Radio KAOS
Radio Waves (Waters)
.
Who Needs Information (Waters)
Me Or Him (Waters)
The Powers That Be (Waters)
Vocals by Paul Carrack and Waters.
Sunset Strip (Waters)
Home (Waters)
Vocals by Waters and Claire Torry.
Four Minutes (Waters)
Vocals by Waters and Claire Torry.
The Tide Is Turning (After Live Aid)(Waters)
Roger Waters: Vocals, Guitars, Bass Guitar and Keyboards
Andy Fairweather-Low: Electric Guitars
Jay Stapley: Electric Guitar
Mel Collins: Saxophone, Horns
Ian Ritchie: Drum/Fairlight Programming, Piano, Keyboards, Horns
Graham Board: Drums, Percussion
John Linwood: Drums
Nick Smith: DX7, Emu
Matt Irving: Hammond Organ
Paul Carrack: Vocals
Claire Torry: Vocals
Suzanne Rhatigan: Backing Vocals
Kate Kissoon: Backing Vocals
Doreen Chanter: Backing Vocals
Madeline Bell: Backing Vocals
Steve Langer: Backing Vocals
Vicky Brown: Backing Vocals
The Pontardoulais Male Voice Choir: Backing Vocals
John Phirkell: Horns
The Story
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, age 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 of 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.
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