Sure, I've been tricked for years on end. When I thought about the Dodge
veg-o-matic, I thought about on of big shiny chrome-plated american cars
from the 1950's, stranded in the 1970's on a Boston parking.
I was sure that this car was a veg-o-matic model made by Dodge, like the
Ariane and the Chambord were models made by Simca in France. And then, everybody
knows most of the American cars have an automatic gear box, so the "matic"
made all that plausible.
Anyway,the question had not even touched my mind before Florence
questioned me for her web
page dedicated to the Dodge veg-o-matic myth.And then, like others,
I had to admit the fact : the holy writings of the internet reveal it through
their gospelly search engines, in our universe the only mentions of a Dodge
veg-o-matic are linked to the
Jonathan Richman song (or to the French band named after the Jonathan
Richman song), whereas the veg-o-matic in itself does exist (it is a multi-purpose
vegetable tool of some sort to cut, squash, peel,etc vegetables).
So I had to do some research to make a little sense out of all
this. And, as is often the case, the answer was to be found in the priginal
lyrics of the song itself, when Jonathan says about his Dodge : "I like to watch it vegetate,i like to watch it rot".
It's clear, then, that Jonathan identifies his immobilized Dodge - an unknown
model - with somehting that produces vegetals (or vegetables) automatically.
So he gives the "veg-o-matic" nickname to his Dodge, in the same
way as a French man as imaginative as he, could do at the end of a mad story
if he ended up talking about his Solex
Moulinex...
But maybe your're saying to yourself that I'm drawing hasty conlusions just
from a short extract from the lyrics of a song ? You're right, but I cheated
! I had another source of information. To check on it, you'll have to report
to a CD, "The
best of Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers",released under
the n° RNCD 75889 by Rhino Records
in 1986.
Why ? Because on this CD you'll find the original version of "Dodge veg-o-matic"
from the "Rock'n'roll with the Modern Lovers" from 1977. But the
song is here preceded by nearly two minutes of dialogue - probably not improvised
- between Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers. And here, voluntarily
or not, Jonathan tells it all ! He says that his car is a "special
Dodge veg-o-matic Boston model", that it doesn't go anywhere, that
it is sedimentary and that it hasn't moved for 3000 years.
It's clear that all this confirms that, like the abominable snowman in the
supermarket, like Abdul and Cleopatra, like the martian martians and the
little dinosaur, you'll only meet the Dodge
veg-o-matic in Jonathan Richman's songs. But I don't see why we wouldn't
content ourselves with just that !
