Monday 18th November

You are probably wondering what the Hell the title of this little piece means.  And so, almost am I, but like most things it just popped into my head, and seemed to fit.  It is actually the title of a song (wouldn’t you just know it) by the one and only Frank Zappa.  And not only that, it isn’t even the right title of the song.  Frank had a habit of recycling themes and songs, and in some ways would have been happy playing the same thing over and over again and just seeing what variations came out.

The real title of the song is “The Torture Never Stops”.  I can’t really remember what album it first appeared on, and even Frankophiles have difficulty because he released so many records.  The song kept cropping up, especially on the more and more common live albums.  Then he did an album called “Thingfish”, possibly the most over the top and outrageous record he ever made; a triple album of vulgarity, and not a little great music.  A lot of his old songs were recycled and sung in an exagerrated “Negro” voice, and some even by Ike Willis, a black singer in the band (Irony of ironies).  And the song morphed into “The Torchum Never stops”

Well it made me laugh, even if the subject of the song is the unrelenting nature of life itself.

And so with us all – The Torchum Never Stops.  There never seems a time when you can just relax and do nothing, no worries, no cares, nobody expecting anything of you, no-one to please.  The torchum never stops.  All you can do is put on a silly voice and sing along with the record, because as Frank also said “Hey, it’s the twentieth century – as long as it doesn’t cause a murder.”

Actually it is of course now the twenty-first century and so far the torchum has still not stopped.  Hahaha