Plastic People

Plastic People evolved from the group's cover of Louie Louie, with new lyrics. It opens with an announcement from the President of the United States, who is ill and needs chicken soup, and goes on to criticize the plastic hippies who hung out at clubs like Pandora's Box, then at the center of the Sunset Strip riots. It was recorded at TTG on 15 November 1966, the same day as Status Back Baby and Son of Suzy Creamcheese.

Zappa said in 1967 that the people who run almost everybody's country are plastic people, and that the references to Sunset Boulevard, Pandora's Box, the CIA and Laurel Canyon relate to the first youth riots in Los Angeles the year before. Dominic Priore, writing about the Sunset Strip, records a curfew, mass arrests and a major riot on 12 November 1966, and clubs such as the Trip and Pandora's Box torn down in the months after.