Most people wouldn’t know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.

In this characteristically abrasive quip, Zappa ridicules what he saw as widespread musical illiteracy—listeners (and, by implication, gatekeepers) lacking the experience or curiosity to recognize craft, originality, or complexity. The joke hinges on an exaggerated, physical metaphor: even if “real music” were unmistakably present and forceful, many people still wouldn’t register it. The line also reflects Zappa’s long-running frustration with commercial taste-making and the way mass popularity can reward familiarity over invention. As a piece of rhetoric, it’s less a measured argument than a provocation meant to puncture complacency and defend demanding, nonconformist art.