I was listening to “Trouble Everyday”, and felt I needed more background on the Watts Riots of 1965. Upon looking it up on wikipedia, I felt dissatisfied with both the quality and quantity of information that popped up on the screen. The initial cause was outlined as, the arrest of a drunk driver and the resulting rebellion of people on the street. Presumably, the arrested man was black and the officer white. The wikipedia article did not mention this important detail, nor did it go into racial tensions that characterized the epoch. I thought this spoke significantly to the lack of in-depth coverage that was the focus and remains shallow and a-historical.

In “Trouble Everyday”, Zappa comments on this inherent consequence of news coverage due to the fact that the industry remains profit driven. The byproduct of this is quite simply the way in which news coverage preys on dramatization of events in order to increase viewing and furthermore, the immemorial tradition of misrepresenting a sequence of events so that it reflects the values of the broadcasting station. The tendency for inaccurate and exaggerated coverage in mainstream news is illustrated in the following lyric: “The newsmen say they get the dirt Before the guys on channel so and so”. Zappa highlights the way that the drive for increased profit results in slander when he asserts that he, “don't need it
Take your t.v. tube and eat it.” Obviously, he had a real problem with the content pumped out for the benefit of the elite few controlling the news feed. Given the mass corporatization of news today, this song still holds water. Many of the large broadcasting corporations are connected and owned by a disturbingly small group of people. Conrad Black for instance, controls the Daily Telegraph, the Chicago Sun Times, Jerusalem Post, National Post and hundreds of community newspapers in North America. Indeed, “all that phony stuff on sports And all those unconfirmed reports” Zappa refers to in his work are still in mass circulation. Zappa’s warning against the way profit could affect information dissemination is increasingly applicable today as the disparity between the affluent and the poor increases; leaving innumerable amounts of people at the mercy of fewer and fewer figures in power, like Black.

Another major issue Zappa covers in this politically centered song is the power of mob mentality. He mentions the way people fuel one another on their blind paths of destruction when he sings, “Watch the mob just turn and bite em, And they say it serve them righ Because a few of them are whiteAnd it's the same across the nation Black and white discrimination.” The character of rage is so volatile that it lubricates violence where there is no rationality or purpose behind it once it’s been sparked. The fact that he mentions both black and white groups and their useless crashing and burning speaks to the senseless quality of fury. Zappa consistently references the futility of this type of thoughtless response to provocation. Although he himself experienced discrimination and exclusion time after time, he responded through communication of the injustice through his music rather than beating someone up on the street or his wife at home. It is commonly said of Zappa that he was a misanthrope, but in reality he was reasonably critical of people who chose to make use of their biceps rather than their brains.