Saturday Night Fish Fry

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I do not wish to lead our British Cousin, Marginalia, down another maudlin path with this evening's musical selection, like I did last time. So tonight I humbly put forth a more robust offering from the spoiled-romance department.



Now I, myself, never had a problem with my girlfriends' "mamas"---they always seemed to adore me...more than their fucking daughters did, actually! In fact, it's too bad that they didn't have "cougars" back then, because I might have made it once or twice! Anyway, I consider this jaunty tune to illustrate another case of a missed Frank Zappa opportunity for a hit radio single. True, the "kill your mama" meme would probably have sent 1970 broadcast sensors into a tizzy, but maybe he could have gotten airplay with it on FM "underground" stations. In my opinion, this track has it all: an aggressive beat, great lummox-rock riff, a zillion instruments on its jazz-rock chart, and humor in both lyrics and arrangement. In a more perfect world, this song---not the embarrassing and tiresome Dinah-Moe Humm---would have been his concert encore crowd-pleaser.

The cover art of the album from which this track is extracted, "Weasels Ripped My Flesh," is also worth remarking upon, and I'm delighted that the YouTuber who posted "Guitar" included it as the visual channel. I remember "freaking out" when I first saw this hilariously creepy cover during the summer of '70, on an excursion to an incense-fogged record store in Piper's Alley, Old Town, in Chicago. Sight unheard, so to speak, I eagerly dug out my $3.25, which was plucked from my hand by a greasy longhair with 8-inch dingy yellow fingernails that sickly curled toward the palms of his hand. (What a jagoff!) Fortuitously, 40-some-odd years later it came to my attention that this album jacket artwork was inspired by the cover of a postwar pulp men's magazine. Scroll down below the song credits to see it, and note the inconspicuous article title at bottom right of the cover.

My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention (1970, from"Weasels Ripped My Flesh," Warner Bros. - Reprise - Bizarre MS 2028), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.