Roger Waters, “Radio K.A.O.S”
I am not a Pink Floyd expert. They scared me. I was born the year “Dark Side of the Moon” was released and that iconic prism was still around when I went to middle school, always on the back of jean jackets worn by scary teens, always blowing my mind. White light turned by a triangle into a rainbow, why did something so perky contain such dread? I was more of a rule follower and preferred the bright side of the moon, where you could see what was what. These Floyd fans seemed soaked in the mysterium. And drugs were involved. That scared me more than anything. I still don’t like “Dark Side of the Moon”, but can’t deny it has a power to it. When the band split into David Gilmour-led Floyd and Roger Waters solo, I was able to parse the ick it made in my stomach. Gilmour’s thick, hazy atmospheres bother me more than Waters’ authority questioning melancholy. Waters has more bite to him. The high school sophomores across the nation, including myself, all dove into the Waters-heavy Pink Floyd creation“The Wall”. How could you not? It laid bare that the grown-ups did not know what they were doing. And that left us as the ones in the know! It was irresistible.
1987 finds Roger Waters on his second solo album, his first after formally leaving Pink Floyd. It’s a concept album about Billy, a Welsh paraplegic who can hear radio waves. Yes, you heard that right. Billy lives with his twin brother Benny who works in the mines. Margaret Thatcher’s monetarism-based economic policy, Waters’ nemesis, has resulted in the closing of the mines where Benny works. On a drunken night, Benny throws a concrete block off a bridge as part of a mining protest, killing a taxi driver. Benny’s arrested and Billy is sent off to LA to live with a relative. With the help of a cordless phone and Billy’s superpower (radio wave reading), Billy is able to hack into the defense systems of the whole planet and convince everyone there’s about to be a nuclear attack. Once the fraud is revealed, everyone realizes that nuclear war is dumb and there is peace on earth. I find this all hard to connect together in prose, so as you might imagine, it doesn’t sparkle in song.
The album deviates from Pink Floyd’s palette and makes some musical moves to sound more “modern”. The result, brightens up some of Waters paranoid cynicism for a dance club no one asked for. The catchiest song “Radio Waves” introduces Billy and his special ability. It’s almost an anthem, but it’s hard to stay on board when you realize this isn’t Radio Gaga.
The ozone overflows with radio waves
AM, FM, weather, and news
Our leaders had a frank exchange of views
Are you confused?
Radio waves
Radio waves, radio waves
AM radio waves, FM radio waves
Radio waves, mind-numbing radio waves
Fish-stunning radio waves
Radio waves
You see, these aren’t the fun radio waves. They are the serious ones. And the fish are stunned.
“Who Needs Information” follows with the tale of Benny’s imprisonment. It’s got decent apocalyptic energy to it and a legible message about being despondent at the bottom of the economic ladder. If you were worried about the fish theme, have no fear. it shows up in a conversation between Billy and the radio DJ at the end of “Sunset Strip”. The song itself is about Billy feeling out of place in LA, but what about the fish?
I don't like fish.
You are listening to KAOS here in Los Angeles.
I don't like fish.
Yes, we've established that. Ah! Do you have a request?
Shell fish, guppy, salmon, shrimp and crab and lobster, flounder.
I hate fish, but I think most of all I hate fresh fish, like trout.
I hate fresh trout. My least-hated, favourite fish would be sole.
That way you don't have to see the eyes. Sole has no eyes.
That’s Waters’ sense of humor (I think). He’s about as funny as Judd Nelson’s character in the Breakfast Club, and subscribes to the same dark is deep philosophy. Waters also makes a pun out of balmy and bomby when the fake bomb in the story is about to go off. Rim shot. What keeps me from completely jumping ship, is that Waters’ music can have real feeling in it, it can be tenderly exposed and soaringly operatic. He has what the Germans call it sturm and drang. That’s German for “not my thing but give it up for him, he means it”
The album’s worst song is : “The Powers that Be”. An unimaginative screed against the establishment with a limp chorus. The slight song Is desperately peppered with horns and back up singers to inject some Motown oomph into Waters ‘doom forecast. Blue-eyed soul puts Waters out of his wheelhouse—Hall & Oates without the hooks. “Me or Him” fairs better, though it uses the asian flute that showed up on very special Vietnam vet episodes of television shows in the 80’s (Uh-oh Magnum P.I.’s remembering something). The ‘nam flute, though dated, does place us in Waters’ “Mother do you think they’ll drop the bomb?” sweet spot. Like that “Wall” track, “Me or Him” is sung from the child’s perspective to a parent, and clarifies Waters strengths. Waters is the musical equivalent of the 1964 “Daisy Girl” political TV ad for Lyndon Johnson. It was a black and white shot of a little girl picking petals off a daisy. Her counting of plucked petals switches over to a military countdown as we freeze frame and zoom into her eyeball. Cut to a montage of atom bombs going off. It’s high melodrama, overwrought but effective. Johnson got elected. Fifteen year old me bought “The Wall”.
“The Wall” had a lot of nonsense in it, especially when the translation to film made it more literal, but the overall message of suspicion of authority and the horror of war did come through. “Radio KAOS’s” diatribe against monetarism, how that relates to the problems in Wales and eventually nuclear destruction, does not compute. This is my critique of 90% of all concept albums and has become a bit exhausting to repeat. Maybe I don’t just don’t like this much narrative in my music. Here’s the devils argument: “Radio K.A.O.S” is only eight songs long and that is too short for the form. It needed to be at least a quintuple album. A story this rich needs to spend some time working out the details. Does Billy play video games, does he have a girlfriend, does he meet an old blind man? And what happens to the fish?
Is Waters as an artist full of it? Is he the sneering boy in the trench coat, profiting on nihilism for girls and street cred? To be fair, every once in a while on Radio K.A.O.S., Waters grabs onto something that resonates, like the chorus of back up singers that sings “Sometimes I feel like going home”, and they really do sound like the world is ending and they just want a fleeting moment of mothering before they die. In those moments, you consider that there may be something in this album, though many signs point to the contrary.