The Worst Music in the World

‘I wondered where I could get my hands on a record like that, because I was living in El Cajon--a little cowboy kind of town.’

ONE DAY in the late ‘50s, I happened across an article about Sam Goody’s record store in Look magazine. The writer said that Mr. Goody could sell anything--and as an example he mentioned that he had even managed to sell an album called “Ionization.”

The article went on to say something like: “This album is nothing but drums--it’s dissonant and terrible; the worst music in the world.” Ahh! Yes! That’s for me!

I wondered where I could get my hands on a record like that, because I was living in El Cajon--a little cowboy kind of town near San Diego. There was another town just over the hill called La Mesa--a bit more upscale (they had a “hi-fi” store). Some time later, I was staying overnight with a friend who lived in La Mesa, and we wound up going to the hi-fi place. They were having a sale on R&B singles.

I happened to glance at the LP bin. I noticed a strange-looking black and white album cover with a guy on it who looked like a mad scientist. I picked it up--and there it was--the record with “Ionization” on it, on a label called EMS. The record number was 401.

I couldn’t wait to hear it. My family had a genuine lo-fi record player: a Decca. It was a little box about 4 inches deep, and it had one of those clunky tone arms that you had to put a quarter on top to hold it down. It played all three speeds, but it had never been set to 33 1/3before.

The record player was in the corner of the living room where my mother did the ironing. I turned the volume all the way up (in order to get the maximum amount of “fi”), and carefully placed the needle on the lead-in spiral to “Ionization.” I have a nice Catholic mother who likes to watch roller derby. When she heard what came out of that little speaker on the bottom of the Decca, she looked at me like I was out of my mind. It had sirens and snare drums and bass drums and a lion’s roar and all kinds of strange sounds on it. She forbade me to play it in the living room ever again. She told me to take the record player into my bedroom. The record player stayed in my room, and I listened to EMS 401 over and over and over. All through high school, whenever people came over, I would force them to listen to it--because I thought it was the ultimate test of their intelligence. They also thought I was out of my mind.

Copyright 1989 by Frank Zappa.