MY VIDEOS

In 2020, the pandemic hit and all us musicians lost our gigs for awhile. With nothing else to do, I thought it would be fun to learn video editing - and picked one of my favorite pieces from my all time favorite musician, Frank Zappa, to analyze. I had so much fun and the reception was nice, I continued this series…

This Zappa breakdown video is on the interlude section of his famous song “Montana”. This video seemed to do well and led to a lot of really great opportunities for me. One of the great moments in my life was Dweezil Zappa sharing this on his site.

A Zappa breakdown on the wild interlude from his tune, “Jumbo Go Away”. This features a personal hero of mine, Brett Clement. Brett is the most important Zappa scholar of all time and is famous for the papers he has written. He made a very important discovery about this tune so it made sense to talk to him. Plus, everything I say is stolen from him anyway so I guess it was only right. This is my personal favorite video I’ve ever made.

Here is a Zappa breakdown video that features an actual Zappa band member - Arthur Barrow! I was working on this tune already and figured it would be fun to talk to him. I took a chance and sent him an email - thankfully he was down! I can’t say enough about how fantastic Arthur is as a musician and person, but I’ll continue down below in the next section anyways.

Here is a shorter video analyzing a specific concept instead of a piece - a chord progression I noticed was all over Zappa’s music.

VIDEOS FOR OTHER PEOPLE

Here is a video I made for my great friend, Simon Prentis. Simon worked for Frank Zappa and we met through Gerry Fialka. We started talking on Zoom and having a great time. Eventually Simon sent me his (at the time) unreleased book entitled “Speech: How Language Made Us Human”. I read through the entire thing and thought it was beyond brilliant - which makes sense as Simon is a brilliant man himself! He thought it would be a good idea to make a little video promoting the book, and so here we are. This was a blast to work on.

After Arthur and I collaborated, he called me up and asked if I would be willing to edit a music video for him. Of course I said yes. The old footage of his family is so beautiful and was such a blast to go through. Not to mention the song is great! It features Robby Krieger of The Doors and Tommy Mars (former Zappa band member). Tommy is another personal hero of mine, so to be included on a project with him - even in this small way - is incredibly meaningful to me.

After the success of the first video, Arthur called me up later to do another one. There was still so much footage we had more than enough to use without repeating. This one turned out great as well. I still remember Arthur calling me up to tell me how much he liked it. I thought to myself, “Gosh I can’t believe the bass player from Joe’s Garage is calling me up right now to tell me this!”

This one is out to lunch. From the mind of the wonderful and spectacular Gerry Fialka! Watch at your own risk.