Tuesday, November 21, 2006



That, my friends, is the legendary Frank Zappa. Musician. Comedian. Author.

I just recently stumbled across a collection of his complete discography. Ten gigabytes of crazy-ass Zappa tunes. One thousand, five hundred and eighty-four songs.

HELL YEAH.

Actually, the name for this blog comes from a lyric from his 1979 album Sheik Yerbouti. The song is entitled Broken Hearts Are For Assholes. The lyric goes a little something like this...

"Ram it, ram it, ram it, ram it up yer poopshute!"

Good times. Good times.

I first discovered Mr Zappa at the tender age of about thirteen. My mom was dating this guy named Mark who had a brother named Chris. Mark was a pretty cool guy, but Chris was the coolest almost-uncle a kid could ask for. He is one of those rare grown-ups who knows how to relate to a thirteen year-old and make him feel like a peer, you know? I never felt like I was hanging out with an elder with him. I was just one-of-the-guys. Not to mention he was funny as hell.

At some point Chris went through some sort of existential crisis or some such thing, and decided to go as minimalist as possible. He rid himself of anything that wasn't useful or essential. Basically he got rid of all distractions. No more video games, cd's, movies. he gave it all up to pursue higher conciousness. If you ask me, he might as well have gone one further and joined a Tibetan monastary, but who am I to judge.

Anyway, in this cleansing of stuff that Chris went through, he decided I was lacking in a few items that he could provide.

He knew I was very much into music, so he gave me his guitar.

Wow. My first guitar. I was speechless. What thirteen year-old American boy doesn't dream of playing the guitar? I guess he figured any kid who loves music should have an opportunity to learn how to make his own. I'm sure my Dad loved him for that one.

He also noticed a void in my music collection. I didn't own any Frank Zappa, or Black Sabbath. To him this was a travesty.

On that glorious day I received my first copy of Sheik Yerbouti, along with Sabbath's Paranoid. I say "first copy" because it is one of many CD's to have been borrowed and never returned over the years. Couldn't tell you who has it now.

If you like Tenacious D, then you should look into Franky. He was doing that kinda silly-lyrics-with-ridiculously-good-guitar schtick before Jack Black and K.G. were even born.

"...Sir Richard Pump-a-loaf, the demented bread boffer..."

Haha. Oh Frank, you had me at yerbouti.

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