Many years ago, to the delight of the Mike Glickmans of the day, Bing Crosby immortalized this plum piece of real estate in song.
\o7 I'm gonna settle down and never more roam, \f7 he crooned. \o7 And make the San Fernando Valley my home\f7 . \o7 . .\f7 .
A generation later, it was Frank Zappa, with help from his daughter Moon Unit, who would immortalize something else about the Valley.
\o7 Like omigod like totally Encino is like so bitchin'. There's like the Galleria and like all those like really great shoe stores\f7 . \o7 . . . I like buy the neatest miniskirts and stuff. It's so bitchin'\f7 . \o7 . . .
\f7 Sound familiar? Grody to the max, right? Whereas Bing sang of the promise of suburban life, Frank Zappa savaged the crass reality. "Valley Girl," released in 1982, defined the Valley as the archetypal home to an archetypal breed of shallow teen-ager with a language all its own. The temptation is to write "Gag me with a stereotype"--but the simple fact is the Valley Girl really did exist, and still does, and not merely in the Valley. They're, like, everywhere.
But if Francis Vincent Zappa, the composer and social critic who died earlier this month of prostate cancer at age 52, succeeded in satirizing the Valley, it came with a price. The Valley exacted its revenge. What goes around, it is said, comes around.
One can only presume that Frank Zappa would appreciate the irony. Devotees of modern orchestral music knew Zappa, for all his comic inclinations, to be a composer of the first rank. Yet popular culture--and thus, the newspaper obituaries--were more apt to give prominent mention to "Valley Girl" and other satirical tunes. As fate would have it, Vanity Fair magazine would crown the Zappas "first family of the Valley" in the month of the patriarch's death.
Never mind that the Zappa residence is in the hills above Laurel Canyon, south of Mulholland and thus outside the Valley. The editors of Vanity Fair, a geographically challenged bunch, also divined that the Huntington Library and Old Pasadena are in the San Fernando Valley. But it isn't residence that identifies the Zappas with the Valley and vice versa. Rather, it's a testament to the staying power of "Valley Girl."
It was a brilliant parody, and a commercial smash as well. Some Vals, both here and their spiritual sisters elsewhere, didn't have a clue. They thought the song was like so bitchin'. Even Zappa seemed startled by its popularity.
