Trouble Every Day

And it was Tom Wilson that convinced Verve Records, which was a jazz label predominantly, to sign the Mothers of Invention.

And the funny thing was, Tom Wilson signed them on the basis of one song that the Mothers were playing, which was a blues song about the Watts Riots called Trouble Every Day.

And he thought, oh, great, another blues band.

But then when he heard the Mothers play Who Are the Brain Police, suddenly Tom Wilson had to get on the phone to Verve and go, I think we've got something different here.

will you do if we let you go home? And the plastics all melted, and so is the chrome.

So Freak Out really creates a map of where Zappa's music's going.

You've got the eclecticism of everything from the blues influences that you hear on Trouble Every Day.

He does satires of love songs on that record.

Led by activist Vincent Lingiari, the walk off paved the way for the Aboriginal Land Rights Act in 1976.

From Little Things, Big Things Grow is a gentle song, yet it has been described as a powerful protest anthem.

Such is the power of the story, which didn't need drum fills to get its point across.

Here's From Little Things, Big Things Grow by Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly.

The last one was a song about the troubles in Northern Ireland that somehow topped the Hottest 100 of 1994 in Australia.

In the Australian scene, we had Melbourne band Rails' song about an AIDS victim in Immune Deficiency, and the Living End's song about capital punishment, Second Solution.

And yes, even Tumbleweed did a cover of Frank Zappa's protest anthem Trouble Every Day in 1993.

But all those things seemed far away, issues I should care about, I guess, but not really close to home.

and brought them over and signed them quickly to MGM Verve.

In fact, there's a joke story that Zappa liked to tell that Tom Wilson only heard them playing Trouble Every Day, which sounds like a traditional R&B song, and thought he was hiring a white R&B band

that he was

signing a white R&B band, when in fact they got into the studio and began to play very strange things like, you know, Who Are the Brain Police? And Zappa had to get on the phone and convince the record company to keep the strange band.

[instrumental music]

[instrumental music]That was the Mothers of Invention and Trouble Every Day from the newly released Freak Out! 60th Anniversary collection.

Band member Frank Zappa wrote that in response to the 1965 Watts uprising in LA.

If you didn't know, the riots were motivated by anger at the racist and abusive practices of the LA Police Department, plus grievances over employment discrimination, residential segregation, and poverty.