Saturday, December 06, 2008

Case History/Day 3 of Zappadan


Zappadan always creates serious problems with my personal time/space continuum. The planetary alignment, the stars seem to be affected by forces beyond my senses. I tumble forward and backward on a loop that is connected and disconnected.
It all begins in a Catholic Elementary School basement in Detroit. I was 15 years old? A Teen Club for the neighborhood kids to bring records, drink soft drinks and hang out while the nuns looked on in fear. I was not a regular. My friends and I hung out and listened to the Yardbirds and our ultimate ambition at the time was to form a rock band, have an actual sexual experience with another person and to grow cool side burns.

The kids were hanging out listening to Jan and Dean, The Beach Boys and dancing to The Bird. The nuns thought that Freddie and The dreamers were a nice influence.
The it happened. Over the tinny cheap PA speakers in the hall, a noise like two giant balloons rubbing together at high volume with a beat blasted everyone into stunned silence...There was a voice, "Suzy? Suzy Creamcheese?" And they said it couldn't happen here......

This went on for a few minutes. The nuns were too stunned to react. Then Sister mary Tehonella, the thake charge authoritarian of the group strode into the back room and ripped the record off the turntable. She reappeared dragging my buddy George by the arm nd up the stairs and out the door. He was clutching a record jacket.

So we followed George and he told us that he was officially banned from the teen club.
We were impressed. I offered him one of my Chesterfields which I smoked because I felt for some reason had an aura of sophistication. I looked at Georges record. It was freak Out by The Mothers of Invention and I had never seen anything like it before.
The next day, since I had the most unsupervised existence, George and my buddies came over to my house and played the record.

Things changed fast in my life. I went to an inner city high school, Cass Tech which specialized in the Arts and had a very diverse group of friends. It was the dawning of the Age of Aquariums...The Age of Aquarius never really happened in Detroit. There were "hippies" and hippie hang outs, but most of us knew that we were really freaks and mutants. Living in Detroit only helped to foster that realization, every day.
Freak Out became the soundtrack of my life. I liked lots of other music, but my tastes had been fatally influenced already.

My buddies, Larry and Rudy started one of the first high school "underground" papers in the USA, Yellow. We got to work on it in the offices of the still publishing Revolutionary Paper, The Fifth Estate in an office on the John C. Lodge Expressway below Canfield Ave. One cold afternoon, I was in the office with Larry and found myself creating the ad for the first Mothers of Invention performance in Detroit at The ford Auditorium. I wish I had a copy of that ad. I was doing proto psychedelic lettering and created a collage of giant pigs attacking the skyline of Detroit.

We were able to get free tickets to the show. Also while we were working in the Fifth Estate office, we checked out the want ads for the next issue and saw an ad recruiting "hippie types" to hang out at the opening of an art gallery. An artist had painted the flower children in San Francisco and needed sopme livehippes for atmosphere.
We showed up. I was wearing a double breasted Salvation Army jacket and a wide tie with jeans and was barefoot. I ended up on television and in the newspaper and appropriate quotes were attributed to me like, "Groovy" and "They really make it!".
The next day, when the paper came out and television footage was shown most of my living relatives disowned me, except for an uncle who died recently and my sister told me that the cutting from the paper was in his wallet.

I saw the Mothers at The Ford Auditorium. They abused the rising stage and played a program of covers of sleazy R&B and greasy Rock songs. Frank would announce the song, the artist and the label and the recording serial number. Then theyy launched into an extended version of the early proto King Kong! It was great! I was never the same...the syndrome had truly set in.
This was the beginning of my 43 year obsession with frank Zappa and his work and the world revolving around it. My esthetic was profoundly twisted and I had become a teenage dada monster. Happy Day 3 of Zappadan!

11 comments:

historymike said...

Happy Zappadan, microdot.

Being kicked out of a Catholic Club should be a rite of passage for every young person.

Anonymous said...

From Engineer of Knowledge
Hello Microdot,
Happy Zappadan to you too. What a great posting and I enjoyed it very much. I wanted you to know that I am listening to the annual traditional music, “Live at the Fillmore” with the former members of The Turtles. Latex Solar Beef is causing a flashback as we speak.

mud_rake said...

Latex Solar Beef? I must be way too old for this stuff. What ever happened to the Mamas and Papas?

microdot said...

Mudrake, this is what was happening while the Mamas and The Papas were on Top 40 Am Radio....
The other history American Music, this is Un-Pop Music.

I am going to put up some links today from other sites celebrating Zappadan, including a link to a video of the Tehran Symphony Orchestra practising "The Dog Breath Variations".....

Frank Zappa was fond of quoting Edgar Varese, "The Modern Day Composer Refuses To Die!"....

darkblack said...

'giant pigs attacking the skyline of Detroit'

I hear Big D had trouble with pigs, but what of the ponies?

;>)

Happy Zappadan, microdot.

Anonymous said...

From Engineer of Knowledge
Hello All,
I happened to pick up my wife's "Entertainment" magazine and I noted an article stating that Alan Gordon, the co-writer of the 1964 Turtles hit, "Happy Together," died of cancer on Nov 22, 2008 at the age of 64 in Scottsdale, Az. I make mention of this because it was performed by Flo and Eddie with the Mothers on the "Live at the Fillmore" album. A classic moment in music history.

Jinbon H Wrong aka Sloop John B said...

nice sayings in this post - hey, I was in France this summer, I should have dropped in! I was staying in Avignon. Anyway, I just spun my vinyl copy of Grand Wazoo on Saturday. Also, I saw a Wild Man Fischer program on IFC and was flooded with newly re-illuminated memory fragments from the densely-cluttered Zappast. Francis Vincent Zappa, long may he live and Happy Zappadan!

microdot said...

I saw your post about the Pont du Gard! I remember going there before there were zillions of Chinese tourists. I was by there probably around whenyou were there, I had gone to visit friends in Ales....
More Zappa stuff, plus some links later tonight...
Meanwhile I gotta eat some more of this Baby Jesus sausage....my dog loves the skins.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the memory...I knew Frank well and was actually behind the scenes at the Ford Auditorium concert with some WSU radicals (who had earlier in the day disptched some of Don Losinger's thugs). You should have partied with us after the concert...it's amazing that Frank ever played again.

Perezoso said...

Hap-hip Happly Z-Dan

FZ and Mothers was before my time, but listening to Uncle Meat, Hot Rats, Overnite Sen, Apostrophe (and Beefheart) in late 80s and into 90s sort of altered my musickal consciousness.

At the same time, FZ may be overrated as Svengali (as I have said previously), or shall we say there's a celebrity-freak factor that's not that related to the music. The Yellow Shark is cool for reducing that factor to some extent. Gail and kids are typical tinseltown brats as well (she might have peeps monitoring Z-dan at this very moment).

FZ was a bit megalomaniacal, and while quite talented, not quite Stravinsky (not to say Coltrane,etc.).

I caught the Grandmothers in Fresno 2000 or so, and the boys were not all worshipful of FZ, or Gail and ZappaCo. Van Vliet was reportedly not on friendly terms with FZ for years. Ultimately, however, it's the music matters: Viva the Dog Breath Variations!

microdot said...

I would easily rate him as one of the top guitar/sound visionaries of his day.