Don't Eat The Yellow Snow

A song about a dream of being a baby Eskimo, this is one of the canonical Zappa tunes familiar to the mainstream. It's album, Apostrophe ('), was the first Zappa album to achieve mainstream commercial success, becoming certified gold in 1976. "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow" was also the first Zappa single to make the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #86.

When we talk about it here, keep in mind that we're also including the subsequent songs "Nanook Rubs It" and "St. Alphonzo's Pancake Breakfast" on the same album, all three of which combine to tell the complete story. Zappa names himself "Nanook" in the main character of the Eskimo. "Nanook" actually comes from Inuit legend, being the master of the polar bears. In a 1922 silent film Nanook of the North, the character was introduced to worldwide audiences as a mere mortal Eskimo struggling to eke out an existence in Quebec, Canada, for himself and his family. Just about every stereotype of Eskimos, from the igloos to the sleigh dogs to rubbing their noses to say "hello," came from this film.

Zappa mentions retaliating against a fur-trapper in vengeance of the trapper's abuse of his "favorite baby seal." Baby seals were the celebrity cause du jur in the mid-1970s, along with the plight of whales and the slaughter of animals for their fur in general. After a few years of this, PETA launched in 1980 to protest animal exploitation. So this is yet another bit of social satire on Zappa's part.