CHEAPNISS

Busy so this will be short. I have put up a window’s movie maker video of Cheese in My Head on the band’s My Space page.

Looking forward to the gig Friday – several folks have said they are coming which means to me a) nobody will come b) we will suck and c) I will get the cold my coworkers have so my voice will be naught but a croak (actually that might help with some of our tunes). I have learned to ignore this voice in my head but I still hate that it’s there.

I know I write about bad movies a lot for a band blog – hey it’s fun. And I get a lot of my pull from junk like It Conquered the World – it’s hard to take a world seriously that produces a film about a giant carrot taking over the earth.

Which links to the first Frank Zappa song I ever heard.

Years and ages ago – I was in my first year of collage, I was a commuter student and I was driving home listening to 92.7 fm WLIR , this was back in the day (I have to come up with another phrase – I hate back in the day) when radios played music. As I’m going along Frank came on the radio talking about loving monster movies, especially cheap monster movies with things like visible nylon strings on the jaws of a giant spider. I nodding along and he talks about It Conquered the World.

It Conquered the World was a Roger Corman – shoot this before they destroy the set cheapie from 1956 – it had Peter Graves, Lee Van Cleef and Beverly Garland (who is really so much better than this film deserved) and to quote Frank “the monster looks like a teepee or a sort of a rounded off pup tent or inverted ice cream cone with Teeth around it, it’s got fangs and ugly mouth. I don’t know why but it’s a very threatening sight”

Well not really – it lives in the memory along with the Giant Claw, Robot Monster and the Tobanga (of from Hell it Came fame) as the one of stupidest looking monsters ever put on the screen. It’s a carrot with fangs and teeth.

The movie features a lot of talk (infused with cold war era paranoia about communists taking over people’s minds) and Peter Graves’s odd trouble driving a stick shift car. Seriously he grinds the damn gears every time he tries and then there is the final confrontation between the carrot and the troops where per Mr. Zappa again: “You can see about this much two by four that they’re using to push it out of the cave. Now this scene must have been soo good that they didn’t want too retake it so off camera someone’s going ‘no get it back’ and they drag it back”

“Now that’s cheapness” he said “and this is Chepnis here”

And the band launches in to the song, a love song to bad monster movies.

The song ends with the chorus

“Can you see it all, can you see it from here, Can you laugh till you’re weak in the knees?
If you can’t I sorry, cause that’s all I wanna know, I need a little more cheapness please”

I remember sitting in my car, parked in my driveway laughing. Thinking I need to know more about this Frank Zappa guy.

And boy did I

PS: The song chepnis is on is Roxy and Elsewhere.