Zappa... On The Final Arbiters Of Taste For The Entire Population

I used to be on the committee of the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame that chose the nominees every year. It always seemed like a pretty Stalinist procedure but the part that was especially distasteful was that it was a roomful of older white men-- a couple actually drooling and nodding off-- and almost no women, no young people, and fewer people of color. This represents the music business? Well... my friend Gina sent me an old Zappa interview in which he explains that it could have been worse. (And for those who don't know what Frank Zappa's music sounded like, here's a video from a BBC session in 1968 in which they allowed his band, the Mothers of Inventionto... let their freak flag fly.)