Bob Marshall: Bob, have you ever heard of Frank Zappa?
Dobbs: Sure have. Why?
Marshall: Just wondering. I think he's a genius--one of the few around today.
Dobbs: On November twenty-fifth, nineteen seventy-one, I was in New York City to see Zappa's new movie, TWO HUNDRED MOTELS, and I went over to the Guggenheim Museum to look at the James Joyce Liquid Memorial Theater. Besides running into Gerard Malanga--you know, the Warhol poet--I got to join the group onstage. I was up there dancing and ranting when something intangible nudged me and I almost fell off the stage. I would've been killed or at least paralyzed--the stage was that high. Anyway, about two weeks later, on December tenth, Zappa was pushed off the stage in London and incapacitated for about a year...
Marshall: Man, I remember that! I was really pissed off. But are you connecting the two events?
Dobbs: Perhaps. You see, Frank and I have been close friends for over twenty years.
Marshall: What?! You're kidding!
Dobbs smiled and pointed to the window of a used-record store where the front cover of the album sleeve for Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica held court.
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