Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention—If We'd All Been Living In California "lyrics"

FZ put a tape of a band meeting on his album Uncle Meat. The band was obviously struggling--making a few hundred bucks a month each. I don't know which band member Frank was talking to, but it was one of these guys:

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)

"If We'd All Been Living In California"
Frank Zappa and an unknown Mother of Invention

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

Unknown Mother: 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.

FZ: Probably.

Unknown Mother: I mean after all, what is all this sh*t in the newspaper? If we got such a big name, how come. . .we're starving man! This f**king 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.

FZ: 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.

Unknown Mother: Expenses are sure high too. If we'd all been living in California, it would have been different.

FZ: If we'd all been living in California, we wouldn't have worked at all.

Unknown Mother: 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.
---o0o---