-- A History...

In 2007, Andrew Greenaway - author of the book 'Zappa The Hard Way' (Wymer UK, 2010) and webmaster of idiotbastard.com - approached Cordelia Records in the UK about the possibility of putting together a sequel to their collection of Frank Zappa songs performed by surf instrumental bands, titled Lemme Take You To The Beach (CD 035, 2005).

The response was, “get us 20 versions of Frank’s The Idiot Bastard Son and we’ll put that out”. The next year, they did just that with 20 Extraordinary Renditions (CD 043, 2008). This was followed by 21 Burnt Weeny Sandwiches (CD 049, 2010), comprising truncated versions of the whole of the Mothers’ 1970 album by various artists.

Early in 2013 saw the release of On Broadway (CD 054, 2013), which focused on covers of some of the songs that Zappa covered on his final world tour in 1988.

The next part of this trilogy (in four parts!) is a collection of unreleased songs composed by Zappa. The album is called Rare Episodes and is available from Cordelia.

cordeliarecords.co.uk

-- Enter Z.E.R.O...

While Kevin was at Zappanale #24 in Germany in Aug of 2013 playing bass for Pojama People, he met up with Andrew and was given a song called Variant #1 for Z.E.R.O. to rework for the upcoming Rare Episodes CD. Kevin and Rupert went into Egg Studio in Oct 2013 and stacked up a few tracks. Playing a total of 5 ukes, 3 acoustic guitars, an electric, a dobro, two cow cans, a lap steel, an acoustic bass guitar and a computer for the percussion and other parts. The acoustic instruments (including cow cans) were recorded with a Neumann U-87 microphone. Took approx 8 hours to from set up to final mix. The song grew into a bit of a concept piece and Andrew decided to use it as the first song on the disc.

The recording is dedicated to the memory of percussion virtuoso, Glenn Leonard.

- Please visit IdiotBastard.com for more information.
- Find Rare Episodes CD's and MP3's on Amazon.