The Story Of Joe's Garage

Desperate nerds in high offices all over the world have been known to enact the most disgusting pieces of legislation in order to win votes (or, in places where they don't get to vote, to control unwanted forms of mass behavior).

Environmental laws were not passed to protect our air and water ... they were passed to get votes. Seasonal anti-smut campaigns are not conducted to rid our communities of moral rot ... they are conducted to give an aura of saintliness to the office-seekers who demand them. If a few key phrases are thrown into any speech (as the expert advisors explain to these various heads of state) votes will roll in, bucks will roll in, and, most importantly, power will be maintained by the groovy guy (or gal) who gets the most media coverage for his sleaze. Naturally, his friends in various businesses will do okay too.

All governments perpetuate themselves through the daily commission of act which a rational person might find to be stupid or dangerous (or both). Naturally, our government is no exception ... for instance, if the President (any one of them) went on TV and sat there with the flag in the background (or maybe a rustic scene on a little backdrop, plus the flag) and stared sincerely into the camera and told everybody that all energy problems and all inflationary problems had been traced to and could be solved by the abolition of MUSIC, chances are that most people would believe him and think that the illegalization of this obnoxious form of noise pollution would be a small price to pay for the chance to buy gas like the good ol' days. No way? Never happen? Records are made out of oil. All those big rock shows go from town to town in fuel-gobbling 45 foot trucks ... and when they get there, they use up enormous amounts of electrical energy with their lights, their amplifiers, their PA systems ... their smoke machines. And all those synthesizers...look at all the plastic they got in 'em ... and the guitar picks ... you name it ...

JOE'S GARAGE is a stupid story about how the government is going to try to do away with music (a prime cause of unwanted mass behavior! It's sort of like a really cheap kind of high school play ... the way it might have been done 20 years ago, with all the sets made out of cardboard boxes and poster paint. It's also like those lectures that local narks used to give (where they show you a display of all the different ways you can get wasted, with the pills leading to the weed leading to the needle, etc., etc.). If the plot of the story seems just a little bit preposterous, and if the idea of The Central Scrutinizer enforcing laws that haven't been passed yet makes you giggle, just be glad you don't live in one of the cheerful little countries where, at this very moment, music is either severely restricted ... or, as it is in Iran, totally illegal.

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Eventually it was discovered
That God
Did not want us to be
All the same

This was
BAD NEWS
For the Governments of The World
As it seemed contrary
To the doctrin of
Portion Controlled Servings

Mankind must be made more uniformly
If
THE FUTURE
Was going to work
Various ways were sought
To bind us all together
But, alas
SAMENESS was unenforceable

It was about this time that someone
Came up with the idea of
TOTAL CRIMINALIZATION

Based on the principle that if we were ALL crooks
We could at last be uniform to some degree in the eyes of
THE LAW

Shrewdly our legislators calculated
That most people were too lazy to perform a
REAL CRIME
So new laws were
Manufactured
Making it possible for anyone to violate them
Any time of the day or night,
And
Once we had all broken some kind of law
We'd all be in the same big happy club
Right up there with the President,
The most exalted industrialists,
And the clerical big shots
Of all your favorite religions

TOTAL CRIMINALIZATION
Was the greatest idea of its time
And was vastly popular
Except with those people
Who didn't want to be crooks or outlaws,

So, of course, they had to be
TRICKED INTO IT...
Which is one of the reasons why
MUSIC
Was eventually made
ILLEGAL