Zappa was never a big fave, but I was definitely aware of him. Nearly everyone in college could sing a few lines from at least “Moving to Montana…” or “Dinah Moe hum…” And Weasels Ripped My Flesh - Rzzzz was a classic album cover. Tripped and drank through a Zappa concert in around the 10th row at college. 10 of us had a wedge of seats - it was like a big party. Named one dog Dinah.
So, yeah - I’d expect pretty much anyone over 50 to at least know who he wa (as well as anyone over 20 who was at all into rock music.)
Longtime Zappa guy here. I got into FZ during the summer of '75, just after I graduated high school with a musical background that consisted mainly of being somewhat deeply into classical music and superficially into Top 40 radio. I did have a vague awareness of Zappa at that point. I knew the name and that it was somehow associated with music. Anyway, several things happened that summer that opened up my musical horizons.
In regard to Zappa specifically, a couple of guys who had gone to the same high school but were a year or two ahead of me wrote a script for a short experimental movie and recruited me to help them make it. (They found out that I had a Super 8 camera and had read a bunch of books on filmmaking) In the course of hanging out with those guys, I was exposed to Zappa’s Flo and Eddie period. Pretty cool.
A bit later, and completely unrelated to my movie friends, through a mutual acquaintance I came to know a guy about ten years older than me, out of the army and, as I recall, collecting disability checks for some reason I don’t remember now. Having a part-time evening job at a restaurant, I had lots of free time to hang out at his place and smoke weed and listen to records while his girlfriend was at work during the day, and I certainly had the inclination to take advantage of the opportunity to do so. He was a big Zappa freak, and the music selections very often included some of his stuff.
So it took, and I’ve been listening to Zappa ever since.
I’ve made sure my own kids (youngest now thirty) are acquainted with Zappa, although I haven’t gone so far as to try to, like, indoctrinate them. But they by God know who he was and can even recognize a few of his songs if they hear them. Not sure about what would happen if I asked any of them to just name a title off the top of their head, though.
I am pleasantly surprised that someone on the Board knows Allie Sherlock, whom I have had the pleasure to hear performing live on Grafton Street on various occasions. Do you mind my asking, which song gets her onto your list?
I always thought that the orangutan in Babe 2: Pig in the City was named Thelonius because he was a Thelonius Monkey (except he was an ape, but close enough).
Looking at my list of my fifty favorite performances of songs, the one I include is “I Will Survive”. But she does great performances of many songs. She doesn’t write the vast majority of the songs she sings. In fact, I was surprised just now looking at her Wikipedia entry to discover that she has written a few of them.