Whenever I enter a record store, the first I thing I do is check out the Frank Zappa selection. I do it for two reasons: (1. I love Frank Zappa, and (2. it serves as something of a litmus test for the store. If they have a good Frank Zappa selection, then I know they’re the real deal and I’m not wasting my time. Last week I visited Oxford’s new record store, The End of All Music. Is it the real deal? Well, I walked away with my favorite Zappa album, One Size Fits All. You do the math.
As for the music itself, it hit me at a time when I was in desperate need of something different, something really different. I had spent all of high school flooding my ear canals with the same eleven songs my local classic rock radio station played on rotation, day-in and day-out. Then came One Size Fits All. It’s an exhibition of everything that made Zappa great: off-the-wall musical arrangements, surrealist humor, and, yes, a devastating guitar solo here and there.
Now, is it his finest offering? God, I don’t know. The man released oodles of material in his lifetime, and though I’ve been an ardent fan for the past five years, I feel I’ve only scratched the hairy surface of the Frank Zappa iceberg. But it certainly spoke to 18-year-old me. One minute into “Inca Roads,” the first song on the album, and you realize this is the music he wanted to hear, not what a cigar-puffing record executive wanted. There’s an undeniable passion and conviction to Frank Zappa’s music. He genuinely believed in his work, in spite of the shrugged shoulders, raised eyebrows, and looks of “I don’t know..” it caused over the years. Forget Robert Frost, man, that’s the inspiration you need leaving high school. And hey, it doesn’t hurt that it’s set against the backdrop of great, great music.
