This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Artist News Gigs & Festivals
Hologram Frank Zappa coming to the UK
By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 30 January 2019
Launched in the US last year, that Frank Zappa hologram tour is set to arrive in the UK for a series of dates in May.
“As a futurist, and hologram enthusiast, Frank fearlessly broke through boundary after boundary as an artist and in honouring his indomitable spirit, we’re about to do it again, 25 years after his passing”, says his son, Ahmet Zappa, who – by an extraordinary coincidence – also happens to be an exec at the hologram company behind the show, Eyellusion.
“This mind-melting show we’re putting together celebrates the music, often surreal imagery and humour synonymous with Frank”, he goes on. “We will be pushing the limits of what anyone has seen holographically on stage before in a live venue”.
“Circumstances, objects, places and subject matter from Frank’s songs and imagination will be brought to life for the first time on stage”, continues Zappa Junior’s big holographic sales pitch. “We are anthropomorphising Frank’s music, so his own hand drawn illustrations, classic imagery from his album artwork and characters from his songs can all interact and perform on stage”.
Laying the ‘this is what he would have wanted, honest guvnor’ rhetoric on little a bit thick, he then rambles on: “My father and I actively discussed 3D and ‘holography’ and it was a concept he actively engaged in. He actually devoted half a chapter of his ‘The Real Frank Zappa Book’ to this subject”.
“This is a love letter and a journey celebrating the genius artistry of Frank Zappa”, Ahmet concludes. “On a personal note, I feel like I am finishing something my father started years ago. And let’s not forget, Frank himself will be rocking his fans, alongside his bandmates, like nobody’s business”.
Ahmet is possibly keen to stress just how much his dad would have loved this show because the whole hologram tour venture has proven somewhat controversial. Another of Zappa’s sons, Dweezil, has openly denounced it. He’s also used it to bring attention to his ongoing trademark dispute with the Zappa Family Trust.
But if you are willing to ignore Dweezil’s denouncement and would rather buy into Ahmet’s hyperbole – or if you just fancy seeing a 3D rendering of Frank Zappa appear on British stage – here are the dates:
9 May: Edinburgh, Playhouse
11 May: Gateshead, Sage
12 May: Manchester, Bridgewater Hall
13 May: Birmingham, Symphony Hall
14 May: London, The Palladium
