DJ Allyn – The Soundtrack for my Life

Keep it Greasey – Frank Zappa  

Frank Zappa was an American composer, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, electronic, orchestral, and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. Zappa produced almost all of the more than 60 albums he released with the band Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist.

In his teens, he acquired a taste for percussion-based avant-garde composers like Edgard Varèse and 1950s rhythm and blues music. He began writing classical music in high school, while at the same time playing drums in rhythm and blues bands—he later switched to electric guitar. He was a self-taught composer and performer and his diverse musical influences led him to create music that was often impossible to categorize. His 1966 debut album with the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out!, combined songs in conventional rock and roll format with collective improvisations and studio-generated sound collages. His later albums shared this eclectic and experimental approach, irrespective of whether the fundamental format was one of rock, jazz or classical. He wrote the lyrics to all his songs, which—often humorously—reflected his iconoclastic view of established political processes, structures and movements. He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech and the abolition of censorship.

Zappa was a highly productive and prolific artist and he gained widespread critical acclaim. Many of his albums are considered essential in rock history, and he is regarded as one of the most original guitarists and composers of his time; he remains a major influence on musicians and composers. He had some commercial success, particularly in Europe, and for most of his career was able to work as an independent artist. Zappa was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997.

Zappa was married to Kathryn J. “Kay” Sherman from 1960 to 1964, and in 1967 he married Adelaide Gail Sloatman, with whom he remained until his death from prostate cancer in 1993. They had four children: Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet Emuukha Rodan and Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen. Gail Zappa manages the businesses of her late husband under the name the Zappa Family Trust.

Keep it Greasey

Keep it Greasey is from the 1979 rock opera, Joe’s Garage: Acts I, II, & III, which tells the story of what could possibly happen if music was made illegal. The album features Ike Willis as the voice of “Joe”, a stereotypical garage band youth who unwittingly journeys through the miasma of the music business. Zappa provides the voice of the “Central Scrutinizer” character—a mechanical voice that narrates the story and haunts Joe’s psyche with McCarthyistic 50s-era discouragement and “scrutiny.”   The major themes of the story include groupie migration, mockery of Scientology, appliance fetishism, garage bands, and above all censorship of music as an art form.

Keep it Greasey comes from Act II, where Joe has been thrown into a special prison after destroying an appliance he was having sex with.  In prison, Joe is repeatedly gang raped (“plooked”) by former musicians and record executives when they’re not snorting lines of detergent. This gang is led by a shockingly endowed former promotional agent of a major record company, known as “Bald-Headed John: King of the Plookers”.

Keep it greasey so it’ll go down easy
Keep it greasey so it’ll go down easy
Keep it greasey so it’ll go down easy

Roll it over ‘n grease it down
I’ll drive you through the heart of town

Keep it greasey so it’ll go down easy
Keep it greasey so it’ll go down easy
Keep it greasey so it’ll go down easy

Roll it over ‘n grease it down
I’ll drive you through the heart of town

Good women, they sure has it tough
Good men, well there just ain’t enough
Good girls are lookin’ all the time
Good men is something that they can’t find
If they find one miraculously
They try to be lovin’ as they can be
‘Cause if they find one and let him go
Chances are they might not never find no mo’

So they keep it greasey so it’ll go down easy
Keep it greasey so it’ll go down easy
Keep it greasey so it’ll go down easy

Roll it over ‘n grease it down
I’ll drive you through the heart of town

Grease it down
Grease it down
(Gimme some grease!)
Grease it down
(Please!)
Grease it down
Grease it down
(I want some grease, baby)
Grease it down
Grease it down
Grease it . . .

A good lovin’ man is hardest to find
A good woman needs to ease her mind
I know a few that need to ease it behind
All y’gotta do is grease it down
‘N everything is fine

Keep it greasey so it’ll go down easy
Keep it greasey so it’ll go down easy
Keep it greasey so it’ll go down easy

Roll it over ‘n grease it down
I’ll drive you through the heart of town

A girl don’t need
No fancy grease
To get herself
Some rump release
Any kind
Of lube’ll do
Maybe from another
Part of you
Lube from the North
Lube from the South
Take a little slobber
(Take a little slobber!)
From the side of your mouth
Roll it over
Grease it down
Here come that crazy
Screamin’ sound . . .

Keep it greasey so it’ll go down easy
Keep it greasey so it’ll go down easy
Keep it greasey so it’ll go down easy
Roll it over ‘n grease it down
I’ll drive you
I said I would drive you
I said I was gonna drive you
All the way how-hown

• Audio from the 1979 album,  Joe’s Garage:

Other Songs Posted for this Artist

• July 17, 2008 -- Jewish Princess ~ Frank Zappa
• July 13, 2008 -- Bobby Brown (Goes Down) ~ Frank Zappa