The Uncle Frankie Show

Lyrics

MC: Once again, the Jewitt, Klopfenstein and Things program takes great pride in presenting to you that foremost author, world renown lecturer, writer of many books, musical director, singer, actor, producer, and waterboy for the Cucamonga Killers. There he is, uh . . . ah, oh! Frank Zappa!

FZ:
Hiya, kids. How are ya? It's just wonderful that you would come back to listen to me one more time.
I'd like to tell that here at Studio Z we're doing some wonderful, exciting things nowadays. We're in the process of uh . . . (why are you feeding me back through there, Bobby baby?) . . . we're in the process of preparing for the uh, well, CBS, that's a network that they have, you know the one that doesn't show many color shows. We're preparing the world's first rock & roll teen-age opera for them, and this is no fooling, kids, they're even gonna pay us to do it. And the name of this little show, which will be probably on sometime around Valentine's Day, is called I Was A Teenage Malt Shop. And, it's really wonderful, it's got a lot of fun songs in it, one of which you'll hear a little bit later, oh, you'll just, oh, you'll have a lot of fun with it.
But, what I wanted to say was that this thing could start a new trend, you know, like there used to be those other, those movies, you know, I Was A Teen-age Frankenstein and I Was A Teen-age Werewolf and all that. But we got some really wonderful stuff to follow up the Malt Shop with. See, here are some of the wonderful things we can do, like the following month we can do I Was A Teen-age Lord Of The Jungle. A thirteen year old boy is lord of the jungle, he talks to animals, and they talk to him. Follow him as he searches the dark interior of Africa to find a strange herb that would make hair grow on his chest. That's a good one.
And then, uh, I Was A Teen-age Hub Cap. Unwholesome youth mob with long greasy hair gain control a small isolated town and run it better than the fat real estate operators who had it before. Mmmh, that sounds like fun.
And then, of course, we have I Was A Teen-age Martian. A small town boy reigns in terror over local residents who don't understand him. He falls in love with a plastic girl full of dynamite and computers that the high school metal shop teacher builds as a decoy. They get married and take off to Mars in his flying saucer and it blows up.
Then we have I Was A Teen-age Gas Station Attendant. A young boy hates life, he wishes he was a girl. High school counselor helps him to see that this is only a way of expressing his resentment from the fact that most girls don't like to run a gas pump. Finally convinced that it is not only ridiculous, but exp--, but expensive of course to become a girl, he attempts suicide. At the last minute his alcoholic mother yells up to him on the bridge, you know, where he's gonna jump from, and tells him that he got scholarship to Juilliard. He comes down and finds out that the letter wasn't for him at all, so he joins the Marines.
Then of course we have I Was A Teen-age Rhinoceros. A psychotic teen-age liar's nose keeps growing. His friends reject him. He gets a part in an American International monster movie. His big chance. At the premiere he tells Hedda Hopper the picture is lousy and his nose goes back to normal. His friends reject him.
I Was A Teen-age Amoeba. A little animated thing, you know, showing teen life in [Pollard] Slew. An educational way to present raw sex among one-cell animals.
Uh . . . Oh, here's a wonderful one. I Was A Teen-age Artichoke. There is a slumber party, the girls are having merry fun and drinking Pepsis and hitting each other with pillows and making screwy phone calls. And they just get to sleep and one girl wakes up screaming for some strange reason. She finds artichoke leaves are growing out of their arms and head. Then everybody wakes up and tries to decide if they still want to have her for a girlfriend. Pretty soon they forget about her and start hitting each other with pillows and making screwy phone calls again.
Oh, here is a wonderful one. I Was A Teen-age Escape Artist. The unusual story of a boy who is kept in a cage in a trailer by his emotionally disturbed parents. One day he finds the way to escape. Once he is free he runs away and he rents a dog costume. He comes back to the trailer and overhears his parents talking. They believe he's dead. He barks. They come to the door and see him. They really believe he is a dog. They love him and feed him and adopt him and care for him for a long time. Then, one day, the man from the costume shop finally finds him and he gets arrested because he can't pay for all the rent he owes on the costume. And it's all worn out on the knees and they have to throw it away. The night they locked him up there's an earthquake and he escapes from jail. It is the middle of the night and it is cold outside and everybody is all hysterical about the earthquake, so he runs away and joins a circus and becomes the clown.
Ooh! And here's a one final one, it's a pretty one for one. I Was A Teen-age Garbage Collector. Their son wants to be a garbage collector and there's nothing they can do about it. The neighbours are talking, they get mysterious phone calls in the middle of the night, and the guy on the other end hangs up. Still the youth's mind cannot be changed, he has an overwhelming sense of civic obligation and duty. He says, "Who else is gonna pick it up? You wanna just let it lay there? Today's youth must prepare for tomorrow's challenges, etc." And that's what he'd say all the time. They buy him a new car and new clothes, kiss him when he gets home from school, raise his allowance, take out a policy so he can go to Harvard, buy him a carton of cigarettes and a jar of tackle, and still he wants to be a garbage collector. A wise neighbour suggests the use of negative psychology. "Tell him he can do it, and he won't want to." Mmh-mh-mh. They tell him he can be a garbage collector, he can do anything he wants, and good parents shouldn't stand on the way of their children. Now the boy and his older sister both become garbage collectors and the parents move to another city.
That's in the-- in the near future, friends, we'll be preparing those for some unknown network. Now, I'd like to, well, entertain you musically a little bit, uh, tell you a little bit about I Was A Teen-age Malt Shop, and this actually is for real. We're just wonderful up here at Studio Z, we do such strange and crazy funny things. This show, the basic plot of it is there is this girl and her father, strange relationship they have, and the father owns a little recording studio, and the landlord wants to close the recording studio down and convert it into a malt shop, because the girl, her name is Nelda, because her father hasn't had a hit in three years. So the story opens up in the recording studio and the first song of the program is a little ditty that is sung by a very bad rock & roll group called, well, we haven't developed their names yet, but the name of the song is, "Charva, I Love You And I Don't Know What In The World To Do About It." And we have already recorded this thing. I wanna just a-- just a dandy song. And I'd like to show you how we do these things here at Studio Z. It's done on our five-track recording machine, we make multiple recordings here, it's very exciting. This is what the drums for the song sound like. Well, Bobby . . .

Charva, I loved you
I loved you through and through . . .

Recorded that all by itself. It has a drum part, you know, we put that in. And the next thing we have would be like a little rinkety dinkety piano on there . . .
Exciting, isn't it, the way these things are done? Oh, boy. And then we put in, you know, like some background singers . . .
And we blended it all just like . . .
What, just right means silence? Well, anyway, there is another way that you can listen to "Charva, I Love You And I Don't Know What In The World To Do About It." Uh, I think we should like play the whole thing for you, it's a, just a dandy song, we'll splice it in right here . . .
Well, I have to do-- Oh, here it is! . . . Hiya! I'm back again, ha ha ha! Oh, boy, bet you're really glad. Now, I thought I'd entertain you further. See, this is the total entertainment show. I'm going to perform on the guitar for ya, I'm gonna play some old time nasty blues for ya . . .
That was kind of nice. And was fun to do too. I bet you thought I couldn't play that kind of stuff, I mainly just specialize in piano and play that badly, but I can do the same thing on a guitar. Now, I'd like to say that I wish that some of you would write in and say what you think about what you hear on this wonderful two hour program that begins at 11 o'clock and ends at 1 o'clock on Saturday nights on KSPC, 88.7 on your dial, folks, on the FM dial. Mm-hm. And I wish you'd write in and say how'd you like it, and how you are today, and, just tell me how many kittens your animals have been having and things like that. All the important things that you worry about during the rest of the week, that we take care of for you here on Saturday night. And I'd be very interested in hearing from you if you just address your mail to KSPC, Pomona College, Claremont, California, and you might put my name on there someplace, Uncle Frankie. And good night, folks.

Records On Which This Song Has Appeared

Zappa Albums & Side Projects

• Joe's XMASage