The first few years of listening to pop music (beginning around 1982) was all about the new. I heard solo efforts by members of the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones before I knew anything much about the bands that came before. I heard the remake of "Walk This Way" by Run-DMC before I heard the original Aerosmith song. But eventually my brothers and I began to run backwards a bit to fill in musical history.

Aerosmith was one of the first backward moments. Because of the popular hip hop remake, my older brother was compelled to get the 70s band's greatest hits. And then at Bible Study one night, a girl who was a year older than me insisted we finish our "studies" by eight so she could watch the World Premiere of the "Dude Looks Like A Lady" video by Aerosmith on MTV. Watching her wiggle her ass to the song, I knew there was something in this music. Something I needed to look into.

My older brother was the lead on most of this musical history research. Reading the liner notes of Permanent Vacation (the Aerosmith comeback album that contained "Dude"), he found that some particularly suggestive lyrics were from a Frank Zappa song called "Dinah-Moe Humm." The original version of this song is on Over-Nite Sensation, one of Zappa's best selling albums. My older brother, however, found it first on Baby Snakes, which is a (mostly) live album.

And so began our appreciation of Frank Zappa. Baby Snakes, in particular, is pretty much filled with psychosexual songs about the strange habits of men, women, teenagers and demons (possibly all the same thing when you get right down to it). It includes "Punky's Whips," which I didn't understand as a kid. The song tells the story of a young man in love with the male lead singer of his favorite rock band--sung by the drummer Terry Bozzio. In real life, Terry Bozzio's wife's name was Dale. Eventually they formed Missing Persons, which had about one big hit ("Walking In L.A."). Androgyny: check!

Also on the album (which we had in tape form) is "Titties & Beer," a story song about a guy who loses his girl and beer to the devil, so he signs his soul away to said devil to get his titties and beer back. Overaggressive male mentality: check!

Needless to say, this tape was cherished by us teenage boys (which also included our friends, who also loved songs about sex with long drum and guitar solos).

Yesterday, I finally watched the film Baby Snakes, which includes the concert said album comes from, as well as lots of strange backstage behavior (one extended piece with a blow up doll comes to mind), bits and pieces of sound checks where many songs from Sheik Yerbouti are being worked out and lots of claymation (this animation seems to lay credence in my "men women teenagers and demons are all the same" remark). The movie is a little more than two and a half hours long, while the tape is about forty minutes.

But seeing these amazing musicians play these seriously twisted songs was both new and nostalgic at the same time. New because I'd never seeing this version of Frank Zappa's touring band play (although I have seen versions from before and after this time period in another concert movie), but nostalgic because I'd heard the exact audio from the film twenty years before.

I have lots of Zappa on CD now (around 20 discs or so) spanning from his debut in the late 60s with the Mothers to compilations released after his death in the early 90s. I can't find a copy of Baby Snakes anywhere, though.

Uncle Steve (who might be an uncle, but he's not mine--it's merely my nickname for him) was a fan of Zappa's, as are many of my friends. Part of it might be that Uncle Steve looks similar to Zappa, but he was also a connoisseur of stoner music from the 70s. He gave my younger brother a vinyl copy of Apostrophe. He also got us into Steely Dan. His one regret (music wise) was never seeing Frank play live before his death. The rest of us never really got a chance. So these concert movies are pretty much it.

As far as Aerosmith goes, I saw them twice on their Permanent Vacation tour (which was over two years long and went through many opening acts). White Lion opened for them in Albuquerque, and Guns N' Roses opened for them in a suburb of Kansas City. The first I saw with my brothers and a friend, who had never been to a music concert before in his life. I remember him looking stunned. The second I saw with my Dad, who enjoyed Aerosmith's live show, but wondered why Guns N' Roses didn't have the same stage presence as the older band did. Some kids in Cure t-shirts didn't think GNR played very well, mostly because they didn't sound as polished as their studio album.

I haven't bought an Aerosmith CD since the early 90s. I've probably got as much Frank Zappa as any sane man should have (although there are large gaps in my collection, as FZ released a ton of music once he was free of the totalitarian government called Warner Brothers). But my love of music is strong. And Terry Bozzio is a freakin' amazing drummer, even if he is in love with the fictional rock god Punky Meadows.

Matt Worley would never blame music for the direction his life has taken.