Sunday, July 21, 2024

ANOTHER TRIP TO ZAPPANALE - PART 7

Another trip to Zappanale – Part 7.
Saturday, July 20
“ Who the heck is Chuck Barris”

Zappanale-Saturday opened with a concert by the Jeff Hollie Quartet at the expo room.
Or was it going to be a Fred Händl solo concert?
Opinions were divided (and I guess that even Fred didn’t know until he arrived).
In the end, it was decided that the number of musicians would determine who would actually play.
Lucky for us (although I don’t mind Fred doing a solo concert), the entire quartet showed up and they redid some of the tunes from their Friday concert.
Was it the more intimate setting? Was it the lack of a microphone that limited Jeff’s parlando vocals? It's hard to tell the exact reason, but I liked this concert way more than the Friday / mystery stage one.
Another excellent start of the day.


Later, in the afternoon, we were just in time to enjoy the Miserablen HuSos at the main stage. The MHS perform Frank Zappa’s songs with altered lyrics, in German. They even have a little booklet out with the lyrics, but that didn’t help me much.
Still, fun to see and hear. And the parts that I do / did understand are / were funny.


In the future, this particular edition of Zappanale might be remembered as the Napoleon Murphy Brock edition.
Napoleon performed with Fuse at St Katharinen in Hamburg on Wednesday.
On Friday, he did another show with Ensemble Fuse, this time on the main stage at Zappanale, and on Saturday, he teamed up with Inventionis Mater for a concert at the mystery stage.
And if all goes well, NMB will guest with Frank Out! on Sunday evening, also on the main stage.
Inventionis Mater with NMB, is a fine combination.
For the occasion Pierpaolo and Andra had brought along a double bass player. Add Napoleon and you get a beautiful quartet. The music was approached from a classical angle (clarinet, classical guitar & double bass) but also included some psychedelic fuzz guitar and other mother-esque excursions (including a sequencer / sampler).
I loved it.



The nice thing about Zappanale, is that you get a bit of everything, but all from the same progressive rock, modern jazz, or zappa corner.
For the fans of King Crimson, the David Cross band had been scheduled.
They’re also scheduled to perform at the MoonJune Records festival that will be held in Toledo next September.



And then it was time for another highlight: The Wrong Object.
This time, the band included trumpet player Bart Maris (who one might also know from Flat Earth Society). Original material plus some Zappa stuff.
My cup of tea.
Special guest Steve Kettley (from Orange Claw Hammer & Pygmy Twylyte joined for the final two pieces.
Amazing.



Our day ended with a portion of Gong. I remembered seeing them with Daevid Allen once, and that hadn’t convinced me.
This time, however, fronted by Kavus Torabi on guitar and vocals, they sounded quite impressive.
I caught the ‘Muffin Man’ riff in one of the tunes and Kavus even played the intro to another Zappa tune between two songs, which proved that he knew where he was playing.
As one has to make choices, I only caught the first songs, but I do hope a recording of this concert will surface. I’d love to give it a listen. And I have to check out Gong…
What a day…


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