Frank Zappa For President

 

Brown shoes
Don't make it
Brown shoes
Don't make it
Quit school
Why fake it?
Brown shoes
Don't make it

TV dinner by the pool
Watch your brother grow a beard
Got another year of school
You're okay—he's too weird
Be a plumber
He's a bummer
He's a bummer
Every summer
Be a loyal plastic robot
For a world that doesn't care
Smile at every ugly
Shine on your shoes and cut your hair

Be a joik
And go t' woik
Be a joik
And go t' woik
Be a joik
And go t' woik
Be a joik
And go t' woik

Do your job and do it right
Life's a ball
TV tonight
Do you love it?
Do you hate it?
There it is
The way you made it
YARRRRRRRRRRRGH-H-H!

A world of secret hungers
Perverting the men who make your laws
Every desire is hidden away
In a drawer, in a desk
By a Naugahyde chair
On a rug where they walk and drool
Past the girls in the office

Hratche-plche
Hratche-plche
Hratche-plche
Hratche-plche

We see in the back of the City Hall mind
The dream of a girl about thirteen
Off with her clothes and into a bed
Where she tickles his fancy all night long

His wife's attending an orchid show
She squealed for a week to get him to go
But back in the bed, his teen-age queen
Is rocking and rolling and acting obscene

Baby baby
Hratche-plche
Hratche-plche
Baby baby
Hratche-plche
Hratche-plche

And he loves it, he loves it
It curls up his toes
She bites his fat neck
And it lights up his nose
But he cannot be fooled
Old City Hall Fred
She's nasty, she's nasty
She digs it in bed

Do it again
And do it some more
That does it, by golly
It's nasty for sure
Nasty nasty nasty
Nasty nasty nasty
Only thirteen and she knows how to nasty

She's a dirty young mind
Corrupted, corroded
Well she's thirteen today
And I hear she gets loaded

P-pum-m-mum-m-mum-m-mum
P-pum-m-mum-m-mum-m-mum
P-bum

If she were my daughter, I'd . . .
(What would you do, daddy?)
If she were my daughter, I'd . . .
(What would you do, daddy?)
If she were my daughter, I'd . . .
(What would you do, daddy?)

Smother my daughter in chocolate syrup
And strap her on again, oh baby
Smother that girl in chocolate syrup
And strap her on again

She's a teen-age baby
And she turns me on
I'd like to make her do a nasty
On the White House lawn
Gonna smother that girl in chocolate syrup
And boogie till the cows come home

Time to go home
Madge is on the phone
Gotta meet the Gurney's
And a dozen grey attorneys

TV dinner by the pool
I'm so glad I finished school
Life is such a ball
I run the world from City Hall

This is the new AM-NERIKA now!
(AMNESIA/AMERIKA—Better, somehow)
What cannot be fixed by a favor or bribe,
Should be dead or forgotten—it must not survive!

Those dreadful CREATIVES!
Those up-rising NATIVES!
They make us remember;
They cause us such grief!
My HOLY DISEASE is the only relief!

I looked into the Bible,
Yes! And so, I'm not liable
For guilt to apply!
Those dreadful CREATIVES
Have all got to die!

If I was President? I think I'd do a fine job.

Because first of all I don't owe anything to anybody. And I don't believe in the platform of any of the parties. So I would start from scratch and make it up as it went along. And there's no way that anybody in any public office is gonna get 100% of the public liking his or her policies, and so you just take that as a given. And you can do things.

If I were going to run here's exactly what I would do. First of all I would file as a candidate of no party. And all I would do is raise enough money to get on the ballot in every state. And I wouldn't campaign.

And I happen to think that the news media would call me up to ask me what do you think about this. And I would tell 'em. And let the other guys spend their money and argue about it. But just being completely outside of the circuit I think you could get enough information into the marketplace of ideas to let them know what you thought about various things. And the day that they got to go to the poll, when they're just sick to death of next season's Willie Hortons or whatever it's going to be, there would be an alternative. There'd just be something that you could check on the box that would enable you to vote against the rest of what politics is.

Whether it's me or somebody else, I think that that is the key to breaking the way politics is conducted in the United States, 'cause it's going to be a long time before any of these practitioners really change the election procedure. They're not gonna make it fairer, they're not gonna make the expenditures lower, they're just gonna try and keep it going the way it is. And the only hope that this democracy—and I use the word advisedly in the case of the United States, 'cause it's almost evaporated—the only way that you can have a choice is for somebody to come up from nowhere and do it just the way I described, completely outside the system, as simply as possible.

And that would enable the voters that are fed up who are always saying one of the reasons why they don't go to the polls is 'cause there is no choice—if they know that this time they would have a choice, no matter whether— whatever the candidate is. Just to have a third box that you could check.

These guys with these— the helmet hair, these custom molded guys that have sprayed the hair never moves and they all do like this and like— have these terrible little hand gestures that they got out of a comic book someplace and they say the same things and . . . uh, it's boring and it's insincere. I find it hard to believe that 250 million people in this country really buy into that. I think that the reason why they're able to hang on to their positions or get into the office in the first place is because there isn't anybody willing to look at them and say, "You're fake! You're just— just that. I feel sorry for you that you have to live your life being a fake."

(Whip it good!
Well, Ike, you know, it's not really an invasionary thing, it's just—
It's a training exercise and, well . . .)

They got lies so big
They don't make a noise
They tell 'em so well
Like a secret disease
That makes you go numb

With a big ol' lie
And a flag and a pie
And a mom and a bible
Most folks are just liable
To buy any line
Any place, any time

When the lie's so big
As in Robertson's case,
(That sinister face
Behind all the Jesus hurrah)

Could result in the end
To a worrisome trend
In which every American
Not "born again"
Could be punished in cruel and unusual ways
By this treacherous cretin
Who tells everyone
That he's Jesus' best friend

When the lies get so big
And the fog gets so thick
And the facts disappear
The Republican Trick
Can be played out again
People, please tell me when
We'll be rid of these men!

Just who do they really
Suppose that they are?
And how do they manage to travel as far
As they seem to have come?
Were we really that dumb?

Oh, people, wake up
Figure it out
Religious fanatics
Around and about
The Court House, The State House,
The Congress, The White House

Criminal saints
With a "Heavenly Mission"—
A nation enraptured
By pure superstition

Is everybody happy?

When the lie's so big
And the fog's so thick
And the facts get forgotten
The Republican Trick
Can be played out again
(I see you!)
People, please tell me when
We'll be rid of these men!

 

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
The only place to be
Because we crown thy good with our (because the) brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

Shining sea!

Oh, I'm talking 'bout the freedom
And shining sea
(Shine, shine, yeah)
Now the sea
(Sea, sea, sea, yeah
Shining sea)
I wanna keep it free, yeah
(Let it shine, yeah)
I wanna keep it free with you and me
(Sea . . .)
Oh no
(Yeah)

Sea to shining sea, yeah
Sea to shining sea, yeah yeah
Oh, yeah yeah, sea to shining sea, yeah
Oh, yeah, sea to . . .

Sea to shining sea . . . oh, yeah yeah . . .
Oh, yeah . . .

This really is good night. Thanks a lot for coming to the show. See you in the Fall!