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The Latest Breaking News from Frank Zappa

"Even though he's dead, I believe that in a hundred years' time from now people will still be listening to him": Steve Vai on the wild genius of Frank Zappa – and the two words that made him want to join his band

They say never meet your heroes – Steve Vai would disagree

Louder

“Ozzy would say, ‘No. This isn’t Frank Zappa, this is Ozzy Osbourne. Go back and write me something else’”: Jake E. Lee revisits Badlands, the album the music industry doesn't want you to hear

Why can't we buy Badlands' self-titled debut? Who knows. The record label buried it. But former Ozzy guitarist Jake E. Lee swears it's his best work

Guitar World

“A true artifact of musical genius”: Frank Zappa’s ‘Baby Snakes’ SG is heading to auction for the first time – and expected to sell for half a million dollars

The heavily modified SG copy was bought for $500 and became one of his most well-known guitars

Guitar World

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‘I was called an enemy of the people’: how the US Senate went to war with the biggest rock stars of the 1980s

Forty years ago Prince, Madonna and Judas Priest were among stars dubbed the ‘Filthy Fifteen’ in a high-profile parents’ campaign against ‘objectionable’ music. Some of those artists, and supporters like Alice Cooper, recall a major moral panic

The Guardian - UK

Street battles, invented languages and gigs in psychiatric hospitals: France’s lost rock revolution of 1968

Bands such as Magma and Art Zoyd provided a soundtrack for the student protests that shook the country. Little remembered now, a new book reveals their decisive influence on later successes such as Air and Daft Punk

The Guardian - UK

Another day, yet another Frank Zappa reissue - and this one's glorious

Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention's landmark album One Size Fits All, reissued with extra bells, whistles, kitchen sink, etc

Louder

“His response to seeing a wilderness being bulldozed, he can’t resist also mentioning Bonnie Prince Charlie, Vikings and an ill-fated brontosaurus”: The Sensational Alex Harvey Band’s Tomorrow Belongs To Me is a prog epic

Gravel-voiced bandleader plays eco-warrior, futurist and satirist on 1975 genre-crossing album wrapped in a sleeve where Roger Dean meets Marvel

Louder

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Mark Volman, who co-founded The Turtles and performed with Flo & Eddie, has died at 78

Mark Volman, a founding member of the 1960s pop group The Turtles, whose hits include "Happy Together," has died

The Independent UK

“Mr Blue Sky is the song I always go back to. It’s such a feelgood track and it’s never aged”: The ELO classic led Crobot’s Brandon Yeagley to Frank Zappa, Protest The Hero and a whole world of prog

From a box of his parents’ cassettes to voracious filesharing, the vocalist always wanted to be the one bringing strange new music to his friends

Louder

“To those that have said I inspired them to start drumming, the first thing I say is: ‘I apologise to your parents!’”: A rare interview with legendary drummer Neil Peart of Rush

“After 40, 45 years of playing, I wanted to push myself and open up this whole new frontier,” he said

MusicRadar

‘It’s like having a button that makes the audience go nuts’: Deep Purple on Smoke on the Water

‘We went to see Frank Zappa at Montreux casino. But someone fired a flare gun into the ceiling and – whoosh! The whole building went up in flames’

The Guardian - UK

“I thought he was taking the piss”: The time Ozzy Osbourne planned to beat up Frank Zappa

The story of the unlikely love-in between Frank Zappa and Black Sabbath

Louder

“He had his own vocabulary. He had his own way of constructing chords. His own understanding of how they go on the neck”: Steve Vai on why Allan Holdsworth – the fusion virtuoso who wrote his own rules – was the GOAT

Most players Vai can work out where they were coming from. Holdsworth, he admits, was something different entirely

MusicRadar

“The year that I spent with Frank was the first and only time that I’ve ever had serious instruction”: Adrian Belew reflects on his game-changing year with Frank Zappa – and what the avant-garde musician taught him about music and the business

Belew was discovered and handpicked by Zappa in 1977 after the latter saw him playing at a bar in Nashville

Guitar World

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Louder

"A high point in the FZ catalogue!" Frank Zappa's One Size Fits All gets lavish 50th anniversary reissue

Frank Zappa and The Mothers Of Invention's 1975 album One Size Fits All has been resized, reupholstered and remastered for its 50th anniversary

Louder

“He picks his tools up and strikes the living crap out of himself with them. There was blood flying everywhere”: How a street musician who played with Frank Zappa inspired one of grunge’s greatest songs

Inspiration came from an unlikely place for one of the biggest 90s grunge hits

Guitar World

“They asked me to play the E string of a Chapman Stick with a bow for six minutes. Somebody else got that gig”: Why Nick Beggs passed on his audition for Blue Man Group – and what he learned from Frank Zappa

Nick Beggs played bass in Kajagoogoo – and almost every band you can think of

Louder

“A lost gem featuring the best of the best being put through their paces by the ever-controlling bandleader”: Frank Zappa’s unaired TV special Cheaper Than Cheep

A nearly forgotten 1974 afternoon show, with an audience of 100 and a short-lived Mothers line-up, rises from the avant-prog titan’s basement

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Guitar World

“You’re talking about somebody who’s touched by the hand of God. You can’t even fathom it”: Paul Gilbert worshipped his playing, he tutored Luther Dickinson, and he remains, decades after his death, perhaps the greatest little-known guitarist of all time

He was made a guitar legend by his jaw-dropping speed, but Shawn Lane is more worth remembering for his sheer fretboard versatility – he aced country sessions, while blowing minds onstage equally with Southern rock bands and Indian classical-influenced ensembles

MusicRadar

“They told me to start playing along, but I didn’t even know what key the song was in. And by the end they said, ‘You’re the only one who made it to the end of the song — you’re hired!’”: The madness of Captain Beefheart’s masterpiece Trout Mask Replica

“Man, it was weird!” recalls bassist Rockette Morton

Reason

Kennedy: A Gen X Rebel's Journey From MTV to Fox News

The Fox News personality reflects on her evolution from a contrarian Republican to a libertarian and her belief that personal freedom, humor, and not giving a shit are the keys to a better America.

MusicRadar

Neil Peart called him 'the Wood Whisperer' and now he's blended metal and timber in DW's new SonicPly shells

Fusing up to 12 plies of wood with two plies of aluminum they promise presence and power like no other

Louder

“He saw what everybody saw: they could play, they had a ton of energy and they were authentic”: The weird story of Frank Zappa and AC/DC

The story of AC/DC’s most unlikely famous fan

Louder

“In 1989 I paid a scalper $400 for a ticket to see The Who play Tommy. It was worth every cent”: Mike Portnoy on his top prog songs and artists, and why the Rolling Stones have the greatest-ever prog album sleeve

The Dream Theater drummer’s musical world includes Rush, Yes, King Crimson, Roger Waters and Frank Zappa – alongside the Bee Gees

Louder

“I became a punk – I hid my Pink Floyd records and I now had an uneasy relationship with the music”: Siobhan Fahey’s lifelong passion for prog is only hinted at in Bananarama’s name

A Frank Zappa show bored her to sleep, but the Shakespeare’s Sister masterming has remained in love with Roxy Music, Hawkwind and Syd Barrett

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