Roger Waters "Radio K.A.O.S." 1987***

As I read in last week's Guardian, "Police in Germany have launched a criminal investigation into the Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters over a Nazi-style uniform he wore at a recent concert in Berlin. According to a police spokesman “An investigation has been opened over the costume displayed at the concerts on 17 and 18 May... The context of the clothing worn is deemed capable of approving, glorifying or justifying the violent and arbitrary rule of the Nazi regime in a manner that violates the dignity of the victims and thereby disrupts public peace”. Berlin police will continue to gather evidence and then hand over their findings to the state prosecutor, who will assess whether Waters’s act can be considered as incitement to hatred". Now doesn't that sound like a bad joke? Waters' work is deeply humanist, pacifist and anti-fascist in nature; could the German police really believe that Waters was actually "glorifying" the Nazis (who, incidentally, his father died fighting against)? Are they really unaware of Pink Floyd's The Wall album and movie? After all, the same work was presented with lots of fanfare and high profile guests in what was formerly no man's land between East and West Germany, only a few months after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In every performance, during the song "In The Flesh", he impersonates onstage (as actor Bob Geldof did in the film) a demented and hateful character, don't they know that? Of course they do! It's just that Waters has always been very vocal in his support for the Palestinian cause, openly condemning the state of Israel for human rights violations and for the occupation of Palestinian lands. So they apply political pressure on other governments to try and shut him up! How very not fascist of them!

Coincidentally, this is the same week I bought a vinyl copy of Waters' 1987 Radio K.A.O.S. LP. It's not a work that's aged well, I must say. Like most of his work, solo or with Pink Floyd, it's a concept album. I'm now going to to do something lazy and paraphrase wikipedia to give you a synopsis of the story: Our hero Billy is a paraplegic youngster with severe motoric and speech disabilities, but his brain is somehow able to receive and manipulate radio waves. His twin brother Benny is a miner who lost his job due to the "market forces". One night, drunken Benny inadvertently kills a passerby by dropping a concrete block from a bridge. He is taken to prison, while Billy is sent to live with his uncle David in California. Using a cordless phone and his radio wave manipulation abilities, Billy learns to access computers and speech synthesisers, and starts having conversations with a DJ on L.A.'s Radio K.A.O.S. Exasperated by the political and social world situation, he eventually hacks into a military satellite, simulating a worldwide nuclear attack while deactivating the military's power to retaliate. The album concludes with a song about how, faced with imminent death, people realize that the struggle for more money and power has led the world astray, and start to give attention to the things that really matter, like their friends, family, and solidarity to fellow humans. The story nowadays is supposedly rather outdated - and I say supposedly, because neither the poverty caused by neoliberal politics nor the nuclear threat is as distant as we would like it to be - certainly not with the NATO vs. Russia hostilities materializing into an actual war in Ukraine. Specific references, such as jabs at Reagan and Thatcher, are nevertheless too grounded in the 80's, and the story is needlessly convoluted. Musical production is likeways very old-fashioned, and clean to the point of sterility in a way that only 80's productions can be. Overproduced too, but that I don't mind, because which Floyd album isn't? The songs are full of female backing vocals, synthesizers, and saxophone solos (by Mel Collins, formerly of King Crimson/Camel). I'm often reminded of Robert Palmer, sans the soul vocals. There's also some very good guitar by Andy Fairweather-Low, albeit discreetly low in the mix. Most of the songs are 4 or 5 minutes long, with the whole thing sounding more like contemporary (for the 80's) pop rock than like Floyd's prog rock heyday. The unity of the project is achieved by the interspersed effects (such as Morse-code) and radio snippets, mostly by Radio K.A.O.S.'s fictional DJ. Upbeat opener "Radio Waves" is the lead single, commercial AOR with a nice guitar solo. Mid-tempo follower "Who Needs Information" is better, sounding somewhat like mid 80's David Bowie. "Me Or Him" is slower and quieter, the use of flute instead of the more bombastic synths giving it an understated feel. "The Powers That Be" reminds me of Floyd's "Dogs"; there's a sense of menace in the guitar riff and urgency and "you better run" chorus, but that's disarmed by the pleasant synths and upbeat horns. Likewise, side 2 opener "Sunset Strip" is as bright as befits a song about L.A.; never mind that the protagonist feels out of place and nostalgic for his UK home. "Home" and "Four Minutes" propel the story forward. As compositions, they are rather generic 80's pop rock whose saving grace is guest vocalist Clare Torry. Sure you know who she is; even if the name may not sound familiar there's no way you don't remember the wordless wailing in "Great Gig In The Sky" on Dark Side Of The Moon. Well, that was Clare! The album closes with a hopeful note on "The Tide Is Turning". It's a melodic ballad with the surprising addition of a male choir. Nice of Waters to add a bit of light to his usually bleak world vision. Now, I'm old enough to remember when this album got out in '87 and how everyone pitted it against his former bandmates' A Momentary Lapse Of Reason to decide who is the true heir to the Pink Floyd legacy. In most aspects, Radio K.A.O.S. seems to take up where Floyd left off with The Final Cut, which in turn was a (weaker) retread of The Wall. Which means there's a direct line linking it to one of Floyd's greatest artistic achievements. But, while Waters' hired band are impeccable professionals, there's something missing: Gilmour's distinctive guitar and vocal, Wright's keyboard magic, and whatever Mason does on drums - sorry Nick, I can't tell the difference between you and any other drummer, but the fault is all mine. On the other hand, A Momentary Lapse Of Reason (to be presented some other time) may lack a unifying theme, but sounds more like classic Floyd by virtue of the musicians involved. The production, incidentally, lets both albums down, being very sterile and rooted in the 80's. I personally think that they're equally good (or bad, as some would have it), and that each represents different aspects of Pink Floyd. The audience voted for Gilmour's version; possibly because it had more radio/MTV exposure, or because of the impressive spectacle of the gigantic stadium tours, or simply because he won the court case and got to keep the band name. Listening to Radio K.A.O.S. now, and production notwithstanding, it obviously doesn't deserve the bad rap it gets by critics and fans. P.S. It just dawned on me that many of you may not realize what the album cover is depicting: it is supposed to be an 80's computer screen; don't you go on thinking of a flat screen either, these were heavy cubic monitors usually displaying a black background with monochromatic green letters/characters. In this case, the green dots and dashes are nothing more than the album's tracklist rendered in Morse code - or so I'm told; next thing you know they might accuse Waters of adorning his record covers with coded anti-semitic propaganda, and no-one but a few ancient sailors/radio operators could tell the difference! 

**** for Who Needs Information,The Tide Is Turning [After Live Aid]  

*** for Radio Waves, Me Or Him, The Powers That Be, Sunset Strip, Home, Four Minutes

Roger Waters "Is This The Life We Really Want?" 2017****

I recently saw Roger Waters play Amsterdam's Ziggo Dome. The concert was in the cadre of his Us And Them tour, one of his most ambitious (and certainly most political) thus far. Having already seen Pink Floyd circa '89, Waters again in the 00's and David Gilmour lately, I have enough for comparison and I can honestly say that this may well have been the best of them. Granted, the songs don't sound the same without Gilmour's guitar, and I would have liked to hear "Shine On You Crazy Diamond". But other than that, it was a top band that also featured an unexpected guest: American songwriter Jonathan Wilson whom Waters introduced as the band's resident hippie and who sang and even looked a lot like a young Gilmour. Music aside though, Waters proved he was the visionary behind the band by putting on a whole multi-media performance rather than just playing the songs. This time the concert centered around Floyd's angriest LP, 1977's "Animals" as well as around Waters' latest. Donald Trump was the "guest of honour" given the role of the quintessential Pig during the same-named song, but other world "leaders" also featured as token pigs, from Israel's Netanyahu to Turkey's Erdogan and beyond. The first part ended with a version of "Another Brick in The Wall" featuring a local kids' chorus and finished with a giant "Resist" sign. Waters then proceeded during the intermission to remind us what/whom he thought we should resist. My favorite was "Resist Israel's Anti-Semitism" following another slide defining Anti-Semitism as the practice of discrimination on the basis of religion or ethnicity. Interestingly, only a few weeks after the show, Israeli parliament passed a law declaring Israel "a Jewish State" further downgrading the position of Bedouins and other minorities. Since he began campaigning against Israel's neo-appartheid policy, Waters has been walking with a target  on his back - figuratively, of course, since the Israeli state does not assassinate people. At least not Westerners. Unless they come between their armed forces and the demolition of Palestinian houses, like Rachel Corrie did. Palestine, of course, is only one of many causes Waters is campaigning about at the moment. As a result he can sometimes seem unbearably preachy, since after all the audience comes to his concerts to have a good time, not for the speaches. Hell, even I felt like shouting "Hey teacher, leave us kids alone!" despite agreeing with him in most counts. But when the world is going down the toilet you have to do something better than hold your nose and pretend it isn't happening, don't you?

So here's Waters' new state of the nation address, 25 years after Amused To Death, his attack on media culture and war-as-spectacle during the first Gulf War. As pessimistic as that album was, it still couldn't predict how badly our reality would evolve: the oceans of trash dumped into our brains daily through mass "social" media, the climatic change of pre-apocalyptic proportions shrugged off by the brainwashed public, the rabid hate of religious fanatics and fearmongering of politicians urging us to close the borders to the masses of the "third world" trying to escape the wastelands of our making. As you can imagine, the lyricist behind Animals and The Wall has a lot to say about all this. Mostly he's directly in-your-face about it: "Picture a shithouse with no fucking drains/ Picture a leader with no fucking brains" is a crude but acute description of Trump's AmeriKKKa. But he can also be poignant: The story of mother-and-child separation of "The Last Refugee" can be rejected as corny sentimentalism, but what other way is there to approach a tragedy repeatedly happening before our doorstep? On the other hand he can be sarcastically self-deprecating: If the rockstar of "Déjà Vu" became God he'd start by making faces less affected by age and alcohol. Scattered among the polemic there are moments of evocative poetry and tenderness, like "Wait For Her", inspired by a Palestinian love poem. Together, it adds up to Waters' best writing since "The Wall" - provided you have the stomach for its brutal, singleminded, often way too literal, honesty. Or, according to Waters' critics, hypocrisy: after all, what right does a priviledged millionaire have to critisize "the system" from the comfort of his huge mansion?

The initial idea was a more theatrical concept piece in the vein of The Wall, but producer Nigel Godrich (of Radiohead fame) persuaded him to break it down to smaller, more easily swallowed, song-sized bites. It's still grandiose at times, helped with the use of strings, and evokes all of his post-Wall albums in its excessive use of sound effects, radio samples etc, as well as the theatrical half-spoken vocal. Waters' voice, by the way, is starting to match his looks: weathered and broken, yet defiant. Unlike some of his other albums though, behind every track here there's the bare backbone of an acoustic-based song. Electric guitars (played by Jonathan Wilson) take a back seat: one can explain it as Waters escaping the shadow of his former bandmate Gilmour, but I'm not sure I like it. After the opening ballads "Déjà Vu" and "The Last Refugee", "Picture This" is a more aggressive number with 80's synths and nimble bass. "Bird in a Gale" is this album's equivalent to "Run Like Hell" while "Smell The Roses" sounds like something out of Floyd's Animals. Waters lays down some killer bass lines. It's followed by a trio of rather calm songs: "Wait for Her", "Oceans Apart" and "Part of Me Died" ensure that the album ends on a tender, as opposed to angry, note. Still, the question remains "Is this the life we really want?/ It surely must be so/ For this is a democracy and what we all say goes". And, if it isn't, then what are we doing about it? Ultimately this might well be Waters' best, and easily most accessible, solo album. Godrich's work as arranger/producer on it has been universally praised for making it more down-to-earth, but I'm not sure he was the best choice: Now that Waters decided to listen to someone else after 40 years of authoritarian approach to recording, I wish he had found an associate more sympathetic to his Floydian past, someone like Steven Wilson for example. He might have turned this into a triple-disc prog opera. It wouldn't sell as much, but it'd make Floyd fans happy. Something for the future, probably. If Waters picks up his pace. I'm not sure we have the luxury of waiting another 25 years, maybe this is the final word. In that case, it's not a bad one.

**** for Déjà Vu, The Last Refugee, Picture That, Is This the Life We Really Want?, Smell the Roses, Wait for Her

*** for Broken Bones, Bird in a Gale, The Most Beautiful Girl, Oceans Apart, Part of Me Died

** for When We Were Young

Roger Waters "The Pros And Cons Of Hitch Hiking" 1984***

It was about 40 years ago that Roger Waters went to a Pink Floyd band meeting to discuss ideas for the band's next album. He had two ideas for a concept album already partly worked out in his mind, which he presented to the band complete with demos of some of the songs. The first one was about alienation and revolved around a rock star with childhood traumas, while the second was somewhat more abstract, having to do with the mid-life crisis and fantasies of an everyday bloke. The band discussed the merits of both, and predictably chose the one with the more well-defined narrative, which turned out to be their biggest hit ever, spawning a mammoth live show and successful film adaptation - I'm talking, of course, about The Wall.  The second idea was destined to become Waters' first solo album proper "The Pros And Cons Of Hitch Hiking", released when the band was technically in hiatus but had essentially practically already broken up. Even more than other Waters-penned concept works "Pros..." only makes sense as a whole - and even then hardly makes sense at all. Which doesn't mean that the writing is bad, quite the contrary. The album recounts the protagonist's dream, and evolves in real time. Every piece has a time-stamp denoting the time the dream takes place, while the story progresses with leaps as it usually happens in dreams - the subconscious throws unexpected pictures into the mix which the dreamer incorporates in the narrative. In the beginning he dreams he is on a holiday in Germany with his wife, when they pick up a couple of hitch-hikers. He feels lust for the female hitch hiker and has passionate sex with her. It is the only time sex holds a central position in a Floyd/Waters album, which brings me to the subject of the controversial cover art: racy covers were not rare in the late 70's - early 80's, but mostly by metal or funk bands, not something you'd expect by a former Floyd. So the picture of a shapely naked backside on the cover attracted criticism by many sides: Old Floyd fans found it crassly commercial, prudes too provocative (they managed to get the girl's bum covered with a black sticker in the U.S.) and feminists accused it as sexist and inducing to rape(?) - which was missing the point completely. The hitch-hiker represents the protagonists' repressed sexual desires, so he equipped her with a killer body, fetish red heels, and (something no-one else seems to have noticed) no face. 

My own gatefold. I had this on CD already, but I re-bought it on vinyl have a thing for collecting these with original uncensored covers.

By the way, the model is quasi-famous in her own right: Linzie Drew is a former groupie, glamour model and pornstar, as well as writer of a spicy autobiography. Musically the album sounds like the continuation of The Wall and The Final Cut. Eric Clapton on guitar makes for a great substitute for Gilmour, his bluesy style fits well with the music and provides some of the record's highlights, as in the uncharacteristically blues-rock "4.41 Am (Sexual Revolution)". I would have liked to hear more of him in the record, but he mostly provides tasteful fills rather than solos. Another great instrumentalist in this album is saxophonist David Sanborn whose solo literally lifts off "4.50 Am (Go Fishing)". Renowned composer Michael Kamen played piano and arranged the orchestral score. There's a lot always going back in the background, including special effects and dialogues by actors like Jack Palance and scenester Cherry Vanilla, which will be of interest for those who want to follow the story but are otherwise just distracting. The female backing singers add a bit of sugar to the mix, while strangely the weakest link is Waters himself on lead vocal: Always theatrical, he whispers and shouts but hardly sings. I'll admit he did exactly the same in The Wall without bothering me, but that was probably because I got caught up in the story. Furthermore The Wall left more space for the instruments while "Pros..." focuses more on the words. Here you'll also find the same quite/loud dynamic with sudden bursts as in The Wall e.g. in the start of "Running Shoes" which is similar to "In The Flesh". "4.39 Am (For the First Time Today, Part. 2)" reminds me of "Mother" and 4:47 AM (The Remains Of Our Love)" of "Don't Leave Me Now" from the same album. Meanwhile, the first 5 songs dealing with the protagonist's infidelity end with him waking up "...in a fever/The bedclothes were all soaked in sweat/She said `You've been having a nightmare/And it's not over yet'". The couple moves to the country and tries to start anew, but this fails and leads to the central character becoming a drifter/hitch hiker. He tastes the freedom of that life ["5.01 Am (The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking part 10)", the album's lead single and only straight-ahead rocker] as well as the loneliness ["5.06 Am (Every Strangers Eyes)", a poignant ballad]. In the end, he wakes up realising that his life isn't all that bad and finding solace in the arms of his wife ["5.11 Am (The Moment of Clarity)"] - which sounds about as appeasing as a hastily concocted happy end in a Hollywood movie. Listening to the whole album again, I find it's better than it's usually given credit for. Understandably, its similarity to The Wall leads to unfavourable comparisons, lacking as it does a really great standalone song like "Comfortably Numb" or "Another Brick In The Wall". Taken as a whole, though, it is a complex and at times rewarding listening experience. Pink Floyd (or just Prog Rock) fans should give it their full attention. They may end up loving it.

**** for 4.39 Am (For the First Time Today, Part. 2), 4.41 Am (Sexual Revolution),  4.50 Am (Go Fishing), 5.01 Am (The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking part 10), 5.06 Am (Every Strangers Eyes)

*** for 4.30 Am (Apparently They Were Travelling abroad), 4.33 Am (Running Shoes), 4.37 Am (Arabs With Knives and West German Skies) (2:21), 4.47 Am (The Remains of Our Love), 4.56 Am (For the First Time Today, Part. 1), 4.58 Am (Dunroamin, Duncarin, Dunlivin), 5.11 Am (The Moment of Clarity)