"My Pet Theory"

Lyrics

FZ: The Sixties was really stupid. [pause]
Interviewer: Okay, can you expand on that a little bit more where you think the Sixties were really stupid?
FZ: Well, it was the type of merchandising. Americans had this hideous weakness, y'know? They have this desire to be okay-fun-guys-and-gals. And they haven't come to terms with the reality of the situation: We were not created equal. Some people can do carpentry, some people can do mathematics, some people are brain surgeons, and some people are winos, and that's the way it is!
And, we're not all the same! And this concept of one world is when everything blended and smoothed out to this mediocre norm, but everybody, uh, downgrades themselves to be, is stupid. And the Sixties was merchandised to the public at large.
My pet theorie about the Sixties is, that … there is a sinister plot behind it, but I don't wanna dwell opon that.
Interviewer: Okay. [laughs]
FZ: Okay? They just that … the lessons learned in the Sixties about merchandising stupidity to the American public on a large scale have been used over and over again since that time.
Interviewer: Freak Out! and Absolutely Free influenced the generation.
FZ: Did they? Didn't sell that much. How they influence a generation? Come on, tell me.
Interviewer: That's what my questions says here … [laughs]
FZ: But that wasn't a question, that was a statement.
Interviewer: Then it was my statement. Looking back over all these years and these records, how do you feel about them now?
FZ: About Freak Out! and Absolutely Free? Hrm, okay, for something that was done as a four-track-recording twenty years ago. Y'know, I wouldn't sit around listening to them.
Interviewer: You don't think they had any influence on people?
FZ: Well, I know, that a lot of people were vastly influenced by them, I've heard horror stories about that. But, … so what? They weren't released to be influences, they were released as a form of entertainment for people who, uh, didn't have that type of entertainment before.
Interviewer: You once said, listen, now that I'm thirty years old, now that I'm over the hill I really don't give a shit, I don't care. Now, that you're over forty, any comments?
FZ: Said it once. Do I need to say it again?
Interviewer: [laughs]

Players On This Song

FZ and interviewer

Records On Which This Song Has Appeared

The MOFO Project/Object (Deluxe Edition)

Notes About This Song

From a 1986 MTV interview