What it was, was Freak Out.

“You’re scarin' me, Aunt Z.”

“Shut up and sing, kid.”

“B…b...but don't none 'a these words make any sense.”

“Girl you thought he was man, but he was a muffin...”

In honor of Zappadan (Ristocrats ™), I hereby relate this mostly /nearly /roughly /slightly true Zappadan Heresy to test whether it is possible to mix a drink which

A) Dangerously blends one part Andy Griffith and three parts Frank Zappa, and yet,

B) All at the same time goes down smoove, finishes clean, and gets those libidinous liberal lasses to thinking that, why yes, it would be a good idea to ditch these pesky pants wouldn’t it?

See, once upon a time when I was but a wee little shotglass, some of the more brilliant reprobates and public school pariahs out with whom I hung fell all madcrazyjunkie in love with Frank Zappa.

Now this was not a summer fling or a little occasional backseat nooner tumble; it was full-on obsession. And like your boy-tribe world after your pal starts bringing along his new, weird girlfriend -- because he cannot stop talking about her -- at some point all conversation will inevitably circle ‘round to the time she lived in Burkina Faso, or the amazing things she could do with her tongue, a soft-serve yogurt machine and a timing belt.

And so, by degrees, we made room for “Roxy & Elsewhere” and “Apostrophe” around our table, and made polite if awkward and noncommittal banter about this force of absurd nature that had somehow ensorcelled some of our friends.

The dividing line seemed to be the convergence of band and math; the higher-order math and music-reading geeks fell for Frank like Ali dropping Liston.

“Look a this block of musical notation. It’s, like, black. For eleven pages! You know what that means?”

No.

“It means to play this, he’ll need, like, 13,000 Taiko Drummers. Wearing hand-woven seaweed panties on their heads! All seated in a straight line from Philadelphia to Tulsa! All playing the same note for two hours!”

About such things they grew very excited.

Now at the time, the only blots of ink-on-paper that interested me were words, and the only words that really held my attention either began something like this:

“TRUE! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been, and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses — not destroyed — not dulled them.
…”

Or something like this:

“Dear Penthouse, I never thought I would be writing you, but…”

I had a blunter palate, whetted for other things, so while I accepted on faith that a long wiggly slab of black ink on lined paper could be the spoor of genius, it didn’t move me.

And when yet another fire-hose of tin-whistles, woodwinds, hemostats tapping cat skulls and so forth was offered up to maybe, finally, get po’ slow me to understand the sheer fucking perspicacity of it all

(Ok, Ok, Ok, Ok, I believe you; I’ll do whatever you want.

Sure, “Debra Kadabra” makes Samuel Coleridge sound like Wimpy, drunk, with a mouthful of chipped concrete and YooHoo.

The greatest sound ever made by the hand of Man is “Carolina Hardcore Ecstasy”.

Captain Beefheart is the Titan from whom Frank Zappa sprang fully formed.

Or maybe the other way around.

Just please don’t make me listen to "Bat Chain Puller" anymore…” )

I could only think “Yes, this is indeed exactly what the London Philharmonic would sound like if they were all simultaneously pushed down a flight of stairs by Richard Widmark

in ‘The Kiss of Death’."

In the end and over the years, I came to very much appreciate Zappa’s lively intelligence, splendid politics and outlook, and much of his music.

But I missed my chance to love him. To luuurve him.

For I was not the lad who found his passions and perversions being exuberantly everted and conjured by Frank.

Instead I was the lad who was swept along into a cow pasture where they was a’playin’ at some kinda contest I never quite understood, with some kinda peculiar rules I could not fully comprehend.

I was the musicological hick, standing with my Big Orange drink in hand -- as people cheered knowingly all around me -- straining like Hell to make an ounce of sense of the game.

And what it was was football.