Baby Snakes

You know, Zoo Freaks, when the Zoo Crew drops the needle on Baby Snakes from Sheik Yerbouti, it is pure Zappa weirdness wrapped in a catchy little package that still gets heads nodding and folks wondering what the heck Frank was really talking about. That short, snappy tune sits right there on the double album, all live basics from the 1977 and 1978 tours with a mountain of studio overdubs piled on top. Keyboard man Tommy Mars once recalled getting a call while he was sitting around watching a Twilight Zone episode. Frank rang up and asked if he felt like doing a little singing. Tommy headed over to Cherokee Studios and laid down his parts six times, just a straight line of his own voice with no fancy harmonies stacked on. That late-night session kind of thing was typical for how Zappa built these records, taking soundcheck bits and live takes and then polishing them until they jumped out of the speakers.

The lyrics themselves are classic Frank, all pink and wet baby snakes that come out late and make the best kind of pet. Fans and writers have kicked around the meaning for years. Some see it as pure abstract sexual imagery, tongues or other intimate bits wiggling around in tiny holes that are usually empty. The SMPTE reference, that Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers code that keeps everything in sync, gets a lot of play too. It ties the whole thing to the technical side of recording and film, which makes sense because the song lent its name to Zappa's own concert movie from the same era. Others just dig the absurd humor, the way he turns something ordinary into a mini-opera of styles jammed together. Tommy Mars even talked about how he added parallel sixths under a lick because the piece hopped between styles so much, and Frank said that was exactly what he wanted. It is that mix of doo-wop roots and sudden shifts that keeps it fresh every spin.

Speaking of the movie, Baby Snakes the film captures the Halloween 1977 shows at the Palladium in New York, complete with backstage antics, audience participation, and those wild clay animations by Bruce Bickford. Zappa spent his own money editing it and premiered the thing on his 39th birthday, running it around the clock at a Manhattan theater. Critics were mixed, calling it shapeless or too long, but the animation and the energy of that band with Adrian Belew, Terry Bozzio, Patrick O'Hearn and the rest still stand out. The soundtrack later pulled the studio version of the song itself, skipping the opening riff and jumping straight into the verses. It is all part of how Zappa treated the live show and the studio as one big canvas.

Sheik Yerbouti itself turned into one of his best sellers, helped along by the European hit Bobby Brown Goes Down that never really got airplay over here. The album title plays on that old Yma Sumac track and Zappa's own stage persona, and the whole package shows him at a peak of productivity, blending satire, complex arrangements and straight rock energy. The overdubs balanced the live tracks, with months of work going into tracks like this one. It is the kind of record that rewards repeated listens, revealing little details in the arrangement every time.

To get a sense of how Frank arrived at this kind of freewheeling creation, you have to go back to the beginning. Born in Baltimore in 1940, he bounced around with his family as his dad worked in defense-related jobs. By age twelve he was playing drums, and not long after he discovered Edgard Varèse's Ionisation, that wild percussion piece full of sirens and unconventional sounds. It stuck with him hard. He called the composer on his fifteenth birthday and started collecting modern classical alongside the R&B and doo-wop 45s. In high school out in the Antelope Valley he drummed in the Ramblers and the Black-Outs, hanging with a guy named Don Van Vliet who would become Captain Beefheart. Frank pushed him to sing in his own way instead of forcing a straight 4/4 feel. By senior year he had switched to guitar, chasing the styles of players like Johnny Guitar Watson.

After high school he drifted through junior college classes, married young, scored a couple of low-budget films, and used the money to set up Studio Z in Cucamonga. That place became his lab for experimenting with recording. Trouble with the local authorities landed him a short jail stay, but he bounced back by joining the Soul Giants as guitarist. He took over, renamed them the Mothers, and by 1966 they were the Mothers of Invention with the double album Freak Out! on Verve. That record mixed protest, satire, doo-wop and experimental noise in ways that influenced a whole generation of players and even the Beatles. From there the catalog just exploded, with Zappa constantly pushing the band, the arrangements and the live shows into new territory. The Baby Snakes era band was just one more chapter in that long run of restless invention.

You can dig deeper into all of it over at the official site zappa.com, where the music section covers Sheik Yerbouti and the rest of the catalog. Catch the verified Facebook page at facebook.com/Zappa, the Instagram at instagram.com/zappa, and the X account at x.com/zappa. Fans hang out in groups like The Totally Unauthorized And Completely Unofficial Frank Zappa Fan Group. And of course the whole crew is spinning this and a whole lot more over at THE ZOO, keeping the freeform rock alive for the Zoo Freaks who still want the deep cuts and the stories behind them.