Infamous track from We're Only In It For The Money, Zappa's fourth album. Good album, I have it on vinyl though, not digital. This song, from the album, is an old MP3 I downloaded ages ago on one of my previous PCs. I first heard this song, in a slightly remixed form, on Mothermania ... the first Mothers album I ever bought. I like the remixed version better but this version has features that make for a more interesting video, I think.
Despite an amusing line concerning the bastard's parentage, the true meaning of the song concerns a far more serious issue and is quite dark and in-your-face. The first damning clues are that "the idiot boy" is "abandoned to perish in back of a car" and "Kenny will stash him away in a jar." That means he is not even alive ... he is a "pickled punk."
The idiot bastard son is a pickled punk.
"Try and imagine/ The window all covered in green." The abandoned car is likely one in an auto graveyard, and pretty much overgrown with weeds, fungus, and rotted out inside. The glass in the back window is green from decayed leaves, fungus, and other stuff. As we find out later, that is also a reference to human decomposition (the fetus/almost baby is decaying when Kenny discovers it).
Misleading lyrics suggest "the idiot boy" is alive, but it only means the people who have custody of the pickled punk are putting him through some life-like experiences: carrying him in his covered jar to church and setting the jar in the pew, pretending to feed him at home in a toddler's high chair, and putting him on display on the living room mantle so he can "thrive and grow" and "enter the world" to be ogled and humiliated by "the liars and cheaters" (and smugly self-satisfied real life idiots). At the end of the song "the window all covered in green" and "all the time he would spend, all the colors he'd blend" (back in the car) resulted from his own decay and decaying foliage and fungus.
Try and imagine.
Despite an amusing line concerning the bastard's parentage, the true meaning of the song concerns a far more serious issue and is quite dark and in-your-face. The first damning clues are that "the idiot boy" is "abandoned to perish in back of a car" and "Kenny will stash him away in a jar." That means he is not even alive ... he is a "pickled punk."
The idiot bastard son is a pickled punk.
"Try and imagine/ The window all covered in green." The abandoned car is likely one in an auto graveyard, and pretty much overgrown with weeds, fungus, and rotted out inside. The glass in the back window is green from decayed leaves, fungus, and other stuff. As we find out later, that is also a reference to human decomposition (the fetus/almost baby is decaying when Kenny discovers it).
Misleading lyrics suggest "the idiot boy" is alive, but it only means the people who have custody of the pickled punk are putting him through some life-like experiences: carrying him in his covered jar to church and setting the jar in the pew, pretending to feed him at home in a toddler's high chair, and putting him on display on the living room mantle so he can "thrive and grow" and "enter the world" to be ogled and humiliated by "the liars and cheaters" (and smugly self-satisfied real life idiots). At the end of the song "the window all covered in green" and "all the time he would spend, all the colors he'd blend" (back in the car) resulted from his own decay and decaying foliage and fungus.
Try and imagine.
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Music