The Furious Bongos are celebrating like mothers this Mother’s Day season. Forget brunch and grab your poncho. There’ll be muffins, and perhaps some tiny cookies to keep you sated while worshipping the Grand Wazoo. The Furious Bongos are a bunch of professional musicians with pretty diverse backgrounds who decided to take on a pretty big challenge and have some fun in the process. Now, you might ask, “Oh yeah? ‘Professional’ musicians, eh? What makes you think they can play Frank’s music as well as [insert Zappa family member here]?” Well….you might not have heard of them individually, but you have heard of the people they’ve spent their careers working with (and not just “I played a 10am slot at a festival once that was headlined by Mr. Big Name Artist Guy”): Yo Yo Ma, Mick Fleetwood, BB King, REM, Vinnie Colaiuta, Oasis, LA Philharmonic, Jerry Kimbrough, BB King, Ani DiFranco, Madison Symphony, Arthur Barrow, The Crawdaddies, Alice In Chains, Munich Philharmonic, Camille Zamora, India Arie, Popa Chubby, Limelight: A Tribute To Rush, Pinetop Perkins, Damon Harris, Robert Mirabal, Jason Webb, Chicago Lyric Opera, Savannah Symphony, Ben Tucker, Arrested Development, Madison Opera, and that’s just a sample. When it came to his music, Frank was constantly changing things, and he allowed his band members to bring their unique voices to the table. He also understood that his live performances were entertainment – it’s supposed to be a rock show, not a piano recital. With that in mind, the Furious Bongos don’t think playing Song X from Album Y note-for-note while staring at our shoes is the proper way to go about it. The result of that approach (combined with a lot of homework and being lucky enough to have a killer complement of musicians) is a show that pays respect to Zappa’s legacy, but is still new and different and dangerous and FUN, with lots of eyebrows. Kinda like Frank.