The Mudd Club (did I fuck anybody in this picture?)
 
Frank Zappa performing at New York City’s Mudd Club in May of 1980. From the German documentary Ein Leben als Extravaganza - Das Genie Frank Zappa.

This clip includes a brief interview with Mudd Club owner Steve Maas.

The video quality ain’t great, but it’s rare and and I know of no better quality copies anywhere.

I basically stopped listening to Zappa after the first couple of Mothers albums. But, as someone who spent many nights at The Mudd Club, I consider this a worthy contribution to the history of New York’s downtown music scene.

 
Wow ! I had never seen this animated/live action film for the mini-song Sleeping In A Jar from the epic 1969 double LP Uncle Meat before. If this was, as I suspect, created as a TV ad for the LP then it’s no wonder it was never shown (except this one time on Swedish TV in 1971), given the none-too-subtle 7-UP bottle fellatio seen in the clip. As always, FZ brought the wholesome family entertainment.
 

 
Thanks Tony Coulter !

 
Always the savvy marketer, Zappa sure knew how to reach his audience, eh? As seen in Daredevil #38.

And here’s another piece of obscure Zappa ephemera, a Clio Award-winning soundtrack for a Luden’s Cough Drops TV commercial that he did in 1967.
 

 
Via Little Green Footballs

 
I’m so glad Richard hepped me to the fact that it’s Frank Zappa day. It’s impossible to overstate how much FZ meant to me as a teen. Here’s my contribution to the festivities in the form of his 1967 masterpiece “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It”. I think I learned to both loathe and champion my mundane suburban surroundings via songs like this and much of his other work. But this piece has it all : filthy rocking, experimental tape work with nods to his serial composition and doo-wop heroes and of course naughty satirical humor. Viva Zappa !

 
The city of Baltimore declared today Frank Zappa Day in honor of the iconoclastic rock musician and composer, who was born there 69 years ago on Dec. 21, 1940. Last week the city’s public art commission also announced that a bronze statue of Zappa would be erected outside of a public library sometime next year. When will Los Angeles, where Zappa raised his family and lived most of his adult life, follow suit? Maybe a nice statue somewhere in Laurel Canyon?

Also in Zappa news, today marks the release of a previously unheard concert from Philadelphia in 1976 on two CDs. The liner notes for “Philly ‘76,” taking a cue from its bicentennial date, reproduce the Declaration of Independence, but with a twist: Endeavoring to show how history repeats itself, the Founding Fathers’ claims against the King of England are highlighted, drawing parallels that probably would have made the independently minded composer smile.

www.zappa.com