Thursday, September 02, 2004
How Frank Zappa Still Can Get Out the Vote
How Frank Zappa Still Can Get Out the Vote
A few days ago, I happened to find this yesteryear radio show streaming online, with none other than "Frank Zappa, the Fraudulent DJ".
Hey, Frank Zappa! Did you know that Frank Zappa was not only a famous musician, he was also, as they used to say in show business of old, a hoofer?
It's true, and here is my muscle memory anecdote of the day. Turn the dial of your way-back machine way back in time to a summer of another political convention year, the good one of 1960. Allow images of the Los Angeles Ambassador Hotel to come into your mind -- flags, ribbons, and white straw plastic hats and folding tables everywhere covered with white linen table cloths. Please do, as that sets the era and the stage for my Frank Zappa story.
The Ambassador was the very place where I had been dragged every day for a week by my parents to volunteer working at the national Democratic convention. That year, JFK (that's John Fitzgerald Kennedy) had been nominated as the candidate for President. And there, as an impressionable pre-teen, I saw the powerful and the mighty from afar and came close to some. I saw Lyndon Johnson and his entourage, all in suits and ties in LA, swing through some double doors. I shook hands with Stuart Symington upon introduction, and I had actually said hello to Ted Kennedy on his later whistlestop at Pomona headquarters.
Back in that warm summer of a distant time, a pink lemonade kind of season, Frank Zappa and my sister knew each other at college and he'd visit our home often.
Anyway, that same summer Frank actively participated with my family and neighbors in getting out the vote back then when JFK (Jack Kennedy) was nominated to run for the Presidency on the Democratic ticket. This is a true story, and this is how it happened.
In our small town, our neighbor, Mike, was the precinct captain and a milk man by trade. One summer day, slightly after the convention, he just walked over, rang our doorbell, and got our whole household and our friends actively involved. Mike said that in his job, he walked up to the front doors of homes every single day of his life and talked with the people who lived there, and we could do that, too.
We worked for months in our spare time hitting the precincts. I was too young to register voters, but Frank and my sister did. (And I’ll bet our neighbors wish they’d known Frank was going to become so famous and so would have saved their registration receipt with his signature at the bottom.) Always reminding people to study the differences between the candidates and to vote. I helped by hanging literature on their doorknobs if the people weren’t home to speak with, but I preferred to hand it to them personally. The goal was to get every single complacent, discouraged, or undecided person off their couch, get registered, and get down to the polls and vote ... for the good candidate, our candidate.
Well, it worked! We continued on to the last minute, right up to election day all the way up to moments before the polls closed, we all went door to door to remind registered Democrats to vote. My memory may be playing tricks on me, but I recall hearing Frank even drove more than one or two elderly ladies to the polls that afternoon and on into the evening.
But it worked! It all worked out for the absolute best! For the first time in the history of California, a voting precinct reported a 100% turn out (who cares if it was only for one party, it was for the right one!) and Frank Zappa helped it happen. Frank Zappa helped make political history that day!!
Think about it. Every single registered Democrat cast their votes. EVERYBODY VOTED BECAUSE THEY KNEW THE ELECTION WAS CRITICALLY IMPORTANT (Remember who was running on the Republican ticket for the Presidency back in that election? Richard Nixon ... a vote for the Democratic presidential candidate served a double purpose -- it was also a vote against THAT guy.)
ONE HUNDRED PER CENT DEMOCRATIC VOTER TURN OUT HELPED BAT THAT GUY AWAY FROM POLITICAL POWER RIGHT THEN!!
Granted, this was only one small precinct. But that being said and done, that also says there can be an active, informed, and engaged populace. Even if only in microscopic precinct size, still ... the fact that one precinct did it, that means there can be more! It made me very proud of my community. And proud of the odd cast of characters who’d banded together and worked together for all those months prior to the election night for such a noble cause.
Although a small victory (I tell you, I was aware even then that ours was just a single precinct in a single small town in California), we all felt proud of helping that to happen. The report of 100% voter turnout was so newsworthy, it even made it on to the major metropolitan tv news broadcast from Los Angeles and we celebrated in the living room because we even heard it on the tv news ourselves. We heard about something we'd done on the tv!! And our guy WON the national election! We watched the news late late late into the evening, until the very last vote was reported,
(I recall seeing somewhere a picture of Frank Zappa holding an oversized pencil towards the camera with the word "VOTE" over his head. I can't find it anywhere right now, but insert the image of it here.)
It's funny how memory works, you know. All this came back to me a few days ago after I spent six hours on a hot summer day walking a neighborhood in a small town precinct, searching for non-registered voters, and encouraging the Democrats to vote. And I couldn't help remembering Frank Zappa and the first time I'd walked the neighborhood precincts with my family and our friends. It's kind of fun. I mean, you think you might know all the people in the neighborhood, but you never really know who you're going to meet there.
(Last piece standing of Ambassador Hotel ... all photos courtesy of Vintage Los Angeles)
¶ 9/02/2004 11:45:00 AM
A few days ago, I happened to find this yesteryear radio show streaming online, with none other than "Frank Zappa, the Fraudulent DJ".
Hey, Frank Zappa! Did you know that Frank Zappa was not only a famous musician, he was also, as they used to say in show business of old, a hoofer?
It's true, and here is my muscle memory anecdote of the day. Turn the dial of your way-back machine way back in time to a summer of another political convention year, the good one of 1960. Allow images of the Los Angeles Ambassador Hotel to come into your mind -- flags, ribbons, and white straw plastic hats and folding tables everywhere covered with white linen table cloths. Please do, as that sets the era and the stage for my Frank Zappa story.
The Ambassador was the very place where I had been dragged every day for a week by my parents to volunteer working at the national Democratic convention. That year, JFK (that's John Fitzgerald Kennedy) had been nominated as the candidate for President. And there, as an impressionable pre-teen, I saw the powerful and the mighty from afar and came close to some. I saw Lyndon Johnson and his entourage, all in suits and ties in LA, swing through some double doors. I shook hands with Stuart Symington upon introduction, and I had actually said hello to Ted Kennedy on his later whistlestop at Pomona headquarters.
Back in that warm summer of a distant time, a pink lemonade kind of season, Frank Zappa and my sister knew each other at college and he'd visit our home often.
Anyway, that same summer Frank actively participated with my family and neighbors in getting out the vote back then when JFK (Jack Kennedy) was nominated to run for the Presidency on the Democratic ticket. This is a true story, and this is how it happened.
In our small town, our neighbor, Mike, was the precinct captain and a milk man by trade. One summer day, slightly after the convention, he just walked over, rang our doorbell, and got our whole household and our friends actively involved. Mike said that in his job, he walked up to the front doors of homes every single day of his life and talked with the people who lived there, and we could do that, too.
We worked for months in our spare time hitting the precincts. I was too young to register voters, but Frank and my sister did. (And I’ll bet our neighbors wish they’d known Frank was going to become so famous and so would have saved their registration receipt with his signature at the bottom.) Always reminding people to study the differences between the candidates and to vote. I helped by hanging literature on their doorknobs if the people weren’t home to speak with, but I preferred to hand it to them personally. The goal was to get every single complacent, discouraged, or undecided person off their couch, get registered, and get down to the polls and vote ... for the good candidate, our candidate.
Well, it worked! We continued on to the last minute, right up to election day all the way up to moments before the polls closed, we all went door to door to remind registered Democrats to vote. My memory may be playing tricks on me, but I recall hearing Frank even drove more than one or two elderly ladies to the polls that afternoon and on into the evening.
But it worked! It all worked out for the absolute best! For the first time in the history of California, a voting precinct reported a 100% turn out (who cares if it was only for one party, it was for the right one!) and Frank Zappa helped it happen. Frank Zappa helped make political history that day!!
Think about it. Every single registered Democrat cast their votes. EVERYBODY VOTED BECAUSE THEY KNEW THE ELECTION WAS CRITICALLY IMPORTANT (Remember who was running on the Republican ticket for the Presidency back in that election? Richard Nixon ... a vote for the Democratic presidential candidate served a double purpose -- it was also a vote against THAT guy.)
ONE HUNDRED PER CENT DEMOCRATIC VOTER TURN OUT HELPED BAT THAT GUY AWAY FROM POLITICAL POWER RIGHT THEN!!
Granted, this was only one small precinct. But that being said and done, that also says there can be an active, informed, and engaged populace. Even if only in microscopic precinct size, still ... the fact that one precinct did it, that means there can be more! It made me very proud of my community. And proud of the odd cast of characters who’d banded together and worked together for all those months prior to the election night for such a noble cause.
Although a small victory (I tell you, I was aware even then that ours was just a single precinct in a single small town in California), we all felt proud of helping that to happen. The report of 100% voter turnout was so newsworthy, it even made it on to the major metropolitan tv news broadcast from Los Angeles and we celebrated in the living room because we even heard it on the tv news ourselves. We heard about something we'd done on the tv!! And our guy WON the national election! We watched the news late late late into the evening, until the very last vote was reported,
(I recall seeing somewhere a picture of Frank Zappa holding an oversized pencil towards the camera with the word "VOTE" over his head. I can't find it anywhere right now, but insert the image of it here.)
It's funny how memory works, you know. All this came back to me a few days ago after I spent six hours on a hot summer day walking a neighborhood in a small town precinct, searching for non-registered voters, and encouraging the Democrats to vote. And I couldn't help remembering Frank Zappa and the first time I'd walked the neighborhood precincts with my family and our friends. It's kind of fun. I mean, you think you might know all the people in the neighborhood, but you never really know who you're going to meet there.
(Last piece standing of Ambassador Hotel ... all photos courtesy of Vintage Los Angeles)
¶ 9/02/2004 11:45:00 AM
