Trouble Every Day

Listed on the original vinyl labels as Trouble Comin' Every Day, it opens side three of Freak Out!. Zappa's liner notes say it is how he felt about racial unrest in general and the Watts situation in particular, that he wrote it during the riot as it developed, and that he shopped it around Hollywood and no one would touch it. In a 1967 radio interview he said he was offended that both sides appeared to be really stupid, and that constructive thinking might find other ways to solve racial problems.

Wilson heard the Mothers play it and signed them; Zappa wrote that Wilson took them for a rhythm and blues band. Jimmy Carl Black recalled that it was the first song Zappa really featured as a vocalist, and that the earlier live version, with Ray Collins on harmonica, sounded like a John Lee Hooker song. A rearranged, faster version appears on the live albums Roxy & Elsewhere (1974) and The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life (1991). Ray Collins told Uncut it is about the Watts riots being presented on television as a sports show.