Early Mothers Memories
I was lucky enough to grow up in LA and was exposed to Freak Out while still in high school, after which friends and I all had to own one of those funky, hairy, coats that Zappa wore on the cover. We played that old vinyl over and over and, as I recall, Wowie Zowie was probably our favorite, followed by all the wonderful old LA-style doo wop songs that Frank adored. Then there was Trouble Comin' Every Day which is amazingly as relevant today as it was after the Watts riots. Shortly after Absolutely Free came out in the last few weeks of HS, I packed up and went to school in Ohio (big mistake! In those days Ohio seemed a decade behind the times). Nonetheless, by playing Freak Out and Absolutely Free almost continuously, I was joined by half a dozen others in my dorm who saw value in songs like Plastic People, etc. Lucky us when Zappa scheduled a show in Cincinnati in April of 1968. We excitedly drove the couple hours from Columbus to Cincinnati for the show at Taft Auditoriu