Dweezil Zappa World

SO here we are. Dweezilla 2011. Dateline Wednesday 27th July 5.30am. At least that's what the clock tells me because I'm not entirely sure where or when my body thinks it is after 24 hours straight without sleep yesterday and only 4 hours sleep so far tonight - but that's jet lag for ya! But you don't want to hear about this - you want to know the juicy stuff.

Monday, so I've heard, was a blast and many handshakes and hugs took place greeting friends old and new. The highlight it seems was a certain antipodean lady from this site (d'Oily) bringing the house (log cabin?) down with a virtuoso rendition of a couple of numbers with DZPZ. Sad I missed that (still travelling at the time) but I hope to catch up with her performance on any video clips taken which I'm sure some site members will happily share 

Tuesday I arrived mid afternoon during the mummy and daddy of storms - rain so hard the cars stopped on the road, thunder crackling and booming around the beautiful Catskill mountains illuminated briefly in the daytime gloom by fork lightening bolts the size of tree trunks.  Proper biblical stuff.

So, having made myself known to the site staff, I'm sitting on the porch waiting for the rain to ease down so I can eagerly run over to join one of the classes when who walks up but a very wet Tony Levin! The day was immediately brightened for me as Tony is one of  my all time heroes - and don't you think I let him know it. Tony, he told me, was visiting because he, Adrian Belew and some other King Crimson members are here in a couple of weeks time doing a similar camp and he wanted to check out the way things are done. I wonder if Mrs Noodler would notice if I stayed here for a little longer ...... Ah well, back to the story.

Rain eases sufficiently for me to get to Joe's masterclass. Joe did an hour of fascinating stuff (fascinating if you're musically that way inclined!) on odd time signatures and polyrhythms which run through Frank's music. Getting us to clap out time on our hands and then guess the signature. I think 21/16 time was the winner of the 'Most Insane Way to Screw with the Heads of a Bunch of Musicians' award. But Joe deftly doffed his cap to Terry and (particularly) Vinnie who he said 'ate this stuff for breakfast'.

In the evening all campers, band and crew had dinner in a marquee in a relaxed atmosphere. There was just enough time for myself and two other members - Kev and Poodle - to sneak away and have a quick jam before getting back for an evening session in the same Marquee with Dweezil demonstrating his rig for the upcoming tour and even getting young Haakon from this site to play alongside him. Nice moment. Man that guy can play. Wish I'd been able to do that at 43, let alone 13! 

Then, the nice people from Fractal the opened up the new box of tricks which Dweezil hadn't had a chance to use up until then and he was like a kid on Christmas morning! I got the impression this was supposed to be around a 10 minute slot but, over an hour later, he was still at it. I really don't think he realised we were still there - he was now into 'work mode' thinking through a whole new raft of sonic possibilities for future projects. 

Over to another cabin where the camper jam sessions were already into full swing. Great fun for all - anyone could get up (I did at one point - many thanks site member GMBG for the loan of your Les Paul) and considering most had before never met, played together or without any prior knowledge of the music they were going to play (mostly improv) it was darned good entertainment. Highlight for me was Joe and Ben dueting the vocals on Floyd's 'Another Brick in the Wall' with Ben on megaphone. Whenever else will you get the chance to see that!

Couple more beers and  then a walk back to my shack (sky ink black. man, don't ever get to see stars like this - no 'light pollution') past the fluttering Tiki lamps tired but very happy.