Artist: ROGER WATERS
Album: RADIO K.A.O.S. (CD)

Release date: 1987/ 2002
EAN/UPS: 5099750959121
Media type: CD

The concept is based around a 23-year-old disabled man from Wales named Billy. Waters' original concept called for a much stronger narrative element to the music, but he abandoned this as recording progressed, explaining the storyline in the liner notes instead; the storyline cannot be easily deduced from the music alone.

Billy is confined to a wheelchair and is thought to be mentally a vegetable. However, Billy is highly intelligent but has no way of expressing himself. Billy has a twin brother Benny who is a coal miner. Billy lives with Benny, Molly his wife, and their children. Unfortunately, Benny has lost his job in the mines due to the "market forces". One night, Benny and Billy are out on a pub crawl when they pass a shop full of TV screens broadcasting Margaret Thatcher's "mocking condescension". Benny vents his anger on this shop and steals a cordless phone. Next, in theatrical fashion, Benny poses on a footbridge in protest to the closures; the same night, a taxi driver is killed by a concrete block dropped from a similar bridge. The police question Benny, who hides the phone in Billy's wheelchair. Benny is taken to prison, Molly, unable to cope sends Billy to live with his uncle David in L.A.. Billy is gifted and can hear radio waves in his head ("Radio Waves" track 1), he explores the cordless phone recognising its radioness. He experiments with the phone and is able to access computers and speech synthesisers, he learns to speak through them. He calls a radio station in L.A. named Radio KAOS (hence the album title) and tells them of his life story about his brother being in jail ("Me or Him" track 3), about his sister-in-law not being able to cope and sending him to L.A. to live with his uncle Dave ("Sunset Strip" track 5), and about the closures of the mines ("Powers that Be" track 4). Billy eventually hacks in to a military satellite and fools the world in to thinking nuclear ICBMs are about to be detonated at major cities all over the world whilst deactivating the military's power to retaliate ("Home" track 6 and "Four Minutes" track 7). The album concludes with a song about how everyone, in thinking they were about to die, realises that the fear and competitiveness peddled by the mass media is much less important than their love for family and the larger community. ("The Tide is Turning" track 8).

The album is dedicated "to all those who find themselves at the violent end of monetarism." This and other moments in the album--such as a segment juxtaposing a Ronald Reagan campaign slogan with clips from an old western TV show and an apparent recorded plea from American hostages not to engage in "heroics" to free them--make Waters' political point of view quite clear.

TRACKLIST:

01 "Radio Waves" – 4:58
02 "Who Needs Information" – 5:55
03 "Me or Him" – 5:23
04 "The Powers That Be" – 4:36
05 "Sunset Strip" – 4:45
06 "Home" – 6:00
07 "Four Minutes" – 4:00
08 "The Tide Is Turning (After Live Aid)" – 5:43

All songs written by Roger Waters.