The most all-out production on FUN GOLDFISH TOYS, this is the one on which the band makes use of every synthesizer and bizarre instrument they could find it the dark storage rooms of Reardon Studios in New Orleans. Of course, they didn't know how to play oboes, sousaphones, harmoniums, or cellos, but they made noises with them anyway, and they used ancient Moogs and Fairlights to turn the noodling into rhythmic chaos underneath sneering vocals from Nick, with a three-second sample of someone incompetently strumming an acoustic guitar blasting on a loop all the while. Meanwhile someone is holding two notes on an organ throughout the song while someone else is smashing keys on a piano at random and someone else still is creating massive feedback. The song has no bass or percussion. Halfway through, handclaps are added to make everything more confusing.
This track alone took 17 days to record, not counting sessions in which it was not the first priority. The master is overdubbed so frequently that the tape has stretched and the song now plays a bit too slow and with a noticable drone. All the better, as far as the band was concerned.
Another song that was drastically different live, "I Have Papers (We Have Issues)" has never held up in a live setting according to some fans who adore the original's insanity. The song was just a feedback squeal or a hard rocker at early shows; on the Diplomacy Tour it was performed on piano as a kind of political number (included in this guise on the NOT UNPLUGGED live album). On the Science Tour, fans were shocked when the band employed the aid of a string quartet to play dissonant notes while the others made random noises. At the last show on the tour they hired an orchestra to do the same, with an "A Day in the Life"-style crescendo of strings and feedback at the end. (In the studio, the song ends very suddenly when the band gets sick of playing it; Nick is heard to say "Fuck this" dismissively.)
Hey baby whatcha know?
You wanna see the post office?
have dinner then
Watch the laundromat?
Parades don't strike me
As the scene
For our ass ass association
Well fuck you and your bank card
And hula hoops and your stupid friends
I can go to buy my carpet
Alone or with Edward
Edward works next door
And he gets it
Unlike you
I called Edward
He was still trying
To find the papers
That he dropped.
I went with Edward
To the sewer
In search of the papers