Saturday, October 04, 2003
Paying for the Bill of Rights (Free of Charge and No Admission): More on Frank Zappa's sense of humor
Not every body in our valley saw things in the same light. I remember the time I called a local deejay on a Pomona station to ask him to play a song I liked, released on 45 rpm, “Sixty Minute Man,” and instead of just ignoring my request, he launched into a tirade with me on the phone that blew my ears off, saying he would never play that song because of the lyrics and “you know what I mean about that and you know what he really means (that’s just filth!) and just the title alone is enough to keep it off my show” and he hung up on me.
Aside from one alarming encounter with a hostile lunatic on the streets of Los Angeles, I had never had any one respond to me in such a completely anonymous vicious tone before and being a young teenager I was really and genuinely shocked. These are the kinds of things you take to older more experienced people for explanation or comfort, and my sister and Frank did their utmost best to explain to me that it wasn’t just because it was “black” music that the deejay refused to play that song.
I listened to the song again at the record store listening booth and still couldn’t find anything wrong with it. If I was missing something, nobody was telling me what it was, but my naive attempts to unravel the hidden message if there was one caused a certain amount of hilarity.
Frank decided to launch a phone-in one evening as my sister and I sat at the kitchen table with him hanging on the phone. Frank got into a lot of periodic arguments with that guy, it’s like he became an occasional hobby with Frank, so he would call him up now and again just to irritate him by requesting “that song.”
There would be the predictable response on the other end and Frank would break into a grin and roll his eyes and shake his head in disbelief.
Frank would say things like, “Well, okay, I understand you don’t like the title. How about just calling it “Fifty-Nine and a Half Minute Man” and playing it anyway?”
xxxxxx
¶ 10/04/2003 01:17:00 PM
Not every body in our valley saw things in the same light. I remember the time I called a local deejay on a Pomona station to ask him to play a song I liked, released on 45 rpm, “Sixty Minute Man,” and instead of just ignoring my request, he launched into a tirade with me on the phone that blew my ears off, saying he would never play that song because of the lyrics and “you know what I mean about that and you know what he really means (that’s just filth!) and just the title alone is enough to keep it off my show” and he hung up on me.
Aside from one alarming encounter with a hostile lunatic on the streets of Los Angeles, I had never had any one respond to me in such a completely anonymous vicious tone before and being a young teenager I was really and genuinely shocked. These are the kinds of things you take to older more experienced people for explanation or comfort, and my sister and Frank did their utmost best to explain to me that it wasn’t just because it was “black” music that the deejay refused to play that song.
I listened to the song again at the record store listening booth and still couldn’t find anything wrong with it. If I was missing something, nobody was telling me what it was, but my naive attempts to unravel the hidden message if there was one caused a certain amount of hilarity.
Frank decided to launch a phone-in one evening as my sister and I sat at the kitchen table with him hanging on the phone. Frank got into a lot of periodic arguments with that guy, it’s like he became an occasional hobby with Frank, so he would call him up now and again just to irritate him by requesting “that song.”
There would be the predictable response on the other end and Frank would break into a grin and roll his eyes and shake his head in disbelief.
Frank would say things like, “Well, okay, I understand you don’t like the title. How about just calling it “Fifty-Nine and a Half Minute Man” and playing it anyway?”
xxxxxx
¶ 10/04/2003 01:17:00 PM
