And hello to you too, dear Scott, and thank you so much for this kind letter...uh, thingie. EMAIL. whatever.<br>

I am going to assume that you wish to have me come up on stage and play a couple of tunes with you the next time you play in the Bay Area, San Francisco or Berkeley, or environs, am I correct? I haven't any real idea about what you truly want, as the statement "we would like to do some shows with you" doesn't really explain in any detail what is meant.<br>

The alternative, that you'd actually want me to somehow come out to Michigan and do some shows with you, is so far beyond my ability to comprehend that I'm going to just reject it out of hand for the moment.<br>

That said, I have no interest in being on stage for any Zappa-related activities just yet. The bad vibes I retain within me from my past Zappa-related activities thwarts any forward motion towards resolution and I am happy to have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Frank's music (beyond the odd BBYNHIYL listening session).<br>

On the other hand, I wouldn't mind showing up to a gig or what-have-you to stand around and drink free back-stage beer if you did actually end up in these parts. I've yet to view even one Zappa-related musical concert in all my 10 years back in Northern California, and that includes the Project/Object boys, Banned from Utopia, and even G3 (the collected ten-year total of Bay Area performances by these ensembles must reach up into the low Thirties by my guess), so if you wanted me to wear the colors or whatever, I'd be happy to do so, if indeed there was a night that I could get away from my lovely family who I would rather spend time with than pretty much anything else I could think of, save having a beer down the street for an hour or two, or meeting up with some of my other non-Zappa-related musician friends who play large arenas and have large buckets containing cases and cases of microbrews that I can cadge off of them in their holding cells (quite often this is a good chance for my wife and I to go out together, so I'm not really missing anything, my children usually being asleep). Free t-shirts, CDs and concert DVDs also help drag me kicking and screaming out of the house. Bridge toll (Golden Gate Bridge toll is $5!) is great, too.<br>

Please know that I hold in my heart all my dear memories of Frank and would never consciously sully his good name by any further weak-ass performances on my part. My muscle-memory is shot, my calluses are fully disappeared, and I fully have no more stomach for supporting any other front-of-stage musicians. Imagining a Zappa-music-related concert performance that would include me gives me hot and cold chills, along with a bracing blast of sheer and unadulterated fear that can only be assuaged by liberal amounts of alcohol along with several severe hammer-blows to the cranium which might loosen any dead brain cells, causing them to flow into my arteries and give me aneurysms, thereby mooting any previous decisions to include me. I bow to the superior decision-making process with which I chose to abdicate my position as World's Greatest Bass Player, the title of which was bestowed upon me by consensus of several brain-stem-function-only near-vegetables found in a random drawing of neurological hospitals from the world's most underdeveloped nations. Putting me behind a bass to play Frank's music shall only invite bloodshed (most likely mine) and cause friends whose most egregious prior arguments consisted of which is the best mayonnaise with which to slather onesself to permanently refrain from ever speaking to one another for the entirety of time.<br>

You'd do better to put me on the Do Not Invite list and print this letter up and post it on your rehearsal-room door than ask me again to be involved in your lovely musical enterprise. I respect your decision to play Frank's music for an audience of your peers, but unless you're choosing to make me cry, you'll leave me out of it.<br>

Have you read my book: In Cold Sweat, Interviews with Really Scary Musicians by Tom Wictor, Limelight Press? Here it is: http://tinyurl.com/hl7pu<br>

What? You haven't? Well, let's fix that. Buy it and tell me what you think! I don't make a dime from it, so this isn't a plea to alleviate my poverty. It's an informational gift I give to you. Use it well and wisely.<br>

Once again, thank you so much. I appreciate any and all avenues in which to vent.<br>

Scott<br>

PS: So yeah, send me a DVD. I'm all about the watching of DVDs. They're cool. Tons of extras, usually!
PPS: Please do not take the above as some kind of Anti-URR rant. I'm not partisan. I make fun of everybody equally. That's why I have no friends! Except my kids, and they shove it right back in my face. Little buggers.