Zappa.

[bgmnts]

Catholic Girls is a fun bit of silliness and his spawn was in The Running Man so thumbs up from me.

[Petey Pate]

I even know a guy who liked Ruben and the Jets because he thought they were a real band (his elder brother had it when he was 10 or so) and it remains his sole FZ purchase.

They were a real band... eventually.



Supposedly there were radio DJs who played the original Cruising with Ruben and the Jets not knowing that Zappa was behind it.  I have a hard time believing this because its too similar to the joke featured on the album cover.  "Is this the Mothers of Invention recording under a different name in a last ditch attempt to get their cruddy music on the radio?"

[Steven]

Ain't heard this in years, a much better than the album in my opinion studio rehearsal version of How Could I Be Such A Fool.

[NoSleep]

Does anyone have mp3s of that New Zealand radio series about Zappa "The Radio Is Broken"?

Ha! I searched for the name of the show and found that it is now freely available from Radio NZ's website: http://www.radionz.co.nz/concert/programmes/frank-zappa-the-radio-is-broken

[famethrowa]

Ain't heard this in years, a much better than the album in my opinion studio rehearsal version of How Could I Be Such A Fool.

I like that clip, it shows that Frank is just the kind of guy to shut down a rehearsal of a song 30 seconds before the end just because the snare was half a beat late in one bar.

I really believe the "pop" songs on Freak Out are actually serious, earnest attempts to write a successful commercial song in the style of The Four Seasons or The Mamas and Papas or whoever at the time. Frank was of course incapable of doing this, and after the fact it's easy to pass them off as ironic pastiches.

[Pepotamo1985]

I've had this thought before, and I find those cuts the most fascinating parts of FO!, but I reckon it was a tradeoff - either the label telling Frank he wasn't getting Help I'm A Rock or Return on there if he didn't include pop songs, or vice versa.

[NoSleep]

The record company thought they had signed a blues band (after hearing one song), then on the first recording session Frank presented "Who Are The Brain Police?".