FRANK ZAPPA-VALLEY GIRL

The song was a joint effort between Frank and his 15-year-old daughter Moon Unit. The tale goes that Frank was so busy working in his underground room studio that Moon slipped a note under his door saying she wanted to bond with him. Her continuous imitations of her less intelligent classmates served as the inspiration for her contribution, while the music Frank produces shows that, if he really wanted to, he could have written music that appealed to the masses. He just didn't want to.

The song was a hit - it became sort of a meme in its time. Unavoidably, it spiraled into something ridiculous, with the Valley Girl coloring book and even a movie
 "Valley Girl" is still funny, even when split up from my two-month whirlwind romance with an over-privileged chick from the region in question. She didn't sound like Moon in the song, but she would sometimes bring up some bizarre subjects in a casual way, as if it was normal that her college-aged male friend had to have a glass of warm milk before bed each and every night or he couldn't sleep, stories about finding her dad's weed...lots of fun stuff that would have been a gas to explain to our kids about why Granddad smells like Venice Beach.

Zappa believed it sweet to put his daughter Moon Unit, all 14 years of her, onto disc doing her best impact of the “valley girls,” like, ya know? Gag me with a spoon. Fer sher. Totally tubular. And other pimply hyperboles. He put “Valley Girl” out as a single and on his 1982 LP “Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch.” Frank was amused that the song started to be a minor hit. Valspeak captured the imagination of a generation and was immediately made into a film that didn’t have a note of the song. When Nicolas Cage made Peggy Sue Got Married, they included the Buddy Holly original. Not Frank Zappa.

Valley Girl isn’t really the story of the valley girl, it’s a nod to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (the valley duo pose in front of a theater marquee, in case you missed the point), or West Side Story without the snapping. It takes the bus with The Graduate (they throw in the “plastics” advice as foreshadowing) in an attempt to skewer the generation it was trying to herd into the theater. Directed by Martha Coolidge, Valley Girl is a social battle played out in a Disneyland punk underground. It is Revenge of the Nerds gone new wave. Skinny ties, pointy hair and a visible safety pin. Not a razor or a needle in site. LA looked really clean to eighties New Yorkers and the punk scene here. Punk is merely implied. It is the symbol of mass individuality. The soundtrack pushed a lot of songs into the hot 100. Dallas-transplant Josie Cotton created the LA prom queen perennial "Johnny Are You Queer?" I didn’t turn Modern English’s “I Melt With You” off the radio every time.