of his late father, who released more than 60 albums in over 30 years.

The current lineup of Dweezil's band include: Ryan Brown on drums, Kurt Morgan on bass, Chris Norton on keyboards, David Luther on vocals, sax, keyboards and guitar, multi-instrumentalist Scheila Gonzalez, and Cian Coey on lead vocals. (It's also fair to include Dweezil's Gibson Roxy SG as an obligatory member of the band.)

It's definitely a daunting task trying to condense more than fifty years of music history in one night. Montana, Apostrophe, Black Napkins, The Illinois Enema Bandit, and Muffin Man were just a handful of what Dweezil and company had in store for the night. The encore included Michael Winslow (of Police Academy fame) channeling his inner Hendrix on stage, while the band played Cosmik Debris. It was a perfect night for all the hardcore Zappa fans in the audience. The sound was impeccable, and the trip down memory lane was unforgettable.

In recent years Dweezil's career has been immersed in legal drama, after the Zappa Family Trust has been trying to prevent him from using his own family name to perform and preserve the music of his father.

The full name of the tour is 50 Years of Frank: Dweezil Zappa Plays Whatever The F@%k He Wants. And he should. He must. In a way, it's a good thing that constraints can make us more creative. Hopefully all the absurdity can be worked out soon, so he can continue to freely maintain the legacy of the Zappa legend.

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A Night with Amanda Palmer...

Amanda Palmer performed to a virtually sold-out crowd at Culture Room in Fort Lauderdale last Sunday. Not a solo performance; more like a reunion of good, old friends. "A Night with Amanda Palmer, Jason Webley, and Jherek Bischoff." And a local string quartet. All on the same stage.

A piano-less Amanda, by her own admission, condensed the usual 88 keys in the fours strings of her ukulele. After a warm welcome with In My Mind, the rest of the night was a full collaboration along with Jherek's compositions and string arrangements, and Webley's high-energy fusion with his guitar and accordion.

It's an understatement to say that people usually expect the unexpected every time Amanda hits the stage, and last night was not an exception. But every performance is (should be) a two-way street. Nothing can be unpredictable without the support of her loyal fans and followers. Only in a night like last night, for example, a viola player can break one of her strings and a new one can magically appear. In seconds. From the crowd. She's definitely elevated the art of asking to a whole new level.

Amanda planned the show in Fort Lauderdale just because it was right in the middle of the way between west Florida, where she was, and Key West, where she's performing on December 13. But incidentally, Culture Room in Fort Lauderdale is the same venue where in 2009 she penned a song for her record label, asking to [please] drop her from her contract.

It can be said that the rest is history. This special night last Sunday was, again, in the room where it happened.

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Gianmarco Zignago in Miami

Peruvian singer-songwriter Gianmarco Zignago closed the US leg of his #LIBRE tour last night at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium.

To the surprise of some of his followers, his name is not synonymous of sold-out stadiums or arenas in the United States and other parts of the world. But that doesn't necessarily mean you're not familiar with some of his songs.

If you have paid attention to latin music in the last couple of decades, you've probably heard some of his songs from the voice of other artists: Emmanuel, Gloria Estefan, Marc Anthony, Alejandro Fernández, Jon Secada and Obie Bermúdez, to name just a select few.

And that's not an accident. It's actually by choice. He has chosen that path deliberately.

During one of his interactions with the audience, he stated:

"We don't sound on the radio, and that's OK. All of you here are our radio."

A three-time Latin Grammy Award winner, recently nominated for Best Singer-Songwriter Album and Song of the Year, he's taking his #LIBRE tour to Europe starting next month. That radio surely seems to be up full blast right now.

- v.

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Kaleigh Baker at the Indie-Folkfest

"Orlando, The City Beautiful."

Yes, it's grammatically correct. What's the name? Anastrophe? Hyperbaton? My grammar is rusty. It's basically the figure of speech where you change the natural order of words.

It was a beautiful day indeed at the Indie-Folkfest at the Mennello Museum of American Art in Downtown Orlando. There were six artists on schedule to perform that day, but I only had the chance to see soul singer Kaleigh Baker. And I'm glad I had the chance.

I enjoyed the whole set, but her rendition of Tom Waits' Dead and Lovely that day was simply perfect.

There are no orders to transpose or change in Kaleigh's music. Follow the links below and enjoy. Unique is her voice.

- v.

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V's Blog

Photography is my passion. Writing on napkins is my hobby. I love making new images and writing about them. This is my virtual supply of napkins. Comments and discussions are encouraged.

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