Frank Zappa - If We'd All Been Living In California...

[FZ:] Ok? Now if you still want to get your name in magazines he wants five hundred dollars 

a month!
[JCB:] 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. . .
[FZ:] That shit in the news . . .
[JCB:] 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 does it take another five, ten 

years from now?
[FZ:] 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.
[JCB:] Expenses are sure high, too. If we'd all been living in California, it would've been 

different.
[FZ:] If we'd all been living in California, we wouldn't work at all!
[JCB:] 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 . . .