News from the darkest corners...

Groovy ghosts and ghoulies abound on the annual Halloween edition of The Retro Cocktail Hour — Saturday, October 31 at 7:00pm on KPR stations (91.5 Lawrence; 89.7 Emporia; 91.3 Junction City; 89.9 Atchison; 99.5 Atchison, or on the web at Kansas Public Radio.

As always, this Halloween spectacular is spiced with plenty of wild stereophonic tricks and treats, including tunes from albums like Music To Be Murdered By, Shock: Music in Hi-Fi, Poe for Moderns and more, along with TV tunes from The Munsters, The Addams Family, The Outer Limits and more. And, as always, you’ll hear plenty of trailers from cheesy sci-fi and monster movies of the ’50s and ’60s!

Tune in Saturday 7:00pm for all the fun, or listen on demand at the Retro Cocktail Hour website.

Project/Object playing the music of Frank Zappa will feature Ike Willis and Ray White for their winter tour. These two musicians have been creating music for over 30 years and with Frank Zappa himself, between 1976 -1988. They will be performing together on stage for the first time in 25 years showcasing the classic Zappa tunes they were a part of for so long. In the spirit of Frank Zappa’s final message to the fans: “Play my music” come see two fantastic musicians do just that.

One of Frank Zappa’s greatest skills was his incredible sixth sense in identifying something magical in each of the musicians he hired. Recognizing this – Project/Object continues it’s singular mission to present the music as it was recorded,but also to respect and develop the creative “live” aspect that Zappa always pushed his band towards. With the support of the fans, Project/Object chooses to do this with the “Alumni”: the people who were there with Frank as the music was created, recorded and performed.

Read more on the official Project/Object website.

Vic Mizzy, the American film and television composer who wrote the theme song to “The Addams Family,” has died at the age of 93.

The Brooklyn-born composer, who was a studio pianist for a radio station before serving with the U.S. Navy during World War Two, had a string of hits in the 1930s and 1940s including “My Dreams Are Getting Better All The Time,” and “With A Hey and a Hi and a Ho-Ho-Ho.”

Vic Mizzy is best known for writing the theme tunes for the TV shows “Green Acres” and “The Addams Family” with its infamous rat-tat-tat-tat opening and punctuated with two finger snaps. Mizzy had to sing the theme himself, overdubbing himself several times, when the production company refused to pay for singers.

Mizzy owned the publishing rights to “The Addams Family” theme, once telling a CBS interview: “Two fingers snaps and you live in Bel-Air.”

The LA Times said Mizzy died at his home in Bel Air, Los Angeles on Saturday, of heart failure.

Steve Ferguson, a founder of the rock ‘n’ roll band NRBQ, died on Oct. 7 at his home in Louisville, Ky. He was 60. His death was announced on the band’s web site. The cause was cancer, according to an announcement on his MySpace page.

Ferguson, a guitarist, singer and songwriter, was born in Louisville on Nov. 22, 1948, and formed the original version of NRBQ there in 1967 with a high school friend, the keyboardist, singer and songwriter Terry Adams.

The group did not last long, but a year later Ferguson and Adams joined forces with three other musicians to form a new group with the same name. That one has stayed together, with only a few personnel changes.

The first change was the departure of Ferguson, who left in 1970 after the group had recorded two albums for Columbia. But NRBQ’s distinctive mix of styles, which remained its signature – its repertory ranged from the rockabilly of Eddie Cochran to the avant-garde jazz of Sun Ra – was largely a legacy of his tenure.

While NRBQ had no Top 40 hits and never graduated from midsize nightclubs to theaters or arenas, it garnered enthusiastic reviews and a legion of fans, among them Paul McCartney, Jimi Hendrix and Elvis Costello.

Steve Ferguson spent most of his post-NRBQ career in Louisville, where he performed and recorded with his own groups. He briefly reunited with the band in 1974. In 2004, he joined current and former members at a 35th anniversary concert in Northampton, Mass. In 2006, he and Terry Adams teamed up again to record the album “Louisville Sluggers.”

Mashable is proud to present their 3rd annual Open Web Awards online competition. The Open Web Awards is an international online voting competition that covers major innovations in web technology and achievements in Social Media. This year, they’ve extended the length of the campaign by one month and also have created some new and engaging categories for their audience to reflect the changes in web culture since 2008.

Please vote for Weirdomusic.com as “Best Music Site or App” by clicking the banner below:

Thanks for your support!

Al Martino, the Italian-American baritone renowned for a string of hits, including the sentimental ballads “Spanish Eyes,” “Volare” and “Speak Softly Love,” and for his role as the wedding singer in “The Godfather,” died Tuesday in Springfield, Pa., The Associated Press reported. He was 82.

Martino, born on Oct. 7, 1927, in Philadelphia, was one of the most recognizable pop singers of the 1950s and ’60s. Influenced by Perry Como and Al Jolson, he had a career that spanned nearly five decades. He leaves behind several celebrated songs, including his breakthrough hit for the small BBS label, “Here in My Heart.” Released in 1952, it rose to No. 1 in the United States and later became the very first No. 1 single in Britain. It also won him a contract with Capitol Records.

Al Martino had an influential and encouraging childhood friend in Mario Lanza, the American opera singer who became a Hollywood movie star in the 1940s and ’50s. Lanza was slated to record “Here in My Heart” himself, but dropped his plans after Martino explained that his own debut recording would be neglected if he did.

In the mid-1960s, with rock music dominating the charts, Martino and his “olive oil voice” helped reintroduce classic pop romanticism to trans-Atlantic audiences. Between 1963 and 1967 he had nine Top 40 singles, of which the most enduring proved to be “Spanish Eyes.” The vocal version of a song composed and first recorded by Bert Kaempfert as “Moon Over Naples,” it became something of a standard and was later recorded by both Elvis Presley and Wayne Newton. Martino returned to the charts in 1975, when he recorded a disco version of the Italian singer Domenico Modugno’s signature song, “Volare.”

Reel Recordings is pleased to announce the imminent release of the finest recording of the classic Soft Machine quartet ever committed to tape. There was never another band that rose to the heights that Mike Ratledge, Elton Dean, Hugh Hopper, and Robert Wyatt did, nor are succinct descriptions of their music applicable here.

Therefore, with much to celebrate about this exciting double cd set, Reel Recordings have complimented this simply stunning concert performance with a specially designed CD-ROM. This colourfully presents an extensive eight-chapter essay: The Soft Machine Sound: An Acoustic Electronic Experience Examined, replete with previously unseen photos and unheard recording extracts.

Hats off to the Henie Onstad Art Centre in Oslo, Norway for allowing the label to care for their extraordinary direct-to-Studer, two-track ambient recording. Additionally, Reel Recordings offer their deeply felt appreciation to Robert and Mike, as well as Elton’s and Hugh’s estate, for their enthusiastic approval. The label hopes they have done justice to the distinguished history of the Henie Onstad Art Centre and the Soft Machine recorded legacy, with the listeners’ approval in mind. These historically important recordings will be released on November 1, 2009.

SOFT MACHINE ~ LIVE AT HENIE ONSTAD ART CENTRE 1971
(Reel Recordings RR014/015) Two compact discs with bonus CD-ROM

Ralph America has announced that three new releases by The Residents will hit the shelves in november.

In their own words:

On November 3rd, all THREE of these releases will be available. We’ll be getting all 3 on the same date, and if all goes well, they’ll be shipping just before the 3rd. We have THE UGHS! which is a sketchbook of the music from Voice of Midnight (a fictional band was created to create the music for that release, this is all of their output), 10 Little Piggies is a futuristic compilation of songs that will be released over the next year, and IS ANYBODY OUT THERE? is a DVD compilation of the Bunny Boy video series, but a bit more edited and streamlined.

Ordering info at http://ralphamerica.com