If We’d All Been Living in California… Songtext
von Frank Zappa

Okay? Now if you still want to get your name in magazines
He wants five hundred dollars a month
Where does it come from? We worked one gig this month
And now, 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'll be two weeks before we get it
Probably I mean a- after all, uh
What is all this shit in the, uh, in the newspaper?
We sh-, if we got such a big name, how come, uh
We're starving, man! This fucking band is starving!
We′ve been starving for three years
I realize it takes a long time, but God damn does it take another five, ten years from now?


There′s some months when you're not gonna work as much as other months
There′s some months when you're gonna 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 too
If we′d all been living in California, it would've been different
If we′d all been living in California, we wouldn't work at all!
Ah that's true
Well, we′re not working n-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 can afford to take three or 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
′Cause I'm not living very extravagantly, I′ll tell you for sure