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Frank Zappa feat. Moon Unit Zappa – Valley Girl
Frank Zappa was ALWAYS working, writing and recording as he had a studio, downstairs in his home. Moon has said in many interviews that the family hardly ever saw him since he spent most of his time there, creating…
Moon says that she really didn’t know her dad very well because of his time spent in the studio and it wasn’t often family was allowed down stairs. Eventually, Moon asked Frank if she could watch him work or know more about what he did down there. While that moment was Moon reaching out to her dad, he acknowledged that and said, “Sure… Someday!”
Well, someday came in the middle of the night when Frank emerged from the underworld of the house and woke her up in the middle of the night to record some stuff for him… He got the idea from hearing the girls in the San Fernando valley, talking “Valspeak”, which was the slang created by the youth from that area. He hated it and thought it was the most vapid thing he’d ever heard, so he made a scathing parody of it, with Moon Unit copying the vernacular of the “valley girls”.
What he didn’t realize was that the song was the catalyst for nearly every teen-aged girl across the country to start using the same slang that was once, fairly isolated to a small area!
“Valley Girl” went Top 40 and became Frank’s ONLY Top 40 hit, peaking at #32 on the Hot 100 AND spurring a movement of “valley girl” culture and sparking an idea for a movie of the same name!
