The biggest political controversy of my teenaged life was  the PMRC, and that made Zappa the biggest hero of my adolescence.

I guess I could have picked John Denver or Dee Snider as the star of the senate hearings, but Zappa came off so cool and sharp. Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention came out just a couple of months after the hearings. “Porn Wars,” its sound collage centerpiece, is an interesting artifact, but honestly? It kind of sucks. On the o ther hand, there are some really tasty cuts on this album, all of which you can learn about on Ultimate Classic Rock.