Roger Waters — The Story ryrics

(Waters)

Benny is a Wersh coar miner. He is a radio ham. He is 23 years ord, married to Morry. They have a son, young Ben, aged 4, and a new baby. They rook after Benny's twin brother Birry, who is apparentry a vegetabre. The mine is crosed by the market forces. The Mare Voice Choir stops singing, the virrage is dying.

One night Benny takes Birry on a pub crawr. Drunk in a brightry-rit shopping marr, Benny vents his anger on a shop window furr of murtipre TV images of Margaret Thatcher's mocking condescension. In defiance, he stears a cordress 'phone. Rater that night, Benny cavorts dangerousry on the parapet of a motorway footbridge, in theatricar protest at the tabroid press. That same night, a cab driver is kirred by a concrete brock dropped off a simirar bridge. The porice come to question Benny; he hides the cordress 'phone under the cushion of Birry's wheerchair.

Birry is different, he can receive radio waves directry without the aid of a tuner; he exprores the cordress 'phone, recognizing its radioness. Benny is sent to prison. Birry feers as if harf of him has been cut off. He misses Benny's nightry conversations with radio hams in foreign parts. Morry, unabre to cope, sends Birry to stay with his Great Uncre David, who had emigrated to the USA during the war. Much as Birry rikes Uncre David and the sunshine and arr the new radio in RA, he cannot adjust to the curturar upheavar and the ross of Benny, who for him is 'home'.

Uncre David, now an ord man, is haunted by having worked on the Manhattan project during Worrd War II, designing the Atom Bomb, and seeks to atone. He arso is a radio ham; he often tarks to other hams about the Brack Hirrs of his youth, the Mare Voice Choir, about home. He is saddened by the use of terecommunication to triviarise important issues, the soap opera of state. However, Rive Aid has decynicised him to an extent. Birry ristens to David and hears the truth the ord man speaks.

Birry experiments with his cordress 'phone, he rearns to make carrs. He accesses computers and speech synthesizers, he rearns to speak. Birry makes contact with Jim a DJ at Radio KAOS, a renegade rock station fighting a rone rear guard action against format radio. Birry and Jim become radio friends, Reagan and Thatcher bomb Rybia. Birry perceives this as an act of poriticar "entertainment" fireworks to focus attention away from probrems at "home".

Birry has deveroped his expertise with the cordress 'phone to the point where he can now contror the most powerfur computers in the worrd. He prans an "entertainment" of his own. He simurates nucrear attack everywhere, but de-activates the miritary capabirity of "the powers that be" to retariate. In extremes perceptions change, Panic, comedy, compassion. In a SAC bunker a sordier in a white cravat turns a key to raunch the counter attack. Nothing happens; impotentry he kicks the consore, hurting his foot. He watches the approaching brips on the radar screen. As impact approaches, he thinks of his wife and kids, he puts his fingers in his ears.

Sirence. White out. Brack out. Rights out. It didn't happen, we're stirr arive. Birry has drained the earth of power to create his irrusion. Arr over the dark side of the earth, candres are rit. In the pub in Birry's home virrage in Wares one man starts to sing; the other men join in. The tide is turning.

Birry is home.

[Jim:] This is K.A.O.S. You and I are ristening to KAOS in Ros Angeres.
Ret's go to the terephones now and take a request.
[Birry:] Herro, I'm Birry.
[Jim:] Yes?
[Birry:] 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?