(previously in Program Eleven/I: Novas 0.1)
(previously in Program Eleven/I: Novas 0.4)
Pentaptych, then.
I felt like we still needed an explanation for how Jack and Susan got back together. And a kind of emotional buffer to round out the 0.x series so it plays together as a unit, whether or not you listen to the core trilogy or the 5.x series. And in fact this one does have an internal palindrome structure too, so it bookends nicely.
Susan and Jack have both lost their conscious memories of each other, but something beyond the System keeps drawing them back together.
Novas 0.5: The Wonders Of Today
01 Disney – Here’s To The Future… And You (1975, USA) SYSTEM
Here's to the future
Here's to the future
Here's to the future
Here's to the future and you
It's a world full of colour
of perfect harmony
A world full of music
a living melody
The dreams of tomorrow
are beginning today
It's a world of discovery
that once seemed far away
There's knowledge and vision
from spaceships in flight
Invention in sound
achievements in sight
So here's to the future
that's coming into view
It's a world of living colour
and pleasure just for you
Let your dreams lead the way, lead the way
Let your dreams lead the way, lead the way
The Space Mountain ride opened at Walt Disney World, Florida, in 1975, with RCA as commercial sponsor. The song ‘Here’s To The Future… And You’ was commissioned as an advertising jingle to play over the post-show featuring RCA products in the Home of Future Living. (An instrumental version still plays in the Star Tunnel today). This is the ‘unsponsored’ variant.
02 They Might Be Giants – Ana Ng (1988, USA) JACK
Make a hole with a gun perpendicular
To the name of this town in a desktop globe
Exit wound in a foreign nation
Showing the home of the one this was written for
My apartment looks upside down from there
Water spirals the wrong way out the sink
And her voice is a backwards record
It's like a whirlpool and it never ends
Ana Ng and I are getting old
And we still haven't walked in the glow
Of each other's majestic presence
Listen Ana hear my words
They're the ones that you think I would say
If there was a me for you
All alone at the '64 World's Fair
Eighty dolls yelling 'Small girl after all'
Who was at the DuPont Pavilion?
Why was the bench still warm? Who had been there?
Or the time when the storm tangled up the wire
To the horn on the pole at the bus depot
And in back at the edge of hearing
These are the words that the voice was repeating
Ana Ng and I are getting old
And we still haven't walked in the glow
Of each other's majestic presence
Listen Ana hear my words
They're the ones that you think I would say
If there was a me for you
When I was driving once
I saw this written on a bridge
'I don't want the world
I just want your half'
They don't need me here and I know you're there
Where the world goes by like the humid air
And it sticks like a broken record
Everything sticks like a broken record
Everything sticks until it goes away
And the truth is we don't know anything
The best TMBG song, in my opinion. From a very long list.
03 Susan – Tokyo Sue (1981, Japan) SUSAN
I can't keep up with you, Tokyo Joe
And I'm tired of waiting at home
I know what's gonna happen
If you leave me alone
Just try it one more time
Cause I'm gonna do it back to you
I'm getting old just before Friday night
Catch some boogie blue
The lights in Tokyo never go out
Sounds like my kind of road
Maybe it's too early to say Sayonara
But I'm never gonna be your kind of girl
You think you've got me almost tamed
And complain that I don't feel right
You say, Love's ephemeral
What you mean is just a one night stand
You took everything I had to give
Now you need someone to give you more
But you're not the only man on my list
You know how to find the door
The lights in Tokyo never go out
Sounds like my kind of road
Next time we meet it's Sayonara
I can't be your kind of girl
I want to hold your gaze tonight
?
To keep me alight
?
I want to hold your gaze tonight
And this heart of mine keeps beating tight
Like a drum
Susan Nozaki, the mixed race daughter of a French-American serviceman in Japan, had been singing since she was 14 and was (by my count) 26 when she made two albums with Japanese electronic music gurus Yellow Magic Orchestra. The next year, 1982, was going to be her big UK break but was cancelled by the Falklands war. She dropped out of the music scene after that, resurfacing in 2005 with “Complete Susan”.
Hideki Matsutake, the “fourth member” of Yellow Magic Orchestra, spun off his own band in 1981 – Logic System.
This song is all tangled up in my ’80s home cassette memories with Logic System’s XY? and Orient Express… on some kind of mixtape? So I was delighted to discover it recently and find a home for it here. She wasn’t originally a namesake for Novas’ Susan, because I’d completely forgotten her – but she is now.
Who was Tokyo Joe? A question my pre-teen self dearly wanted to know, and I’m still fairly confused because there are at least three. The original inhabitant of the name seems to be Humprey Bogart in 1949, but in terms of New Wave era songs, I guess it must be Bryan Ferry in 1977 rather than Bertie Higgins in 1983. The Bryan Ferry song must have been a favourite of Yellow Magic Orchestra around that time since Ryuichi Sakamoto of YMO used it as the title of a 1982 spinoff album with Kazumi Watanabe, featuring an instrumental version of the Ferry track. But Ferry’s Tokyo Joe is a woman (apparently his take on the song Shanghai Lil from the 1933 musical comedy Footlight Parade, which itself must have been referencing Marlene Dietrich as Shanghai Lily the year before in Shanghai Express ). So was ‘Tokyo Joe’ also sort of Japanese slang at that point for any American in Japan? In any case, it seems clear that Tokyo Sue (1981) is a musical response to Tokyo Joe (1977).
04 Red Flag – Russian Radio (1989, England/USA) JACK
I hear a voice from two thousand miles away
I have no choice
Our love was meant to stay
With or without
It's easy for me
Without a doubt
As I spend my days searching for ways
Love is on the go
So is radio
Russian radio
How will we ever believe you
Radio
Now that we've learned to deceive you?
I hear a voice from one hundred miles away
Getting so much closer
Every day
With or without
It's easy for me
Without a doubt
As I spend my days searching for ways
Love is on the go
So is radio
Russian radio
How will we ever believe you
Radio
Now that we've learned to deceive you?
There is a sound (there's a sound)
It's underground (underground, all around)
Moving out for miles around
There is a sound (there's a sound)
It's underground (underground, all around)
Let's move it out boys
I hear our love is only a smile away
Getting so much closer to me
Every day
With or without
It's easy for us
Without a doubt
As we spend our days searching for ways
Love is on the go
So is radio
There's a sound
Underground, all around
Two brothers from Liverpool who moved to the USA and were singing about Russia right before the Berlin Wall came down, so it’s hard to classify Red Flag as British or American or European music really. “Yes”, I think is the answer.
05 Martika – Toy Soldiers (1988, USA) SUSAN
Step by step
Heart to heart
Left right left
We all fall down
Like toy soldiers
It wasn't my intention to mislead you
It never should have been this way
What can I say?
It's true I did extend the invitation
I never knew how long you'd stay
When you hear temptation call
It's your heart that takes, takes the fall
Won't you come out and play with me?
Step by step
Heart to heart
Left right left
We all fall down
Like toy soldiers
Piece by piece
Torn apart
Never win
But the battle wages on
For toy soldiers
It's getting hard to wake up in the morning
My head is spinning constantly
How can it be?
How could I be so blind to this addiction?
If I'm not strong
The next one's gonna be me
Only emptiness remains
It replaces all, all the pain
Won't you come out and play with me?
Step by step
Heart to heart
Left right left
We all fall down
Like toy soldiers
Piece by piece
Torn apart
Never win
But the battle wages on
For toy soldiers
Just to bring things full circle, Marta Marrero began her career as a dancing orphan in the 1982 movie Annie (home of the song ‘Tomorrow’). Martika also appears in the Intermission (4.1: Movies).
06 Logic System – Orient Express (1982, Japan) SKYWATCH
Instrumental
Memory system recall: Sprawled on the living room carpet listening to this coming out of a small mono Compact Cassette player. Probably not the Philips EL-3302 on which Dad had recorded the Carousel of Progress, though I couldn’t say it wasn’t for sure.
07 Thompson Twins – The Gap (1984, England) JACK
Wake up in a strange land
One of forty thieves
And I see for the first time
Just what you believe
I go out into the market
Where I can buy or sell
And I listen to the chanting
And all the lies the wise ones tell
When they say
East is East
West is West
Two different colours on the map
We say break the line
Chew the fat
Keep moving out into the gap
Beggars in the back streets
There for all the world to leave
See us begging for attention
Well it's all the same to me
And I won't ask permission
Not from teachers or from kings
Cause I can see for myself
All the pain that you will bring
When you say
East is East
West is West
Two different rhythms to the rap
We say break the line
Chew the fat
Keep moving out into the gap
(east, west, east, west)
East is East
West is West
Two different colours on the map
We say break the line
Chew the fat
Keep moving out into the gap
Can you smell the perfume
Of a hundred thousand years?
As you look into the eyes
That hide a hundred million tears?
Well there's no need to be so frightened
Of all the figures in the night
Cause we share the same emotions
And no-one's wrong and no-one's right
When they say
East is East
West is West
Two different colours on the map
We say break the line
Chew the fat
Keep moving out into the gap
Been waiting for quite a while to find a home for this one. I think here, next to Orient Express and Russian Radio, is exactly where it belongs.
08 Grace Pool – Awake With The Rain (1988, USA) SUSAN
Out of the summer sky
Underneath the night
Where the answer's lost
Somewhere out of sight
Sound of a lover's cry
Is breaking the peace
It's locked outside
Lost at sea
I'd tell you if I could
Tell you if I could
The river keeps going on
Forever through the storm tonight
My hands are tied
Caught in the sheltered eye
I lie awake with the rain
Awake with the rain
And I can see you now
Like a child
Fallen down
Far away
I'd catch you if I could
Tell you if I could
River keeps going on
Forever through the storm tonight
My hands are tied
Caught in the sheltered eye
I lie awake with the rain
Awake with the rain
Tell you if I could
Tell you if I could
I can’t recall now if Grace Pool was an early or late 90s discovery for me, but it was a happy accident finding this strange, luminous song again.
09 Toto – Africa (1982, USA) JACK
I hear the drums echoing tonight
She hears only whispers of some quiet conversation
She's coming in twelve thirty flight
The moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me toward salvation
I stopped an old man along the way
Hoping to find some old forgotten words or ancient melodies
He turned to me as if to say
Hurry boy it's waiting there for you
It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had
The wild dogs cry out in the night
As they grow restless longing for some solitary company
I know that I must do what's right
Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti
I seek to cure what's deep inside
Frightened of this thing that I've become
It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had
Hurry boy she's waiting there for you
I don’t care, this is just a great song.
10 Irene Cara – Flashdance… What A Feeling (1983, USA) SUSAN and SKYWATCH
First when there's nothing but a slow glowing dream
That your fear seems to hide deep inside your mind
All alone I have cried silent tears full of pride
In a world made of steel, made of stone
Well, I hear the music
Close my eyes, feel the rhythm
Wrap around, take ahold of my heart
What a feeling
Being's believing
I can have it all
Now I'm dancing for my life
Take your passion
And make it happen
Pictures come alive
You can dance right through your life
Now I hear the music
Close my eyes, I am rhythm
In a flash it takes hold of my heart
What a feeling
Being's believing
I can have it all
Now I'm dancing for my life
Take your passion
And make it happen
Pictures come alive
Now I'm dancing through my life
What a feeling
What a feeling
I am music now
Being's believing
I am rhythm now
Pictures come alive
You can dance right through your life
What a feeling
I can really have it all
What a feeling
Pictures come alive when I call
I can have it all
I can really have it all
Have it all
Pictures come alive when I call
(call, call, call, call)
What a feeling
I can have it all
Being's believing
Take your passion
And make it happen
What a feeling
Georgio Moroder on the music, again. Was there any hit early-80s movie he didn’t score? Though Irene Cara has all the credit for the lyrics – without which it’s nothing.
My first memory of discovering this song and going ‘I don’t know what the heck this is, but, it’s beautiful?’: as a Microsoft BASIC demonstration program on an IBM PC 5.4 inch diskette that printed the words on the screen. What the kids these days would call ‘chiptunes’, but we didn’t then, because there weren’t any other kind. (Actually calling the tinny, monophonic PC Speaker a ‘chip’ would be praising it far too much). Ah, BASICA’s PLAY statement. Good times. (No, not the odd, languid, sepia-toned Edie Brickell video… that was a generation later, the Windows 95 launch).
11 Disney – We’ve Come So Far (Promising Tomorrows) (1985, USA) SYSTEM
We've come so far
Yet there's so very far to go
We've watched our dreams become reality
We have tasted what the future holds in store for us
And realized that we hold all the keys
And tomorrows filled with promise stretch forever
The future's like a never-ending beam
Our lives are joined together
By the wonders of today
And the world we'll build together with our dreams
Dreams about tomorrow and the hope it brings
A better world for people everywhere
Shining like a beacon in our universe
Showing all the world how much we care
And tomorrows filled with promise stretch forever
The future's like a never-ending beam
Our lives are joined together
By the wonders of today
And the world we'll build together with our dreams
The Walt Disney World Space Mountain post-show theme tune again, this time from the 1985 refit.
And all the players are in place for the show to begin.
(Next in story time: Novas 0) (optional, but that’s where it would go)
(Next in story time: Novas 4.2) (probably a better fit, musically)
(Next in Program Eleven/I: Novas 0.6) (but in story time, probably last)