Difference between pages "Monsieur Zappa's Rock Circus" and "'Girls' is awesome, fer sure"

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By Allan Jones<br>
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By Daniel Winkel<br>
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Melody Maker, October 5, 1974<br>
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Knight-Ridder Newspapers<br>
 +
Waukesha Freeman, July 16, 1982<br>
  
  
  
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[[Image:MelodyMaker1974-10-05.jpg|frame|]]
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LONG BEACH, Calif. – Funny thing about Valley girls these days. You can't find one anywhere, especially in the Valley. At least they will never admit to being a Valley girl. Everyone else is a Valley girl but not me. All because of "that song."
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Allan Jones reports on a weird and wonderful two-day jaunt in Paris with the Mothers ...  
 
  
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"Do you need any more from Chester? Have you got the tom-toms ... They haven't got the tom-toms, Chester. Have you got any bass ... HAVE YOU GOT ANY BASS ON THAT BOARD? No ... THEN WHAT HAVE YOU GOT?"
+
That song is ''[[Valley Girl|Valley Girls]]'' by 14-year-old [[Moon Zappa]] and it's either the most popular record around or the most reviled record around, depending, of course, on whom you talk to.
  
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Jeez, [[Biography|Zappa]] looks so peeved it makes you wince. He lays a really morose stare on the sound crew. One of his specials, reserved for unfortunate individuals who don't quite measure up to the moment, designed to reduce those individuals to total insignificance and cause them to wish they were well out of the line of fire.
+
The song is a hilarious and sometimes biting parody of the lifestyle and linguistics of teenage girls in the [[San Fernando Valley]]. And because of it, Valley girls are now an endangered species.
  
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An FZ eyeball wipes out. He turns his attention to the equipment mounting up around him, screws up his face and rips off a riff on his guitar that would make James Williamson blink at the violence of its delivery.
+
"We're not Valley girls," said 14-year-old Angie Barad of Encino, referring to herself and her friend, Stephanie Bannister. "We do fit her (Moon Zappa's) description of a Valley girl but we don't fit our own."
  
−
Francis Vincent Zappa performs the collected works of the ''Stooges,'' already. He stops suddenly: "Listen, can you reverse the polarity on the console?"
+
''Valley Girls'' made its debut on Pasadena radio station KROQ-FM in early May and since then has turned not only an entire city but a large part of the country on its listening ear. "The first week it came out it was the No. 1 requested song," said Denis McNamara, program director of WLIR-FM in Long Island, New York.
  
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If you can imagine a Buckminster Fuller dome-apparition superimposed over a building similar, if slightly smaller, to the Empire Pool then you've almost nailed down a picture of the ''Palais des Sports de Paris.''
+
New York?
  
−
Both have an equal sense of oppressive monotony in terms of space and size. The ''Palais des Sports'' seems more adequate for a Presidential convention than a rock concert, but its capacity and the economics of rock have led to its utilisation as a venue for concerts.
+
For sure.
  
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Tonight it's the scene for Zappa and the [[The Mothers|Mothers]]' first French date of their current European tour. A ''"Concert Unique"'' as the posters for the show would have it.
+
Valley Girls features Moon, the daughter of rock musician [[Biography|Frank Zappa]], gurgling away in a disjointed monologue using the jargon of Valley teenagers. The song is purposeful exaggeration – almost satire – of the way Valley teenage girls speak, sentences full of "you knows" and "like" and Valley code words like "bitchen," "tubular" and "totally." And like satire, it cuts deep because it presents young teenage girls living in the Valley as, well, air heads.
  
−
Outside the hall, 300 gendarmes, unarmed but with truncheons and batons at the ready, mix uneasily with free music aficionado militants.
+
Non-Vals (people who don't live in the Valley) find the song condescendingly cute; the joke is always funnier when it's not on you. But some teenage girls in the Valley say the song is embarrassing, an insult and is making their life miserable.
  
−
[[Herb Cohen]], Zappa's manager recalls that the last rock concert held at the hall precipitated a riot which the hundred police who were on duty could not contain. The hall was severely trashed.
+
"I think it sucks and I'm going to assassinate Moon Zappa," said one ninth grade girl. "It's an insult," added her friend. Said Barad: "When they say it to you it's not as a compliment. They don't throw it to you as a compliment. They throw it as more of an insult.
  
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Tonight, therefore, the police force has been trebled, and look as if they wouldn't suffer a moment's hesitation, at the first sign of any trouble, to wade in and crack open a few dozen heads.
+
"I liked it at first," said Barad. "And then people took it too seriously. We go into stores and there's Valley girl T-shirts. People come up to us and say, 'OK, say for sure, for sure (pronounced fer-sure ).' And we look at them and we can't believe it.
  
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If things outside are a little unsettled, the situation inside the ''Palais des Sports'' is just the right side of chaotic. The Mothers' sound system should have arrived earlier in the afternoon after making the long road haul from the previous gig in Gothenburg.
+
"I like the song but I don't like Moon for writing it."
  
−
The whole system should have been erected, and the sound check completed by 5 p.m, at the latest.
+
Fer sure.
  
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The trucks carrying the equipment were, however, held up at the customs, and delayed at a ferry, and finally arrived hours behind schedule. It's a situation that's occurred twice before, explains Zappa later. It certainly does little for maintaining even tempers.
+
In an interview, Moon said the song was meant not to put people down but as a funny poke at how Valley girls sound. And she said she thinks Valley girls like the song. "They love it because they are getting that attention," Moon said.
  
−
To avoid any potential rioting, the audience are allowed in during the sound check, instead of being kept waiting, with their patience slipping away, while the check is being completed.
+
The song, which is on Frank Zappa's latest album, [[Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch]], was her father's idea, Moon said. He told her to improvise the narration and he mixed the five takes into the one heard on the record. A sample:
  
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None of the tickets are numbered, and with a sell out audience, and a seating capacity of around 5,000, that means a God almighty race for the best seats.
+
<blockquote>"Hi – I have to go to the orthodonist<br>
 +
      I'm getting my braces off, y'know<br>
 +
      But I have to wear a retainer<br>
 +
      That's going to be really like a total bummer<br>
 +
      I'm freaking out<br>
 +
      I'm SURE<br>
 +
      Like those things that like stick in your mouth<br>
 +
      They're so gross ...<br>
 +
      You like get saliva all over them<br>
 +
      But like, I don't know, it's going to be cool, y'know<br>
 +
      So you an see my smile<br>
 +
      It'll be like really cool<br>
 +
      Except my like my teeth are like too small<br>
 +
      But NO BIGGIE<br>
 +
      It's so awesome<br>
 +
      It's like tubular, y'know."</blockquote>
  
−
As soon as the doors open a phalanx of French music lovers sweeps down the aisles, trampling over seats in a demented tide. It gets crazier by the minute, as hundreds more pile in.
+
Awesome, huh? And if you don't have the faintest idea what she's talking about, that's, like, no biggie. And if you don't know exactly what a Valley girl is, that's totally cool.
  
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It's a surprisingly young audience. Half of them look as if they've just crept in after a three day sprawl in some field listening to ''Status Quo'' beating a two chord riff to death. The rest look like roadies for ''Hawkwind,'' or some long forgotten French band of hippies.
+
"What you really need to do to find out (who a Valley girl is) is keep your eyes open and listen to the way the girl speaks, the way they move," said Moon. "You have to watch their actions really carefully. Body language.
  
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The hall is transformed, with their appearance, into some surreal timewarp of gigantic proportions. It's like '67 all over again. And there's even a few dozen in kaftans and headbands.
+
"Their mouth (is) almost as if they have lockjaw or a severe underbite. The jaw seems to be pushed way out. The muscles seem to be straining to pronounce those difficult words. "Not one hair is out of place because they have it in a shag cut. They have nice matching clothes. They like things to match. If you wear something that clashes you're out."
  
−
The slumbering underground of Paris waking again to check out Zappa. They seem genuinely bemused at the sight of Zappa, greeting them with a deadpan ''"Bonjour,"'' as they fight for their seats.
+
Barad said she considers a Valley girl to be anyone who wears Dolphin shorts, has long blonde hair, hangs out at the beach and listens to heavy rock music. And, she said, "there are girls who talk like that (record)."
  
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There's an absurd amount of dope of all description, floating around. As soon as they're settled in their seats the kids get down to the serious business of getting as wrecked as it's possible to get without passing into a coma. Breathing in without suffering an OD becomes an occupational hazard.
+
Fer sure.
  
−
The French security men don't seem at all concerned. Their instructions would seem to have been to guard Zappa at all costs.
+
It is Moon's squeaky, breathless enthusiasm and a sort of universal Valley type that makes the song so irresistible. "I think there are Valley girls spread throughout the country," said McNamara. "They may sound a little different or look a little different but they are an entity onto themselves."
  
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Onstage Zappa and the Mothers are still running the sound check, and tuning up. They play a few bars of a song, with FZ still looking concerned about levels and polarities.
+
Totally.
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----
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The kids are still crawling into the six foot aisle between the front row seats and the barriers, waving and shouting to Zappa and ze Mothurz. "OK, folks," says Frank, "we'll be back in a little while. Just as soon as they fix the lights."
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'''Valley talk<br>
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Knight-Ridder Newspapers<br>
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It's been ten years now, since the first incarnation of The Mothers of Invention, Frank Zappa's "mutating musical telephone to the world." Ten years, eighteen albums and a movie.
 
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To celebrate the anniversary Zappa toured the States earlier this year with a couple of the original band augmenting the line up, and performed selections from the earlier albums. In Paris it was decided to hold an intimate party in a secluded Left Bank nightspot, ''The Alcazar.''
 
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Maybe intimate is an inappropriate term. The whole shebang cost around thirty grand, much to the alarm of the Warner's office in Burbank who tried unsuccessfully to put the finger on the event.
 
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With a guest list of five hundred people and an epic cabaret, perhaps the only word is extravaganza. We arrived at ''The Alcazar,'' after a brief skirmish with a hotel, where a particularly offensive official almost got taken out and stomped by a leather clad journalist.
 
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[[wikipedia:Stephen Stills|Stephen Stills]] arrives, looking like a grease pit mechanic at a Texas truck stop.
 
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There are few words one can use to describe the sheer spectacle, the epic magnitude, the savage splendour of the ''Alcazar Cabaret.''
 
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There must have been thirty or more people flying on, off, and across stage on trapeze, swinging ropes, escalator devices running down from both sides of the proscenium arch.
 
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I was praying that Stephen wouldn't wanna jam with the house-band ("Move over buddy. I'm gonna play me some drums here.") The half naked lady on the trapeze came damn close to kicking him in the back of the head at one point.
 
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Neon lights flickered, "Welcome ZAPPA." The compere, looking like [[wikipedia:Sacha Distel|Sacha Distel]], hijacked from St Tropez and zoomed into some degenerate nightmare, echoed the sentiment: ''"We welcome Monsieur Zappur and ze Mothurz of Eenvention,"'' we sure do.
 
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Herb Cohen was later full of enthusiasm for the show. Zappa didn't like the food or the wine. The service wasn't too hot because most of the waiters spent most of their time running on and off stage being Extremely Silly. It's impossible to recall in any detail the events of the show. Scenes, showstopping scenarios, and a cast of thousands sleeked by at near subliminal speed.
 
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Tapes looped and drag queens dragged. Any element of satire was lost in the language barrier, but the natives around us exchanged knowing smiles as a naked chick in a bubble bath writhed seductively, overlooked by slide projections of (I think) members of the government.
 
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The whole mazimbo got crazier by the moment. Zappa contributed a neatly executed ''impromptu tango'' ... (Pleez, Stephen, sit this one out).
 
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A [[wikipedia:Mae West|Mae West]] parody of "Great Balls of Fire," directed to an enormous spade muscleman who, bumped and ground effectively, was one of the more obviously amusing highspots.
 
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An enormous re-creation of a [[wikipedia:Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec|Lautrec]] [[wikipedia:Moulin Rouge|Moulin Rouge]] vision blazed on complete with a ''Can-can'' routine, and drew ecstatic applause from the French connoisseurs of neo-decadent cabaret.
 
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The climax is a real bazooka. [[wikipedia:Cecil B. de Mille|Cecil B. de Mille]] meets [[wikipedia:Federico Fellini|Fellini]] in a head-on crash at a hundred miles an hour, with choreography by [[wikipedia:Busby Berkley|Busby Berkley]], out of his brain on bad acid.
 
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−
Chicks fly across stage, the escalators deliver the cast onstage, like demented conveyor belts churning out freaks at a Crazy Factory.
 
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−
Half moons, resplendant with semi-naked women descend From The Sky Above Our Heads. Zappa gets conned into joining in: "Herb did it."
 
−
 
 
−
He introduces the Mothurz. All except [[Ruth Underwood]], who's got her feet up in a washbasin or ''sumfink.'' He's hoisted to a dangerous height above the stage as the stage machinery cranks away and the night explodes into tiny pieces ... Thirty thousand sails away ... drifts away.
 
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−
The kid sitting next to me at the ''Palais des Sports'' looks as if he's just ripped off an expensive mixing console from the most advanced recording studio in Paris.
 
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−
No ill-concealed cassettes for this guy. Bring the whole damn works along and bootleg the gig in real style. Most bands don't record their first album on a machine like that.
 
−
 
 
−
The balance certainly ain't too right onstage. "Is somebody stepping on the cables back there?" snaps FZ, as the Mothers anxiously check their equipment.
 
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For those of you into Fine Details, the Mothers for this tour at least, are: "[[Ruth Underwood]] – percussion; [[Tom Fowler]] – bass; [[George Duke]] – keyboards and vocals; [[Chester Thompson]] – drums; [Napoleon Murphy Brock] – tenor sax, flute and lead vocals, and FZ – lead guitar, monologues and sneer."
 
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−
It's a strange performance, veering from the irrational brilliance of "[[Approximate]]" to the unparalleled tedium of the closing blues encore. In between the extremes we have cereberal cadenzas and light entertainment.
 
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−
Much of the latter from the extraordinary Napoleon M. Brock who looks disconcertingly like [[wikipedia:Arthur Lee (musician)|Arthur Lee]] at times. He spends a lot of his time engaged in either startling sax/guitar and vocal dialogues with Zappa, and running in ever decreasing circles around the enormous stage.
 
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−
For most of the concert, FZ and the band seem to coast along, fixated by their own ability and dexterity at switching from difficult time signatures. Zappa's recent songs seem at times little more than brilliant exercises in complete triviality.
 
−
 
 
−
"[[Montana]]," "[[Penguin In Bondage]]" and "[[Stink-Foot]]" are conceptual formulisations on the same theme. Zappa monologue, musical interuption from band, Zappa solo, and back into monologue. When Frank Gets A Solo, which is pretty often, the rest of the band faze out a little, giving him all the time, he needs to wrench whatever sounds he wants to from his guitar.
 
−
 
 
−
He's a nonchalant and articulate guitarist, but with the present line-up there's little for him to feed off. He really needs the extra weight of the horn section featured on the "[[Roxy & Elsewhere]]" album which add more colour to the actual music.
 
−
 
 
−
Zappa's control over the musicians seems total. Ideally I'm sure he'd like to be playing everything himself, as well as mixing the sound and operating the lights.
 
−
 
 
−
So much of the humour that comes over seems forced and stylised. He takes an almost conservative delight in the relatively obscene "[[Dinah-Moe Humm]]."
 
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God only knows what the French kids made of it all, especially [[George Duke]]'s solo, which consisted for the most part of a long rambling rap – "Can you play an instrument now, George?", and the "[[Dummy Up]]" tail end dialogue to "[[Pygmy Twylyte]]." ''C'est'' insane ... "''Merci beaucoup, mes amis.'' And goodnight."
 
−
 
 
−
Backstage Zappa is slouched down against a wall and appears to be on the edge of a total collapse. He signs a T shirt for some kid ... F. ZAPPA.
 
−
 
 
−
When a question is raised, and someone mentions they are planning an extensive analysis of FZ's "output macrostructure" the only reply is a stare – another good one – and a curt "You don't know nuthin'."
 
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−
My God, what a bitter, twisted, cynical, sarcastic human being. Just think that once there was a spark of humanity alive in this body now twisted beyond repair by abuse, critical attacks in gossip columns, scathing album reviews in fashion magazines and women's wear weeklies.
 
−
 
 
−
Perhaps he'd have been better off playing bicycle wheels on the [[Steve Allen]] chat show on Channel Five.
 
  
 +
Here is a glossary of some Valley terms with definitions courtesy of Moon Zappa:
 +
* Awesome: Complete greatness. Used to describe something that can't be described.
 +
* Bitchen: Its use is on the way out. Something that is cool.
 +
* Bitchen twitchin: A very high compliment.
 +
* Barf out: Something that is sickening.
 +
* Beasty: Someone who is socially or physically unacceptable to a Val, usually an enemy.
 +
* Billys: Money.
 +
* Bud or bule: Marijuana.
 +
* Completely: An exclamation, such as something is completely cool.
 +
* Crispy: Someone who is mentally burned out. Often refers to a dopehead.
 +
* Dude: Any Valley guy.
 +
* Edged: Angry.
 +
* Gag me with a spoon: Interchangeable with barf out.
 +
* Grody: Disgusting or dirty. Can be used to the extent that you really like it a lot.
 +
* Geeky: Something that is stupid.
 +
* Jel: As in jello brain, interchangeable with crispy.
 +
* Killer: Used by dudes, meaning something is very, very good.
 +
* Lame: Same as geeky.
 +
* Lick my froth: A new entry. A put down.
 +
* Raspy: Similar to bitchen.
 +
* Shanky: Meaning I don't want to be here, as in something is a way skanky scene. Can also be used in a way meaning you enjoy something.
 +
* Totally: An exclamation.
 +
* Tubular: Has roots in surfing jargon, referring to the tube formed when a wave breaks. If something is tubular, it is too good to believe. Use of tubular is on he way out.
 +
* Way: An exclamation, as a girl is way foxy chick.
 
[[Category:Articles about Zappa]]
 
[[Category:Articles about Zappa]]
 +
[[Category:1982]]

Latest revision as of 19:00, 27 January 2025

By Daniel Winkel
Knight-Ridder Newspapers
Waukesha Freeman, July 16, 1982


LONG BEACH, Calif. – Funny thing about Valley girls these days. You can't find one anywhere, especially in the Valley. At least they will never admit to being a Valley girl. Everyone else is a Valley girl but not me. All because of "that song."

That song is Valley Girls by 14-year-old Moon Zappa and it's either the most popular record around or the most reviled record around, depending, of course, on whom you talk to.

The song is a hilarious and sometimes biting parody of the lifestyle and linguistics of teenage girls in the San Fernando Valley. And because of it, Valley girls are now an endangered species.

"We're not Valley girls," said 14-year-old Angie Barad of Encino, referring to herself and her friend, Stephanie Bannister. "We do fit her (Moon Zappa's) description of a Valley girl but we don't fit our own."

Valley Girls made its debut on Pasadena radio station KROQ-FM in early May and since then has turned not only an entire city but a large part of the country on its listening ear. "The first week it came out it was the No. 1 requested song," said Denis McNamara, program director of WLIR-FM in Long Island, New York.

New York?

For sure.

Valley Girls features Moon, the daughter of rock musician Frank Zappa, gurgling away in a disjointed monologue using the jargon of Valley teenagers. The song is purposeful exaggeration – almost satire – of the way Valley teenage girls speak, sentences full of "you knows" and "like" and Valley code words like "bitchen," "tubular" and "totally." And like satire, it cuts deep because it presents young teenage girls living in the Valley as, well, air heads.

Non-Vals (people who don't live in the Valley) find the song condescendingly cute; the joke is always funnier when it's not on you. But some teenage girls in the Valley say the song is embarrassing, an insult and is making their life miserable.

"I think it sucks and I'm going to assassinate Moon Zappa," said one ninth grade girl. "It's an insult," added her friend. Said Barad: "When they say it to you it's not as a compliment. They don't throw it to you as a compliment. They throw it as more of an insult.

"I liked it at first," said Barad. "And then people took it too seriously. We go into stores and there's Valley girl T-shirts. People come up to us and say, 'OK, say for sure, for sure (pronounced fer-sure ).' And we look at them and we can't believe it.

"I like the song but I don't like Moon for writing it."

Fer sure.

In an interview, Moon said the song was meant not to put people down but as a funny poke at how Valley girls sound. And she said she thinks Valley girls like the song. "They love it because they are getting that attention," Moon said.

The song, which is on Frank Zappa's latest album, Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch, was her father's idea, Moon said. He told her to improvise the narration and he mixed the five takes into the one heard on the record. A sample:

"Hi – I have to go to the orthodonist

I'm getting my braces off, y'know
But I have to wear a retainer
That's going to be really like a total bummer
I'm freaking out
I'm SURE
Like those things that like stick in your mouth
They're so gross ...
You like get saliva all over them
But like, I don't know, it's going to be cool, y'know
So you an see my smile
It'll be like really cool
Except my like my teeth are like too small
But NO BIGGIE
It's so awesome

It's like tubular, y'know."

Awesome, huh? And if you don't have the faintest idea what she's talking about, that's, like, no biggie. And if you don't know exactly what a Valley girl is, that's totally cool.

"What you really need to do to find out (who a Valley girl is) is keep your eyes open and listen to the way the girl speaks, the way they move," said Moon. "You have to watch their actions really carefully. Body language.

"Their mouth (is) almost as if they have lockjaw or a severe underbite. The jaw seems to be pushed way out. The muscles seem to be straining to pronounce those difficult words. "Not one hair is out of place because they have it in a shag cut. They have nice matching clothes. They like things to match. If you wear something that clashes you're out."

Barad said she considers a Valley girl to be anyone who wears Dolphin shorts, has long blonde hair, hangs out at the beach and listens to heavy rock music. And, she said, "there are girls who talk like that (record)."

Fer sure.

It is Moon's squeaky, breathless enthusiasm and a sort of universal Valley type that makes the song so irresistible. "I think there are Valley girls spread throughout the country," said McNamara. "They may sound a little different or look a little different but they are an entity onto themselves."

Totally.

Valley talk
 Knight-Ridder Newspapers

Here is a glossary of some Valley terms with definitions courtesy of Moon Zappa:

  • Awesome: Complete greatness. Used to describe something that can't be described.
  • Bitchen: Its use is on the way out. Something that is cool.
  • Bitchen twitchin: A very high compliment.
  • Barf out: Something that is sickening.
  • Beasty: Someone who is socially or physically unacceptable to a Val, usually an enemy.
  • Billys: Money.
  • Bud or bule: Marijuana.
  • Completely: An exclamation, such as something is completely cool.
  • Crispy: Someone who is mentally burned out. Often refers to a dopehead.
  • Dude: Any Valley guy.
  • Edged: Angry.
  • Gag me with a spoon: Interchangeable with barf out.
  • Grody: Disgusting or dirty. Can be used to the extent that you really like it a lot.
  • Geeky: Something that is stupid.
  • Jel: As in jello brain, interchangeable with crispy.
  • Killer: Used by dudes, meaning something is very, very good.
  • Lame: Same as geeky.
  • Lick my froth: A new entry. A put down.
  • Raspy: Similar to bitchen.
  • Shanky: Meaning I don't want to be here, as in something is a way skanky scene. Can also be used in a way meaning you enjoy something.
  • Totally: An exclamation.
  • Tubular: Has roots in surfing jargon, referring to the tube formed when a wave breaks. If something is tubular, it is too good to believe. Use of tubular is on he way out.
  • Way: An exclamation, as a girl is way foxy chick.
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