Growing up in small town Iowa in the late 90s, being a music fan was pretty hard. There was no internet to look things up, no YouTube to fall down some endless rabbit hole. It felt more like trying to tune into a radio station you could barely pick up. I would hear about artists long before I ever had the chance to actually hear them. I stitched it together however I could, late night MTV, worn out copies of Rolling Stone at the school library, and the occasional trip to Sioux Falls or Minneapolis where I’d grab whatever insight I could from record store clerks and the posters hanging on those walls. Through all of it, one name kept surfacing again and again. Frank Zappa. I had never heard a single note of his, but I could tell it was something important I needed to hear.
So what does a sophomore in high school do when he needs a lesson in rock and roll history? I asked my history teacher, Mr. Darryl Schoeberlein, if he knew anything about Frank Zappa. Of course he did. Not only did he know, he had an original copy of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention’s debut album Freak Out (which turns 60 this week) on vinyl. And being the amazing teacher he was, he brought it into school, let me take it home, dig into it, and dub it onto cassette.
That still feels pretty unbelievable to me. This wasn’t just any teacher. Mr. Schoeberlein was one of the best in the business. He had taught my parents, all of my siblings, and now me, stretching back to the early 70s, a living thread of continuity in a small town in northwest Iowa, not exactly Zappa country. But Mr. Schoeberlein, or “Shoeb” if you’re in the know, loved history in a way that made it feel more than alive, not something stuck in a textbook, he was always about making history something you could experience and pass along.
Yesterday I asked my mom to dig out one of her old yearbooks from 1971, so I could see what he looked like back then. There he was, his last name misspelled in the caption, wearing a groovy pinstriped suit. You could see the style, the curiosity, and way too much swagger for a little Iowa town. It made you wonder why he ever ended up in Sibley in the first place. You could just tell he understood that the world was bigger, weirder, and more interesting than most people there would ever realize. Looking at that picture, it’s easy to imagine him digging on Zappa and all the other beautifully strange music coming out of that era.
Freak Out is still one of the most unbelievable debut records ever made. Who comes out of the gate with a double LP like that, packed with satire, doo wop, strange noises, twisted melodies, humor, discomfort, beauty, total unpredictability, and yes, some truly incredible songs. Songs about civil rights, teenage love, and not even caring if she shaves her legs. It doesn’t just push boundaries, it ignores them completely. The first time I heard it, it felt like permission to be weird, to experiment, to not have it all figured out, to push on things just to see what happens and trust that something interesting might come out the other side. In other words, fuck around and find out. That’s a pretty incredible lesson to learn in high school, which I think my friends and I did all the time. Like the time we got sent home from school during homecoming spirit week. It was “dress as twins” day, and we all decided to show up dressed goth instead. I still wonder what Nathan Hatting’s very conservative mom was thinking when he walked out of the house with black lipstick on. Fuck around and find out. Thanks, Mr. Shoeb, via Zappa.
Not only was he a great teacher, he was an incredible coach. I remember a JV football game my sophomore year when I was playing quarterback. We were getting our asses handed to us, and I finally threw a perfect slant pass that hit (black lipstick wearing) Nathan Hatting right in the chest and he dropped it. I lost my cool, stormed off the field, and kicked the sideline pylon about 30 feet into the air. Shoeb grabbed my jersey, pulled me in close, and said, “What the hell do you think you are doing?” I told him I was pissed because I finally got a pass off and it got dropped. He told me, in no uncertain terms, that I needed to get control of myself and be a better team leader, grabbing my face mask and giving my helmet a quick slap. “Now get it together, we’re going to need you to lead us down the field next drive.” He was right, and in a matter of seconds he helped me pull my head out of my ass. I went over to my teammate and said, “Great job getting open, we’ll get the next one.” Zappa probably would have fired his bandmate for an onstage meltdown like that, but not Shoeb. He had my back, even when I was being a sad sack.
That leader/teamwork idea lives inside Freak Out. For all its chaos and weirdness, there is a vision holding it together. Zappa was pushing boundaries, but he was also leading people through that chaos, building something with The Mothers of Invention that only worked because there was trust, discipline, and a willingness to go somewhere unknown together. It takes a certain kind of leadership to make something that free actually work.
Mr. Schoeberlein had that same balance. He could open the door to something completely new, hand you a record that might change the way you see the world, and in the next breath hold you accountable to be better, to think bigger than yourself, to understand your place on a team. That’s a good teacher.
And then there is Tate Schoeberlein, his son, the coolest guy in town, the guy who could play Slash solos note for note and gave just about every guitar player in Sibley their start, including me. I can still remember him showing me the riff to Pictures of Matchstick Men by Status Quo and the opening to Today by the Smashing Pumpkins and feeling like he had just helped me unlock the portal to rock. Tate can still play any stringed instrument better than anyone I know. He could have played in the Mothers Of Invention. Speaking of Mothers, his mom Becky was my first grade teacher as well. An incredible family of educators, shaping how kids in Sibley learned about the world and how to move through it.
So when I think about Freak Out turning 60, I don’t just think about how groundbreaking it was or how bold it was to release something that strange and fully formed right out of the gate. I think about a history teacher in a small Iowa town who saw a kid asking questions and decided to hand him something that might help him find his own answers, for the lessons, for the perspective, for putting me in my place when I needed it, and for handing me a piece of history that would stick with me forever.