So I’m graduating in less than a month, but don’t worry, I’m not going to waste your time with some sententious twaddle about growing up and blossoming into an adult and all that hogwash.

I’m here to tell you about Frank Zappa.

I’ve allowed him to enlighten my life and he can enlighten yours too. All you have to do is accept him into your heart. Like Jesus!

He’s not recommended to those who practice regular musical sacrilege: listening to Nickelback, Coldplay, Justin Bieber, or whatever marginally talented artist of the present moment (and that’s a generous assertion). Mixing Frank Zappa with the likes of these Philistines can be dangerous; it would be such a shock to the system that immediate medical attention would be required to scrape your brain-matter off the floor and back into your head.

So you might say: "Well, Al, that sounds all well and good, I’m ready to accept Frank Zappa as my musical savior, but what do you recommend for the uninitiated?" Worry not flock, the shepherd is here. "Over-Nite Sensation" and "Apostrophe" are usually the two albums that are prescribed by Zappa acolytes such as myself to those unacquainted with the consecrated.

After the body has been completed, you can move right on to the blood, or, what I refer to as the jazz-fusion epoch. "Hot Rats" or "The Grand Wazoo" will give you a relatively erudite understanding of everything Zappa has to offer, but the truth is you haven’t even skimmed the surface. So after you have taken part in this communion, you are given carte blanche to roam as you wish, and satiate that musical void in your life that has long been unnourished.

And I don’t mean to sound like a scholar of Zappa, because I too am still a student. He’s the most prolific artist who has ever lived, releasing an average of two or three albums a year from 1966 onward to present day. At the time of his death in 1993, master tapes of unreleased material were piled from the floor to the ceiling and lined the wall of his studio, meaning that the Zappa estate will keep feeding the hungry for years to come.

So though he is dead, there is still a holy refulgent light that shines on us all, assuring us that although we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we shall fear no Nickelback, we shall fear no Black Eyed Peas, we shall fear no Lil Wayne. Verily I say unto thee. Go now in peace.