If We'd All Been Living In California... lyrics

Song information

Artist: Frank Zappa
Album: Uncle Meat

Lyrics

Frank zappa (guitar, vocals, percussion)
Ray collins (vocals)
Jimmy carl black (drums)
Roy estrada (electric bass)
Don preston (electric piano)
Billy mundi (drums)
Bunk gardner (piccolo, flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, soprano saxophone, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, bassoon)
Ian underwood (electric organ, piano, harpsichord, celeste, flute, clarinet, alto saxophone, baritone saxophone)
Arthur tripp (drums, timpani, vibes, marimba, xylophone, wood blocks, bells, small chimes)
Motorhead sherwood (tenor saxophone, tambourine)
Ruth komanoff (marimba, vibes)

Ok, now you still want to get your name in the magazines
And he wants 500 dollars a month

Where does it come from?
We worked one gig this month

And thats....so what do we get?
Two hundred dollars for this gig up here if we're lucky

If we're lucky, we'll get two hundred
And it will be two weeks before we get it
Probably

I mean after all, what is all this shit in the newspaper
If we got such a big name, how come....., we're starving man!
This fucking band is starving!
And we've been starving for three years
I realize it takes a long time but god damn it!
Does it take another five, ten years from now

There's some months when you're not going to work as much as other months. there's some months when you're going to make a lot of money and if you average it out, you do make more than two hundred dollars a month

Expenses are sure high to
If we'd all been living in california
It would have been different

If we'd all been living in california
We wouldn't have worked at all

Oh, that's true
Well, we're not working now anyway
We worked one gig this month frank
What's wrong with getting two months in a row of this good money?

Or three months in a row

Then we could afford to take three of four months off
And everybody can.....
After the first month I can get just enough ahead
But if I had two more months man
I'll get ahead
Because I'm not living very extravagantly, I'll tell you for sure