7. Frank ZappaHot Rats
I’ll never forget people’s shocked reaction to the famous Frank Zappa toilet picture. My parents were quite tolerant, but I when I put my own poster of that photo on the doors of our family loo, they lost their tolerance. The poster had to go. Frank Zappa was the next important step of our music and cultural learning. The Rolling Stones in their worst phase looked like just a bunch of schoolkids comparing to Frank Zappa and his Mothers Of Invention. For some reason Frank Zappa had a great effect on the alternative scene in Slovenia, which started in 1970. And later we realised that he also greatly influenced the underground scene in Czechoslovakia, including the future president Václav Havel and his circle. Zappa became the new canon and everything else was too commercial. He was radical and intelligent, full of humour and sarcasm, and that was a novelty in rock music. Soon groups formed in Slovenia (like Buldožer), influenced by Zappa thoroughly in sound, in style and in philosophy. The album Hot Rats, this strange cosmic fusion of progressive rock, was often the subject of some heavy intellectual debates, which usually ended up with a big headache. Finally Zappa came to Slovenia, with one of the later incarnations of the Mothers Of Invention. That also happened in 1975 and I, of course, went to the show. He actually decided to spend a few days in Ljubljana before the concert, people saw him everywhere in the city, even on the public buses. I bumped into Zappa after the show, when he came to say hello to all the fans outside the venue. I remember that he was very tall and very kind, and he looked a bit like another of my all-time heroes, Groucho Marx. He gave me an autograph, which I later exchanged for some other records.
