Tag: Frank Zappa

The Rio Ground

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments
The Rio Grande, pictured July 11, two days before it was declared officially dry in The Duck! City.

Welp, piss on the dogs and call in the fire — the Rio Grande is now the Rio Ground.

John Fleck reports that the “official” call is that the Rio ran dry in the heart of Albuquerque last Sunday evening, for only the second time in the 21st century.

I was down by the river last Friday (not to shoot my baby; I was on a longer-than-usual bike ride) and took the above snap from the Gail Ryba Memorial Bridge paralleling Interstate 40. A stone bummer it was and will be; the future does not look bright, but we’ll have to wear shades anyway. And possibly Assos stillsuits as well.

I wasn’t wearing my dancing shoes.

Happily, I took two tall iced water bottles on this 45-miler. And I had drained both of them before I saw something that made me smile, in Lynnewood Park just short of The Old Home Place.

The Paseo de las Montañas Trail runs right through the park, and on the concrete path someone had drawn a rough square with a message inside: “Dance Here.”

I would’ve, too. But I was hot, tired, and thirsty, and the soles of my ancient Sidis have been ground down to nubbins by the years and miles. Plus it would’ve felt a little like dancing on my own grave.

On the first day of Zappadan …

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

Give me your dirty love.

… I bought a fresh digital copy of “Over-Nite Sensation” to replace the one I had in college.

No, not the bigger-and-better, new-and-improved version. The original, you slime. Do I look like I’m wearing a Sears poncho?

Don’t worry — I got a  little something for you, too: Daniel Felsenthal’s look back at Zappa and that album over at The Atlantic.

Felsenthal calls “Over-Nite Sensation” Zappa’s “most inviting listen, forging a muscular, funk-inflected sound that couches the denseness of his more avant-garde music in pop hooks. … The album’s lyrics made a cutting statement about the flimsy values of its time — and the songs themselves were a tightly wound coil of Zappa’s musical ideas.”

You gotta love anyone who posits that Zappa’s long hair and beard resembled a fermata. No, it doesn’t have anything to do with dirty love, you preverts — it’s a symbol of musical notation.