First set-list:  Heavy Duty Judy / Zomby Woof / The Black Page #2 / Cosmik Debris / Inca Roads / Uncle Meat / Cheepnis / Let’s Move To Cleveland.
Second set-list:  Zoot Allures / Dancin' Fool / Yellow Snow suite / Joe’s Garage / Packard Goose / Outside Now / Montana / Sofa #1 / Peaches En Regalia.

The Players:  Ben Vize (keyboards, backing vocals, and arrangements) / Jonah Hitchens (guitar and lead vocals) / Adam Chinery (lead guitar and backing vocals) / Harriet Riley (electronic vibraphone) / Emma Rawicz-Szczerbo (tenor saxophone and flute) / James Wade-Sired (trombone) / Flo Moore (bass) / Zoe Pascal (drums).

'HEIRS OF INVENTION' by special guest reviewer Simon Prentis

Being a tribute band is a tough gig. Not only are you painfully aware you’ll probably never be as good as the people you’re trying to emulate, you’re mostly playing to audiences who know the material inside-out – and expect to hear it played right. That’s enough pressure for any band; but in the case of Frank Zappa, the shoes are not just big, they’re monumental. Even his own son struggles to fill them.
    So it was an unadulterated delight to discover that the band previously known as Nostalgic Orange (when I first saw them at the Jazz Café in 2022) has got even better. Now rebranded as The Lovers Of Invention, they deliver handsomely on the promise of their name. Not to put too fine a point on it, they are the absolute shiz – so good, in fact, I almost felt I’d been magically transported to the Roxy of 1973, a similarly tight space filled with fans just simply delighted to hear fabulous music played fabulously well in an intimate setting and with great sound.
    Because that’s what we got. Right from the opening bars of Heavy Duty Judy (TBBYNHIYL version) it was clear this was going to be a special evening – the room was dim, the band was tight, and the groove was, well, golden. That’s not an easy thing to do. First and most obviously, there’s notes involved – vast numbers of them. But Ben Vize, captain of the ship (a ship arriving just in time for those of us who thought we’d never hear its like again) has painstakingly transcribed all the music for all the songs, with separate parts for each instrument. Because these boys and girls are reading, ladies and gentlemen. They are all conservatoire-trained virtuosos, so you know there’s a fighting chance they’re getting all the right notes on tape.
    But they’re also reading the room, and that’s the secret sauce. If much of this can be attributed to lead vocalist Jonah Hitchens, who channels the energy and enthusiasm of Napoleon Murphy Brock, the other members of this sveltely rocking ensemble are sufficiently on top of the music to allow them to have fun while playing, and that really shines through. One of the most unique and entrancing aspects of Zappa in performance was his seamless blend of excellence and entertainment, precision and panache – consummate musical skills served up with an attitude that refuses to take itself seriously. The Lovers of Invention have that down, too.
    And that’s what we’re all in search of, at the end of the rainbow. It’s a flame that draws us moth-like to its light, the endlessly inventive, ever-widening and – in the right hands – still succulently surprising rabbit-hole that Frank Vincent Zappa has bequeathed us. To truly thrill to that legacy you have to be a lover of invention – for like all art, its spirit is passed on through its memes, not through genes. A tribute act can never hope to be the thing it emulates, but dagnabbit! this is close as it’s likely to get. If you’re a fan of any vintage, and have the chance to catch these guys, don’t hesitate – they’re the real deal.
    Check ‘em out here.

One of many questions this book raises is why did it take so long for Moon to decide she needed to leave her chaotic family home?
    As you would expect, this is a very well written and engaging book - and well worth the wait. And like Nigey Lennon, Moon has opted to change some names to protect the privacy of those involved - for example, here 'Nellie Bly' becomes 'Kiwi Vicki'!
    The book's title comes from something Gail would say whenever Moon was in a brown study - which is better than it's working title of I Hope You (Die) Love Me.
    We learn that as a very young girl, Moon had a crush on Terry Bozzio (and, weirdly, Derek from the Bay City Rollers - even in later life, her fascination with drummers seems to continue); that she had harp lessons from Lou-Ann Neill (who plays on Zoot Allures, Orchestral Favorites, 200 Motels - The Suites and more); was told she had secret powers by Gail's psychic (and later put a spell on a mean girl at school who then fell off the monkey bars); that RDNZL was an FZ nickname for GZ; and My Mother Is A Space Cadet was written about Gail when she was engrossed in one of her magazines.
    Moon writes that Frank asked for a divorce from Gail on a number of occasions, but of course it never happened. A German lady named Gerda is cited as one of the main reasons for his desire to leave Gail.
    Of all the kids, Moon is clearly the most damaged by their 'unique upbringing' and bore the brunt of Gail's many outbursts, such that you do feel a little sorry for her.
    She yo-yos between blaming her cheating, absent father and her angry, unloving mother for all her ills. Once she finally does flee the nest, she undergoes therapy and gets an acting coach and a guru but remains lost and unhappy. Then Frank phones to tell her he has terminal cancer and Gail insists she sells her house to help pay for her uninsured father's hospital bills, so Moon can return home and devote her time to caring for him.
    After he passes, Moon's relationship with her mother gets no more harmonious, but her marriage to Paul Doucette and the birth of their daughter bring fleeting happiness - until three year old Mathilda becomes seriously ill and her marriage unravels.
    The book leaves few stones unturned and ends with her finally learning to love herself and forgive her siblings for the pain they caused following Gail's demise.
    As I say, it's very well written but there are some tiny errors (which could conceivably be fixed, as I have an uncorrected proof copy of the book): for example, she confuses the Pink Panther with Snagglepuss, plus the timeline seems a little awry in places as she talks about the Rainbow incident before introducing the GTOs, and also that she lost her virginity in London on 4 July 1982 after Valley Girl was a hit that enabled Gail and the kids to travel with FZ to Europe for his tour that started at the beginning of May (while an acetate of the record was played on an LA radio station prior to it's official release in June 1982, it wasn't a hit until September). Minor stuff, but this is a major contribution to the ever-expanding Zappa bibliography.
    For the record, there's no mention of: the German Playboy photo shoot; the 'delusional fanatic' who claimed she and her father had stolen his lyrics; recordings made with FZ prior to Valley Girl; recordings later made with DZ (or performing Valley Girl with him at London's Roundhouse); Uncle Dunt's threat to sue her; possible other siblings; or the Wild Man Fischer bottle incident.

POSTSCRIPT: The above was written a couple of months before Moon's book was officially published. The media blitz that ensued after its release saw most commentators (both press and folk on social media) understandably feeling sorry for Moon, with her diagnosis by therapists of PTSD. She continued to portray her parents in such a way that readers’ comments now speak of them as monsters and, in one interview, she even said she hoped Frank's fans wouldn't stop liking his music when they read that he wasn't a great dad.
    Although most of us already had our suspicions about GZ, Moon had never really said anything untoward about her until after her will was read - if anything, the portrayal of America's mother Camilla in her novel America The Beautiful was the closest we really got: annoying but still someone she loved. And even after Gail passed, Moon wrote, "I always gave my mom love because hurt people hurt people."
    As for FZ, nothing but love for him was ever spoken by Moon who, in the 2013 Summer 82: When Zappa Went To Sicily documentary, talked of her excitement at doing publicity for Valley Girl because it meant she got to spend even more time with him. (Later on she gets tearful talking about how emotional, sensitive and gentle he was, and "how thoughtful he was in his words and his actions as a parent.")
    While most of us already knew he'd rather have a leer than win Father of the Year, in an interview on Jonesy's Jukebox in 2017, Moon talked of her surprise at learning (via the 2016 Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words documentary) that her father was a prolific cheater. Prior to that, she thought he'd been unfaithful half a dozen times tops. This late discovery would have had a profound impact on her view of her parents.
    Moon dedicated her first book to her mother; Earth To Moon depicts Gail as a bully and is dedicated to her daughter, Jett Doucette-Zappa (formerly Mathilda Plum Doucette).
    Clearly a lot changed in the 20 odd years between books, but this does not diminish my admiration for Moon who, just like her dad, seems full of contradictions.
    Oh, and finally - yes: they did fix the Pink Panther/Snagglepuss error in time!

Having had a similar book published several years ago, with a lot of the same interviewees (Frank Talk), I just had to check this out. I know of Tony and his Talking Zappa shows, but I'm not really a podcast guy - even as a part of the ZappaCast for several years, I rarely listened back to them. Reading is more my thing, but your mileage may vary.
    In his introduction, Tony talks about how he used an AI programme to transcribe his audio interviews, and then went through and corrected the resultant text. He acknowledges that he might not have done a perfect job and, in the first edition, there were indeed quite a number of typos. Happily, most of these have now been fixed. The interviews - all from 2014 - are interesting and include some 'new' info - for example: Ike Willis told Tony that Frank briefly went into remission in the summer of 1993 and laid out his plans to Ike for a 25th anniversary celebration of 200 Motels with a big reunion tour; Mike Keneally talks about a Synclavier version of Sleep Dirt that he helped Frank create; and Howard Kaylan bemoans the fact that most of FZ's guitar solos were edited out from the 'Vaudeville' albums in favour of more Flo & Eddie comedy.
    As I say, the interviews are quite engaging, and I'm jealous that Tony managed to do what I haven't yet succeeded in doing: a full interview with Cal Schenkel!
     The book comes in hardcover, paperback and on Kindle.

As the book’s blurb says, this is not your average musical autobiography, as Mark’s comments throughout are minimal. Instead, his story is told by friends and family, including Howard Kaylan (of course), Ian Underwood, Aynsley Dunbar, Don Preston, Jim Pons, Jeff Simmons, George Duke and Gail Zappa (yes, it has taken co-author Cody around 12 years to assemble this tome).
    In it, Pons reveals that he squired Gail before she met Frank, though GZ describes it as “just hanging out”. (One of the many fun things here is that the narrators are allowed to quibble and contradict one another, with even Volman chiming in to set his side of the story straight.)
    Simmons and Dunbar both say they initially tried to talk Frank out of recruiting Kaylan and Volman as Mothers, but both later admit they were wrong. (Aynsley also confirms that he was asked about replacing Chad Wackerman in 1988.)
    And Turtle drummer John Seiter, who fought for his writing credit on Eddie, Are You Kidding?, claims to have provided vocal overdubs on Happy Together for the Fillmore East – June 1971 album.
    Happily, Mark has more than elsewhere in the book to say about his time with Frank, but that’s only a part of his story: we’re taken from schoolboy pranks to his becoming a Professor at Belmont University and a born again Christian, via the early days of Mark and Howard’s involvement in surf music with The Crossfires to their later fall-out with Marc Bolan after they dared to ask to be paid for providing back-up vocals on future T. Rex hits.
    The book is a fun read and what stands out is that Mark loves to play the clown and is a much beloved entertainer. Long may that be so.
    For more Flo fun, check out my old interview with him here plus this specially curated Spotify playlist.