"Plastic People" is the first track of the Frank Zappa album Absolutely Free. It also was featured on the You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore (Volume 1) compilation as Track 1 on disc 2, along with a "Louie, Louie/Plastic People"-like version entitled "Ruthie, Ruthie" as Track 10 on disc 1. It was also featured on the 1998 Mystery Disc release.
The title was the inspiration for the name of the Czech band Plastic People of the Universe. The tune is loosely based on the Kingsmen's classic "Louie Louie". The song is a manifesto against conformity and materialistic culture, with Frank Zappa finally asking, "Go home/and check yourself/you think we're singing 'bout someone else?"
It is sampled throughout the GZA single "Cold World" from the "Liquid Swords" album.
Famous quotes containing the words plastic and/or people:
“And I threw a little earth
on the pink coffin
covered by the fake plastic grass
and said O.K., God,
if it’s the end of the world,
it must be necessary.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“My time has come.
There are twenty people in my belly,
there is a magnitude of wings,
there are forty eyes shooting like arrows,
and they will all be born.
All be born in the yellow wind.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)