Being Frank Read Online Free Page A

recorder and played back too fast), a cheap little electric chord organ I had bought at Woolworth’s, and ocarina (may be that ocarina solo on “Wild Thing” had left a subconscious residue). My boyfriend played cello, harmonica, and jew’s-harp, and we both sang. The songs included a ditty inspired by a visit to the La Brea Tar Pits, “The Bones Go Down (The Tar Pits Need Deodorant),” sort of a deconstructed “Them Bones Them Bones Them Dry Bones,” and a mutant jug band number, “Moonlight on the Iceplant.”
    By now Frank Zappa, still my musical idol, had dissolved his old band, the Mothers, and had released “Hot Rats,” a mostly instrumental album and my absolute favorite so far. How many gloomy, ocean-sticky nights had been illuminated for me as I dragged the phonograph tone arm back over and over, hogging out the near-the-end groove in “It Must Be a Camel” where the guitar, the sax, and the electric violin all played that incredible melody over those amazing chords during the final restatement of the theme? I’d gone through three copies of thealbum trying to dope out the voicings. Zappa was also producing albums by other musicians, most notably Captain Beefheart’s “Trout Mask Replica,” which, after Zappa’s music, was the most interesting record I’d ever heard. I noticed in the fine print that both “Hot Rats” and “Trout Mask Replica” were released through Bizarre/Straight Records — the address was in Los Angeles. I began daydreaming about being produced by Zappa. It seemed logical enough to me: everybody said I was weird, so I was probably some sort of genius. If anyone in the music world could appreciate my unique talents, it would have to be Frank Zappa.
    Right before school started, when my boyfriend had left for a vacation in Oregon with his family, I carefully wrapped up the reel of tape (there was only one; I never thought of making a dub rather than entrusting my lone copy to the Fates), wrote a brief note to Zappa explaining what the tape was, along with my address and phone number, and crammed everything into a big envelope, which I mailed off to him.
    I figured I’d hear from him within a week. I stopped going anywhere I absolutely didn’t have to go, so I could keep tabs on the phone and the mail. A week went by — no word; then another, and another. School began again, and I had to abandon my vigil by the phone. Our mailman regained his former geniality. But I hadn’t lost faith; I knew Id be hearing from Zappa. He was, after all, a busy guy.
    In the end, it was nearly four months before the afternoon when I came home from school and found a lime green envelope, addressed to me, on the dining table. The minute I recognized the Bizarre Records logo, with its broken, angular letters, my heart began to pound. I sank into a chair, ripped open the envelope, and pulled out the sheet of lime green paper inside. It was only a few typewritten lines:
    January 6, 1970.
    Dear Nigey:
    I am sorry not to have responded sooner. I am about to leave for a European tour but would like to discuss your tape when I return .

    The written signature looked like a sexually deviant strand of linguine.
    I carefully returned the letter to its envelope and put them both in my school notebook. The next day I pulled the note out and read it so many times that it started to look like dirty money from Tangier. I showed it to a select group of people, mostly other musicians at school who had been known to sneer at me before because I was so weird. I’m sorry to say that I instantly ascended to the topmost pinnacle of that segment of school society, solely on account of the cheap celebrity generated by my receiving a letter from Frank Zappa. Evidently my weirdness wasn’t so weird after all, if the chief weirdo of all time had expressed an interested in my music.
    But as the month crept by, my apprehension