Frank Zappa was one of those musicians that almost everyone’s heard of, but few readily know his songs. The legendarily eccentric musician who would’ve turned 75 today, was a radical musical outsider, releasing more than 60 records over his 30-year career, drawing from influences that spanned from classical music to free form jazz to rhythm and blues, often on a single album. At the heart of his prolific creativity, Zappa was also a renowned political activist. An outspoken proponent of the arts, he was both strongly anti-conformist and fiercely anti-censorship.

It was in the fall of 1985 that Zappa got his first big moment in the political spotlight. That year, a group informally known as The Washington Wives were looking to increase parental involvement over their children’s access to music. The group, which included Tipper Gore, wife of then-Senator Al Gore, had a clear-cut goal in mind to put pressure on the Recording Industry Associates of America (RIAA) into a series of regulations, including voluntarily labeling albums that contained explicit lyrics or cover art, similar to the way the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) rated movies based on content.

This led to the forming of a committee known as the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), who aimed to influence their set of standards within the RIAA itself. Armed with a list of songs known as “The Filthy Fifteen” (which included everyone from Prince to Judas Priest), the PMRC suggested that the RIAA create and enforce these numerous proposed standards themselves, which included everything from warning labels, lack of airplay for songs deemed explicit, and even to reassess the contracts of controversial performers in an attempt to discourage such behavior both on stage and on record.

Zappa, whose own discography defiantly blurred the lines between rock, jazz and classical music, saw himself as a pro-capitalist entrepreneur who believed what the PMRC was suggesting was nothing more than the beginning of watered-down censorship, which he believed to be in direct conflict with his First Amendment rights as both an artist and performer. Fiercely opposed to their proposals, Zappa, along with fellow musicians John Denver and Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider, testified to a Senate committee hearing to speak out against the intentions of the PMRC. While all three of their testimonies were important, it was Zappa’s that stole the show.

Reading from a condensed version of a prepared statement that was a scathing criticism of the PMRC, Zappa called the whole ordeal “an ill-conceived piece of nonsense” that “treated dandruff by decapitation.” He also readily suggested that the hearings existed solely for the RIAA to push through a blank tape tax, which they did that same year. Zappa opened by reciting the First Amendment, which he believed was in danger of being put through the “family paper shredder” should these proposed suggestions be put in place.

Taken as a whole, the complete list of PMRC demands reads like an instruction manual for some sinister kind of toilet training program to house-break all composers and performers because of the lyrics of a few.

Not limiting himself to criticizing what he saw as blatant government overreach, Zappa suggested that the committee’s efforts would better be spent by focusing on music education in schools, stating that children had a “right to know that something besides pop music exists.” He went on to speculate on the kind of precedent that would be set by putting a voluntary ratings system in place, suggesting hypothetically that any material written by a Jewish performer could be released with a letter J on the front so as to “save helpless children from exposure to concealed Zionist doctrine.”

Despite Zappa’s staunch and forthright seriousness on the matter overall, there were some lighter moments, such as Al Gore professing his fandom for Zappa on a personal level, as well as then-Senator Jim Exon asking if he had performed with either Glenn Miller or Mitch Miller. Zappa, as it turned out, had taken some lessons with Miller’s brother as a grade-schooler. Exon laughed, calling it “the first sign of hope in this hearing.”

While his entire statement, as his followup back-and-forth with Gore, is filled with delightful, distinctly opinionated insights that can be read in its entirety here, there’s also a full 35-minute video of his testimony, which is absolutely worth taking the time to watch in full.

Along with testimony from Zappa, who disregarded the entire ordeal as political posturing, both for the aforementioned blank tape tax and to elevate the visibility of Al Gore prior to his presidential ambitions, Denver and Snider spoke about the misinterpretation of their lyrics. Denver cited his often misunderstood “Rocky Mountain High,” while Snider, too, spoke about lyrical interpretation, referring to the Twisted Sister song “Under the Knife,” which had been singled out by the committee. Snider maintained the lyrics were about a bandmate’s surgical proceedings, before adding that “Ms. Gore was looking for sadomasochism and bondage, and she found it.”