ZIRCON
URSULA MINOR "The Little Dip" [0-8 / 75º-90º], one of the constellations in the "One Size Fits All" (1975) "universe", has a star named "ZIRCON (The Nose Star)", being the pivotal North Star.
Zircon is a mineral. It is referenced also in the following Zappa songs:
- The Poodle Lecture: God needs a pair of zircon encrusted tweezers.
- Sofa (Fire!): "It's now time for the bales of imported unmiti-con, unmitigated zircon fondue".
- Divan Ends Here: "Okay, it's time now for the zircon, I believe."
- Montana: "With a pair of zircon encrusted tweezers in my hand".
Interviewed by Steve Peacock (Zappa's Latest Box Of Tricks, Sounds, 27 November 1971), Zappa described a plot for an upcoming movie project, Billy The Mountain, where a character of a "phased-out Byzantine devil" is named Old Zircon, who induces Ethell the Tree to trick Billy The Mountain into taking her on a vacation.
In The Fabulous Furry Freak Brother! interview (December 2012), it is reported that the door leading to Zappa's basement in Laurel Canyon had a sign reading: Dr. Zircon's Secret Lab in Happy Valley.
Frank Zappa about the origins of zircon as conceptual continuity
"We had a piano player named Terry Wimberly. And Wimberly always wanted to be the missing link between Fats Domino and Otis Blackwell [...]. And he decided one day that he wasn't funky enough in his normal white boy condition, living there in the desert. He decided in his infinite wisdom that he was going to get all the things he needed to be more like Fats Domino. [...] I don't how he did it, folks— He got a hundred dollars together to buy a hundred dollar zircon ring. Do you know how big— what size zircon you can buy for a hundred dollars? So he had this enormous, cheap-looking, obviously-fraudulent diamond sort of thing on his little finger that he used to wear to school all the time. And so, since that moment, I've always considered the zircon to be the symbol of wealth—not wealth, but the ultimate cheapness as applied to the back of a comic book. And it was cheap grandeur, you know? The grandeur that we can all afford, but if you dare to afford it you can make yourself look just like Terry Wimberly playing the piano [...]. And it helped his piano technique tremendously. He could play triplets like nobody's business with that thing on his finger."[1] (Zappa tells the same anecdote in the 1974 interviews Frank Zappa – Funny Mother and Grand Mother, both by Chris Lloyd.
References
- ↑ Frank Zappa, interviewed on WABX, Detroit, 2 November 1973:https://www.donlope.net/fz/notes/Over-Nite_Sensation.html#Dinah
