(previously)
This is the Overture to the cyberpunk opera I first began writing? editing? arranging? around 2014. A revised 2019 edit that cuts it down to the ten best songs.
The patrons file into the opera house. The orchestra sits.
The opera house is decorated with some kind of weird mauve and cyan blobs on a badly rendered checkerboard – NO! This is ’80s cyberpunk, not ’90s. The opera house is decorated tastefully with neon primary-coloured wireframes of pyramids and spheres on a plane, thank you very much.
It is 1982. One of the 1982s, at least…
Novas Overture: Tomorrow (Minimum Viable Future Edit)
01 The Monitors – Singing in the 80’s (1980, Australia) JACK
I didn't know if I wanted to laugh or cry
The night that Disco died
The laser lights were kicking off my dancing shoes
But there was nobody dancing in sight - got high
With the song of doom
The moon was listening in
What will we be singing in the 80s?
What should we be singing now?
What will we be singing in the 80s?
What should we be singing now?
You gotta help us get back on track again Mac
You gotta help us get back over the Wall
I can see Sergeant Pepper standing high on a hill
With George, John, Ringo and Paul
And Paul
What will we be singing in the 80s?
What should we be singing now?
What will we be singing in the 80s?
What should we be singing now?
The lights went out in the city around me
Alone I feel so cold
They killed the lights and they killed the music
But they'll never kill rock and roll, oh no
Don't look back over your shoulder
The world is growing colder
Jack, our male lead, wakes up with a look of despair. Something about this universe is deeply wrong and it is growing on him every day.
Thanks to lyrics search, I now know that’s “got high with the song of doom” and doesn’t that completely sum up that whiplash shift from the 70s to the 80s. A bit of a one-hit Aussie wonder I think this band?
02 Martha and the Muffins – Danseparc (Every Day It’s Tomorrow) (1983, Canada) SUSAN
In a crowd, in a city I call my home
Undercover, on the edge I move alone
Faces stare across at me
With eyes that look but cannot see
Out of reach, out of luck
Stepping out of bounds
(into the day, into the night, into your arms in the failing light)
Every day it's tomorrow and I never know what tomorrow will be
Every day it's tomorrow and I feel someone move close to me
Every day it's tomorrow and I never know what tomorrow will be
Every day it's tomorrow and to dance with you is all I need
Danseparc
In a park, in a city I call your name
Will the way that we dance always be the same?
Hold me fast, draw me near
Don't let love disappear
Come to love, come together
Steal me from my sleep
We meet Susan, our female lead, wrapped in shadows on an otherwise brightly lit city street at evening. She’s wary, tense and watchful. She holds secret knowledge and secret plans.
One of the key songs for this whole project in terms of mood and atmosphere.
03 Rational Youth – City of Night (1982, Canada) SKYWATCH
City of night, a thousand colours
Ocean of light among the shadows
Under the stars the world seems brighter
City of night, we shine forever
City of night
Neon like ice
Ocean of light
Under the stars
City of night
Fire in the sky
City of night
City of night
City of night, a million faces
Try to avoid the darkest places
Like in a dream the night-light shimmers
City of night we shine forever
(..)
(bottomless night)
(..)
(only darkness)
City of night
City of night
Neon like ice
City of night
Fire in the sky
City of night
City of night
City of night, while some are sleeping
Creatures of light, on corners meeting
Under the stars the world seems brighter
City of night we shine forever
City of night
Neon like ice
Ocean of light
City of night
Fire in the sky
City of night
City of night
City of night
City of night
SKYWATCH is a friendly Artificial Intelligence.
Susan and Jack meet at a club where they segue into playing in the band. Susan plays keyboard, Jack a flying V guitar. Both on vocals.
Look, save yourself some time and just listen to the whole album of Cold War Night Life, pretty much every song. But this one. This is it crystallised. That sense of… I don’t even know what it is, now. The sense of ‘digital’ personified? Innocence and cynicism combined. A new world about to burst on us. We could see it coming as far away as 1980 but it was in total high by 1982. The video game crash happened the next year.
04 Christian Bruhn – Captain Future Theme (1980, Germany) SYSTEM
Instrumental
SYSTEM is an unfriendly Artificial Intelligence.
Rising into the sky we see an orbital 2001-style space station, the corporate headquarters of Astrodyne Orbital, a giant multinational defense conglomerate. The Company to all its friends. Technology in this 1982 has progressed a little faster than in ours.
So there’s apparently a whole fascinating story about the production of the German soundtrack for this otherwise undistinguished 1978 Japanese anime series, probably cashing in on Star Wars like everything else in 1978, but all I know is I remember hearing it on a cassette tape in the 1980s and it just blowing my mind, and it still does.
05 Simple Minds – New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84) (1982, Scotland) JACK
Love, love, love
Love, love, love
New gold dream
She's the one in front of me, the siren and the ecstasy
New gold dream
Crashing beats and fantasy, setting sun in front of me
New gold dream
And the world goes hot
And the city it takes
And the beat goes crashing
All along the way
She is your friend until the ocean breaks
And when you dream, dream in the dream with me
And when you dream, dream in the dream with me
81 - 82 - 83 - 84
81 - 82 - 83 - 84
New gold dream
Dawn rises in a accelerated montage. Automated construction vehicles swarm the cities. Bankers and industrialists share elaborate lunches. Susan and Jack seem to be close friends, maybe lovers.
06 XL Capris – World War 3 (1980, Australia) SUSAN
Darkness falling on a battlefield
Darkness falling in some dream down there
Black oil slick on a headland
Me in battle gear
Creeping on my knees down Main Street
Underground assault on the undisclosed
My best friend lost me in the haze
Shock wave rips up the road
Oh, World War III, World War III
Sixteen years closing in on me
Keep me away from the enemy
Please keep me out of the war
Please keep me out of the war
Battlefront rages on the newsstand
TV, he soften the blow
We're still planning our futures
We were never meant to know
In a hotel room with Jack, Susan is having a nightmare. It is a familiar one.
07 Logic System – XY (1981, Japan) SKYWATCH
All logic circuits are overflowing
Data banks cannot be employed
Real time does not reply
Your data entry does not compute
Does not compute
Repair immediately
Repair immediately
Time is running out, out, out
Man has created what he now destroys
This does not compute
Do you understand?
Time has run out, run out
This system no longer operates
No longer operates
Susan and her dream recede into a computer monitor. A panel of warning lights and error messages flash. The watching machine is in deep distress.
On another monitor, and then another, and another, we see tactical readouts showing a world war spiralling into nuclear launches.
08 Cast of ‘Annie’ – Tomorrow (1981, USA) SYSTEM
The sun'll come out tomorrow
Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there'll be sun
Just thinking about Tomorrow
Clears away the cobwebs and the sorrow
Till there's none
When I'm stuck in a day that's grey and lonely
I just stick up my chin and grin and say, oh,
The sun'll come out tomorrow
So you gotta hang on til tomorrow, come what may
Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I love ya Tomorrow
You're only a day away
Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I love ya Tomorrow
You're only a day - a - way
In the city the sun is not yet risen, there is only a pale dawn. As we watch, a thin sliver of the yellow orb of the sun slowly appears.
Almost immediately followed by a second sun bursting into existence above the real sun. A thermonuclear fireball, in desperately slow motion, expands and swells until it fills all of the visible cityscape seen through the window.
Susan’s face is framed as it floods with golden yellow light. She is not burned, not yet, but just stands there, framed, the perfect minimalist room behind her, staring forever into the Future.
09 Alphaville – Forever Young (1984, Germany) JACK
Let's dance in style, let's dance for a while
Heaven can wait we're only watching the skies
Hoping for the best, but expecting the worst
Are you gonna drop the bomb or not?
Let us die young or let us live forever
We don't have the power, but we never say never
Sitting in a sandpit, life is a short trip
The music's for the sad man
Can you imagine when this race is won?
Turn our golden faces into the sun
Praising our leaders, we're getting in tune
The music's played by the, the madman
Forever young
I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever?
Forever, and ever
Forever young
I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever?
Forever young
Some are like water, some are like the heat
Some are a melody and some are the beat
Sooner or later they all will be gone
Why don't they stay young?
It's so hard to get old without a cause
I don't want to perish like a fading horse
Youth's like diamonds in the sun,
And diamonds are forever
So many adventures given up today
So many songs we forgot to play
So many dreams swinging out of the blue
Oh let it come true
The city with its frozen nuclear explosion, begins to wireframe and fade out of existence. Susan and Jack are the last to fade.
10 Yvonne Elliman – Edge of the World (end titles from ‘Wargames’) (1983, USA) SUSAN
Standing together at the edge of the world
Nowhere to go from where we are
Sharing a secret at the edge of the world
This time we may have come too far
From the life we've known, from simple things and peaceful days
Come too far
Too far from old familiar ways
Standing together at the edge of the world
No turning back from where we are
Searching for answers at the edge of the world
And though we're standing on it
We never know how close we are
Even the wireframes fade into darkness, which then resolves into a bay of machinery. We find Susan and Jack in separate cryogenic pods, only their faces visible, neural helmets with cables running to vast computer banks.
Yes, that’s the Wargames theme, if you’ve not heard it with its full lyrics. Only the music plays during the actual movie.
End of Novas 0