Baby Snakes – Frank Zappa

There are so many more suitable submissions to choose from the prolific and absurd Frank Zappa as a notch on this particular bedpost but we’re going to go with Baby Snakes because out of context is where it sounds like the most fun.

If you’re ever just letting the technology throw out songs in random while you’re doing something else this song can be a sign, a bridge and a showstopper all at once.

One of the major criticisms this band of loons are often levelled by is that their jazzy jam band approach can be boring or inaccessible, dirgy in places and without hooks. Not Baby Snakes. It’s two minutes long. There is so much goes on inside that scant run time I can barely list it all here less I suck the joy out of it.

We’ve got comically high voices, honky tonk piano, break beats, riffs, silly jokes, soulful backing vocals, spoken word sections and a nonsense train of thought lyric that sounds like it’s part of a bigger picture. Which of course it is. Sheik Yerbooty came from the same era of Zappa as Apostrophe and Overnite Sensation. Concept albums with comical narratives and reoccurring themes and characters.

Franks not for everyone but he reminds me of home and of childhood. My old man and Frank would’ve got on. Very similar senses of humour.