Songoftheday 7/31/12 - Encino's like so bitchin'! There's like the Galleria...

Frank & Moon Unit Zappa - "Valley Girl"
from the album Ship Arriving To Late To Save A Drowning Witch (1982)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #32 (two weeks)
Weeks in the top-40: 3

Today's Song of the Day is the scathing ode to SoCal life by experimental rock god Frank Zappa with his daughter Moon Unit.  Baltimore-born Zappa released his first album, Freak Out, with backing band the Mothers Of Invention, in 1966, with songs like "Who Are The Brain Police" quite different from anything out at the time. Two years later, his third studio album We're Only In It For The Money became his first top-40 album, while still straddling art and comedy with tracks like "Who Needs The Peace Corps".

1974 was Zappa's commercial breakthrough in America, as his Apostrophe (') album was a top-10 seller, and the single "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow" was his first minor pop hit. After dissolving the "Mothers" in 1979, Zappa's Sheik Yerbouti album contained "Dancin' Fool", his first single to reach the top-half of the pop chart in the US, as well as "Bobby Brown", which was a huge hit single across Europe.

But it was 1982 that sent a fluke track of Zappa's onto the radio and into the top-40. Zappa planned a song that lampooned the vapid girls infesting the malls and schools of the San Fernando Valley, and recruited his daughter Moon Unit to mimic the girls she lives around at the time. With the chugging guitar, grunted chorus, and Moon Unit's hilarious squeaky ad-libs, the song more effectively powered the fad than decimated it. Gag me with a spoon!

And this is why I love Solid Gold.

"Valley Girl" not only hit the pop top-40, but even made #12 on the rock radio chart, and went on to inspire a movie of the same name which graced the world with Nicolas Cage. It would be Zappa's last bang as a mainstream artist - he would be more prevalent after that for his jam albums (Joe Garage series) and his testifying before Congress regarding the music stickering movement in the name of free speech. Sadly, Zappa passed in 1993 at the age of 52 from prostrate cancer, but his legacy in the world of art-rock/experimental rock is monumental. Moon Unit is 44 now, and besides acting and periodic stints as a VJ on MTV and VH1, she's been writing books and articles.

...and since the Solid Gold clip was just too damn short, here's the full song mimed by none other than Project Runway's fabu Jack Mackenroth. Totally!

God I love this. Lord God King BuFu!

Up tomorrow: The haircut band of 1982.