Roger Waters - Radio K.A.O.S (KAOS)

[Keith Jordan]

This thread is to discuss Roger Water' Radio K.A.O.S and is linked to from the Pink Floyd Discography section.

Feel free to discuss the album!



01. Radio Waves
02. Who Needs Information
03. Me Or Him
04. Powers That Be, The
05. Sunset Strip
06. Home
07. Four Minutes
08. Tide is Turning, The (After Live Aid)

[Annoying Twit]

I think that this is a good solid 80s album. But I generally expect more from Rog than just being "good". The arrangements also are a bit cheesy. I like Rog's music for what it is, and Erasure for what they do. This is sort of a slightly Erasurefied Rog.

[David Smith]

Really don't like it. I know there is probably an interesting message about mainstream radio pop music somewhere in there with the album being a case of form underlies meaning etc but that doesn't excuse a frankly cringeworthy listening experience in my opinion. Radio Waves is playing on my Ipod right now and i'm dying a little inside. Defnitely a worse album than AMLOR i would say

[mosespa]

My favorite of Roger's solo albums.

I've got that "Project KAOS" thing, too (where some guy named Chad took Roger's "When The Wind Blows" songs plus the singles b-sides from KAOS and doubled the length of the album,) and I honestly listen to that more often than the original album.

There is something of a "time of my life" story that goes along with KAOS...but it's really rather banal and I'm not sure that the events are enough to justify my continued adoration of this album.

[Hudini]

Gave it 4 just because of the awful 80s arrangements. Otherwise the album would be brilliant.

[Real Pink in the Inside]

I love it even though it shows its age, unlike the rest of Roger's work from DSOTM onward. It would be regarded as a masterpiece had Roger made it "sound 70ish" instead of 80ish.

[danielcaux]

Despite the 80's "I wanna be Peter Gabriel" production, is not as bad an album as some people want to believe. I quite like the kawasuki or however is called that weird japanese flute on "Me or Him". Don't understand what's the big deal with "Radio Waves", is quite good for a dance pop song, "Home" is a great song ruined by poor arrangement, and "The Tide Is Turning" is as hopeful a Waters' song we will ever get. The album would have been better had he included "Get back To Radio","Molly's song" and specially "Going to Live in L.A." But even with those songs included it would never be a "great" (5) album, perhaps just a "good" (3) one; but it's a decent and respectable album, for its authenticity.

I think the album's concept is interesting and the topics explored are important ones, but unfortunately the "Super Stephen Hawkings Kid" story arc kind of dumbs it all down; although I have a theory that Billy and Benny are in fact the same person (Benny goes to jail and disociates his personality creating Billy as a way of escaping away of all that trouble and having a happy life in L.A., with all those gorgeous girls, pools and highways, but since it's just a compensatory imaginary projection of Benny's psyche, the principle of reality crawls back into the fantasy in the form of Billy's physical limitations to his wheelchair (that's way at the beginning Billy is a regular kid able to kick stones, on GTLIL.A., but then that abiliity disapears), so he no longer can move like a regular person but the "Id" fights back the "ego" and creates Billy's "amazing powers of controlling information" by way of radio waves, a fantasy whose source is no other than Benny's little taste of freedom thru the experience of listening to the radio in his cell, and since he feels betrayed by society he wants to destroy it all hacking his way thru skynet...). It's the only way I can make some sense of that "far out" story.


So Radio KAOS is basically "Fight Club" set in the 80's but nobody, not even Rog, had figured it out yet! Groovy!

It gives a whole new dimension to lines like "Me and Benny went out last night" or "Forgive me father for I have sinned
It was either me or him, And a voice said Benny, You fucked the whole thing up, Benny your time is up, Your time is up".

[mosespa]

Roger states in a paragraph on the Radio Waves 12-inch single (which has Going to Live In LA on the b-side) that the song was written before he created the character of Benny...so the lyrics might be a little oblique.

Radio KAOS has a synopsis in the lyric booklet that will explain anything about the story that you are unable to get from listening to the music.

[Hogtown]

Mossy mentioned Project KAOS.

I think the album could have been longer (I bought it the week it was released - and felt this way from the beginning).

I feel it is unfinished. But, when it came out, I liked the crispness of the mix compared to aMLoR - it took me the remainder of 1987, into 1988 to reach this conclusion.

[mosespa]

Project KAOS:

1. Get Back To Radio

2. Radio Waves (extended version)

3. Who Needs Information

4. Folded Flags

5. Me Or Him

6. Towers Of Faith

7. The Powers That Be

8. Going To Live In L.A.

9. The Fish Report With A Beat

10. Sunset Strip

11. Home

12. Four Minutes

13. The Tide Is Turning (After Live Aid)

14. Pipes And Drums



It's really very well-done, imo.

[danielcaux]

Roger states in a paragraph on the Radio Waves 12-inch single (which has Going to Live In LA on the b-side) that the song was written before he created the character of Benny...so the lyrics might be a little oblique.

I know (although I have never read a full transcript of the 12 in. single), it seems that both "Get Back to Radio" and "Going To Live in L.A." predate the whole KAOS concept. But I'm going to take Ricoeur's modern hermeneutics path on this one, or perhaps the ancient muse theory: the poet is just a medium for the muse to speak out, and sometimes doesn't even know what the hell he is talking about. Roger's conscious mind didn't understand at the time what his unconscious mind was creating, and thought the songs were contradicting the rest of the album, when in fact it was just a problem with his interpretation of the story.

Radio KAOS has a synopsis in the lyric booklet that will explain anything about the story that you are unable to get from listening to the music.

The more I read the booklet the dumber I find the whole thing; that's precisely why I had to come with my interpretation of KAOS, to have I little piece of mind and make some sense out of all that rubbish.


By the way, for the study of Pink Floyd's "conceptual continuity", let's not forget that KAOS is kind of a sequel to WYWH, and a predecessor of RW's "DSoTM Live" concept.

[thehumanzoo]

14. Pipes And Drums

I've heard the rest, but I have no idea what this is.

[J Ed]

its a musical fragment from When the Wind Blows

[mosespa]

An instrumental version of Folded Flags, essentially.

[Stephen]

If I was going to choose to play a Roger Waters album it would be in the order 1. Amused To Death 2. Pro's and Con's 3. Radio KAOS. It's not that I dislike the album, it's just that I prefer the other two. I gave it a 3 ( but in reality it would be more like 3.5)