Brendan is well known to all members of the Philadephia chapter of Drinking Liberally. He’s known for his humor, for his love of music, for his short-hair and white t-shirts, but also for the permanently pinned position of his outrage meter. You can read his rantings at Brendan Calling, although they pale in comparison to his real-life diatribes. The day the Dems caved on Alito he greeted me with a 10-minute outburst of sustained venom. I wish I had it on tape and could play it in a loop for Joe Lieberman until he begged for mercy. Brendan’s latest outrage involves John Yoo, the architect of Bush’s Torture Doctrines. First Brendan quotes Yoo.
Yoo: The changes of the 1970’s occurred largely because we had no serious national security threats to United States soil, but plenty of paranoia in the wake of Richard Nixon’s use of national security agencies to spy on political opponents.
Then he launches into a rant only Brendan is capable of. He delves into the lyrics of punk bands like Millions of Dead Cops and the Dead Kennedys to prove that the children of the 70’s and 80’s certainly felt a high level of threat. It fascinating and you should read his follow-up piece too.
I wasn’t into hardcore and punk. I listened to some of it: Black Flag, 999, The Stranglers… But I was much more into Reggae, Ska, and Classic Rock. And, for me, the political consciousness that I absorbed came from Bob Marley’s anti-imperialistic anthems, and from Roger Waters.
Obviously, The Wall was the biggest album of my childhood. It told the story of a musician that had lost his father in World War Two and was descending into a drug-enhanced dementia as he struggled to deal with the legacy of an absent father, a domineering mother, and an increasingly fascist (as Waters saw it) England. It wasn’t until Waters saw the Soviets invade Afghanistan and Thatcher go to war over the Falklands, that he turned full-bore against the foreign policy of the Cold War and became overtly political. The result was an album that was released in 1983. And it carried forward some of themes of The Wall. Below the fold, I’ll discuss some of the tracks from The Final Cut and also two songs from a later solo album called Radio Kaos.
Waters lost his father at Anzio. In The Post War Dream he laments his father and the lost promise of England that followed the victory in 1945.
The Post War Dream (Waters- The Final Cut)
[Car sound, switching on of car radio]
“…announced plans to build a nuclear fallout shelter at Peterborough
in Cambridgeshire…”
[phzzt! of returning]
“…three high court judges have cleared the way…”
[phzzt!]
“…It was announced today, that the replacement for the Atlantic
Conveyor the container ship lost in the Falklands conflict would be
built in Japan, a spokesman for…”
[phzzt!]
“…moving in. They say the third world countries, like Bolivia, which
produce the drug are suffering from rising violence…[fades]”Tell me true, tell me why, was Jesus crucified
Is it for this that Daddy died?
Was it for you? Was it me?
Did I watch too much T.V.?
Is that a hint of accusation in your eyes?
If it wasn’t for the nips
Being so good at building ships
The yards would still be open on the clyde.
And it can’t be much fun for them
Beneath the rising sun
With all their kids committing suicide.
What have we done, Maggie what have we done?
What have we done to England?
Should we shout, should we scream
“What happened to the post war dream?”
Oh Maggie, Maggie what have we done?
Exporting shipbuilding jobs to Japan, one of England’s World War Two foes, fighting over the Falkland Islands, is this what England is all about? Is this what so many died to preserve? Waters doesn’t think so.
In this next number Waters baldly takes on the imperialism of the Falkland War. The title says it all.
Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert (Waters- The Final Cut)
“Oi…Get your filthy hands off my desert!”
“What ‘e say?”Brezhnev took Afghanistan.
Begin took Beirut.
Galtieri took the Union Jack.
And Maggie, over lunch one day,
Took a cruiser with all hands.
Apparently, to make him give it back.
In this next one Waters returns to WW Two, mentions the Dresden bombing, and suggests that there was some moral ambiguity, something wrong, with all the cheering when the soldiers came home from the war. The lights going out is a clear reference to the blackouts during the war…one of Waters’s earliest memories.
The Hero’s Return (Waters- The Final Cut)
Jesus, Jesus, what’s it all about?
Trying to clout these little ingrates into shape.
When I was their age all the lights went out.
There was no time to whine or mope about.
And even now part of me flies over
Dresden at angels one five.
Though they’ll never fathom it behind my
Sarcasm desperate memories lie.Sweetheart sweetheart are you fast asleep? Good.
‘Cause that’s the only time that I can really speak to you.
And there is something that I’ve locked away
A memory that is too painful
To withstand the light of day.When we came back from the war the banners and
Flags hung on everyone’s door.
We danced and we sang in the street and
The church bells rang.
But burning in my heart
My memory smolders on
Of the gunners dying words on the intercom.
Fletcher was Water’s father. Waters fantasizes about sending all the warmongers to a home.
The Fletcher Memorial Home (Waters- The Final Cut)
Take all your overgrown infants away somewhere
And build them a home, a little place of their own.
The Fletcher Memorial
Home for Incurable Tyrants and Kings.And they can appear to themselves every day
On closed circuit T.V.
To make sure they’re still real.
It’s the only connection they feel.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, Reagan and Haig,
Mr. Begin and friend, Mrs. Thatcher, and Paisly,
“Hello Maggie!”
Mr. Brezhnev and party.
“Scusi dov’è il bar?”
The ghost of McCarthy,
The memories of Nixon.
“Who’s the bald chap?”
“Good-bye!”
And now, adding colour, a group of anonymous latin-American meat packing glitterati.Did they expect us to treat them with any respect?
They can polish their medals and sharpen their
Smiles, and amuse themselves playing games for awhile.
Boom boom, bang bang, lie down you’re dead.Safe in the permanent gaze of a cold glass eye
With their favorite toys
They’ll be good girls and boys
In the Fletcher Memorial Home for colonial
Wasters of life and limb.Is everyone in?
Are you having a nice time?
Now the final solution can be applied.
Radio Kaos came out in 1987. Waters explained the concept of the story in the liner notes.
The Story- (Waters- Radio Kaos)
Benny is a Welsh coal miner. He is a radio ham. He is 23 years old, married to Molly. They have a son, young Ben, aged 4, and a new baby. They look after Benny’s twin brother Billy, who is apparently a vegetable. The mine is closed by the market forces. The Male Voice Choir stops singing, the village is dying.
One night Benny takes Billy on a pub crawl. Drunk in a brightly-lit shopping mall, Benny vents his anger on a shop window full of multiple TV images of Margaret Thatcher’s mocking condescension. In defiance, he steals a cordless ‘phone. Later that night, Benny cavorts dangerously on the parapet of a motorway footbridge, in theatrical protest at the tabloid press. That same night, a cab driver is killed by a concrete block dropped off a similar bridge. The police come to question Benny; he hides the cordless ‘phone under the cushion of Billy’s wheelchair.
Billy is different, he can receive radio waves directly without the aid of a tuner; he explores the cordless ‘phone, recognizing its radioness. Benny is sent to prison. Billy feels as if half of him has been cut off. He misses Benny’s nightly conversations with radio hams in foreign parts. Molly, unable to cope, sends Billy to stay with his Great Uncle David, who had emigrated to the USA during the war. Much as Billy likes Uncle David and the sunshine and all the new radio in LA, he cannot adjust to the cultural upheaval and the loss of Benny, who for him is ‘home’.
Uncle David, now an old man, is haunted by having worked on the Manhattan project during World War II, designing the Atom Bomb, and seeks to atone. He also is a radio ham; he often talks to other hams about the Black Hills of his youth, the Male Voice Choir, about home. He is saddened by the use of telecommunication to trivialise important issues, the soap opera of state. However, Live Aid has decynicised him to an extent. Billy listens to David and hears the truth the old man speaks.
Billy experiments with his cordless ‘phone, he learns to make calls. He accesses computers and speech synthesizers, he learns to speak. Billy makes contact with Jim a DJ at Radio KAOS, a renegade rock station fighting a lone rear guard action against format radio. Billy and Jim become radio friends, Reagan and Thatcher bomb Lybia. Billy perceives this as an act of political “entertainment” fireworks to focus attention away from problems at “home”.
Billy has developed his expertise with the cordless ‘phone to the point where he can now control the most powerful computers in the world. He plans an “entertainment” of his own. He simulates nuclear attack everywhere, but de-activates the military capability of “the powers that be” to retaliate. In extremes perceptions change, Panic, comedy, compassion. In a SAC bunker a soldier in a white cravat turns a key to launch the counter attack. Nothing happens; impotently he kicks the console, hurting his foot. He watches the approaching blips on the radar screen. As impact approaches, he thinks of his wife and kids, he puts his fingers in his ears.
Silence. White out. Black out. Lights out. It didn’t happen, we’re still alive. Billy has drained the earth of power to create his illusion. All over the dark side of the earth, candles are lit. In the pub in Billy’s home village in Wales one man starts to sing; the other men join in. The tide is turning.
Billy is home.
[Jim:] This is K.A.O.S. You and I are listening to KAOS in Los Angeles.
Let’s go to the telephones now and take a request.
[Billy:] Hello, I’m Billy.
[Jim:] Yes?
[Billy:] I hear radio waves in my head.
[Jim:] You hear radio waves in your head? Ah! Is there a request that you have tonight for KAOS?
Whereas Brendan considered LiveAid to be a program created by guilt ridden corporations, Waters thought it was something more.
The Tide Is Turning (After Live Aid)- (Water- Radio Kaos)
I used to think the world was flat
Rarely threw my hat into the crowd
I felt I had used up my quota of yearning
Used to look in on the children at night
In the glow of their Donald Duck light
And frighten myself with the thought of my little ones burning
But oh, oh, oh, the tide is turning
The tide is turningSatellite buzzing through the endless night
Exclusive to moonshots and world title fights
Jesus Christ imagine what it must be earning
Who is the strongest, who is the best
Who holds the aces, the East or the West
This is the crap our children are learning
But oh, oh, oh, the tide is turning
The tide is turning
Oh, oh, oh, the tide is turningNow the satellite’s confused
‘Cos on Saturday night
The airwaves were full of compassion and light
And his silicon heart warmed
To the sight of a billion candles burning
Oo, oo, oo, the tide is turning
Oo, oo, oo, the tide is turning
The tide is turning BillyI’m not saying that the battle is won
But on Saturday night all those kids in the sun
Wrested technology’s sword from the hand of the
War Lords
Oh, oh, oh, the tide is turning
The tide is turning SylvesterThe tide is turning.
“That’s it!”
[Morse Code:]
“Now the past is over but you are not alone
Together we’ll fight Sylvester Stallone
We will not be dragged down in his South China Sea
of macho bullshit and mediocrity”
Brendan is right. John Yoo is so full of shit that his eyes are brown. We all felt the threat. The threat was real. The threat was that a lot of overgrown infants were going to miscalculate and blow up the world over some bullshit.
Seventeen years after The Cold War, the threat has not receded.
