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Tyranny of Power

“Power was the reason for everything: buildings, roads, churches, schools, houses, cars... The Industrial Revolution is essentially the unbridled use of power. The more power you use, the more things you have. The more things you use, the more power you need. The more power you have, the more power you want. You have entered the rat race. How appropriate the name is. All the devices and products become part of the web of possessions, and replace the web that existed before it. The hungry spider of industry arrives in the garden God has made. His name is Buzz, and boy is he hungry! He has no choice but to eat. Metal from stone. Fire from rock. Oxygen from water. Plants, birds, trees are falling before him. He sees the web of life, and is awed by it. He says, ‘I will never destroy that. That is precious to me.’ But he goes on eating. He eats bats, frogs, fish, shit, turtles, snakes, spiders, information, grass, gas, you name it. And he turns around to smile at the camera, because that is one of his favorite toys. He has a timer on it so it will take his picture automatically. He doesn’t even need to slow down. So he flashes a million eyes over at the tireless timeless eye of the camera, only, when he looks up, one of his eyes notices something wrong with the web. It has a tear in it. ‘Fuck No,’ he exclaims. He belches in anger. What does this mean? Someone better fix that web, it is very important. He looks around at the houses and hotels, banks, stores, cars, phones, planes, trains, every damn thing, and thinks, Oh Shit! I ate the fucking spider.” Mr. D. is rapping. This is the story that introduces Among The Stars.
Mr. D. is the raconteur of the group. He tells a lot of the stories to explain the songs at a level that everyone can easily understand. The reunion had a long tradition of story telling. Most of the old stories were of the legendary bands and the dancers. The dances started at a time when everyone believed science could solve all the problems of the world. The stories of drunkards and damsels in distress seemed out of place now. Mr. D.’s stories were a place for the sets and costumes to be changed. While he explained some crazy song, he entertained the crowd long enough for instruments to be tuned. Files were loaded, and I got to drink some water and take a break during this particularly long break.
“So he climbs up the tree and starts to fix the web,” Mr. D. continued, “but it is not his design and the tree bends and breaks under the weight. ‘The spider who made this web is much better than me,’ the industrial spider says to himself. All his efforts to repair the web are more disastrous than helpful. So he starts to build a rocket ship to take him to another world instead. He can do it too, boy. A world with hotels and restaurants and movies and cars, the way he used to make them is waiting out there in the cold of deep space. The only problem is that there is no Brave New World. There is only the tired old torn one. As Buzz hurtles through space the memory of the world is all that is left. He can’t even see earth anymore. The security cameras and information collectors on earth run on back up for a while, and record the last days of the Tyranny of Power. The planet is on fire. The data is sent along to the servers. The servers analyzed the data. The data miners check for discrepancies. The data is very distressing. Help! A voice cries out to Buzz in the desolation of endless space. Buzz picks up his phone, and listens to his messages. A burned out planet is crying to him for help. He deletes the message. Even when you win the rat race, you’re still a rat.” Mr. D has cued the playback.
The visuals start up and the subterranean bass speakers roar like rocket engines. Kaos the stage manager found the rocket sounds for us. He often did field work collecting sounds and instruments for the band. We use rockets and explosions in playback all the time, because those are the sounds around us. They are electronic Reflections of War. There were rocket ships on the side screens during all this too. The song eventually is all you hear. I get the vocoder parts, where the Martian says,“Go back!” I start playing drums during the solo section of the song, It’s a good way to loosen up before the drum solo Moby’s Dick. Buzz is safe in the stars when the song ends (yeah right), and I am standing behind the drums spinning the glow sticks. There are submarines scooting by on the side screens now. “Prepare to dive,” the captain says. I sit down and start pumping out a simple beat. In the song an oil executive/politician, from an unknown location, has boarded a Nuclear Submarine in an attempt to cause an international incident, a nuclear world war. He doesn’t want to die, but he can’t lose power either. It’s either his or the Russian’s, or the Canadian’s, or the Swede’s, or (God Forbid) the Inuit’s, or the loser Greenlander’s, or Satan Clause’s, or the Norwegian’s, or Icelander’s (frozen suckers), or... ,fuck it, anybody’s. But there is no point in negotiations. Power doesn’t take sides, it takes over. The politician is desperate for more power! He has to have all that wholey, slimy, nasty oil for himself. He is going to the North Pole to force a nuclear showdown over arctic oil. Power has made him its slave, but that’s OK. If everyone is a slave, no one knows what freedom is anymore. It’s fuzzy.
Suddenly, he sees a large object approaching. “Fire all torpedos,” Dick commands. Glass breaks. The roof caves in. Jizz sprays everywhere. It’s Moby’s dick. Nature is finally fucking Dick back after all these years. That looks like it hurts. Where’s Condi? She needs to get in on the action. Dick kind of likes it though. “That was great,” he says. “Hell Yeah” Moby’s dick concurs. It’s the start of a beautiful relationship. The world is safe again. Maybe, kind of?