in which the mysteries of
Last of the New Wave Riders are unveiled
The album on which this song appeared associated it with episode 5 "in service to the squad" of Adventures in Utopia. According to Roger Linder's website, the full lyrics are as follows:
LYRICS The last of the new wave riders Will be the first of the new age masters Pick up your arms was the call So I packed up my Fender and ran down the hall Back to the fields and forests Now I am one of them "Turn on the power" cried the army of sound And the hum of the amps shook the trees and the ground And like a single man we cranked up the knobs And a thousand guitars sang our national anthem We captured the whole human race There was nowhere to hide, playing filled every space Jamming the world back into place Everyone a star We hit the supreme overload And the great amplifier began to explode The smoke is slowly clearing away And the whole universe is a giant guitar (Here comes that silver surfer now)
New wave - a kind of music
new age - a phrase with a lot of connotations -
the common denominator of all these might be
change - especially, change away from shallow,
uncaring, boring, business-as-usual
New wave rider - the 'silver surfer' referred to, the comic book superhero, is someone who is 'riding a wave' - but he rides a cosmic wave. As I recall the comic strip (and I read a bit of it as an early adolescent, in the 60s) the Silver Surfer - in appearance foreshadowing the liquid-metal-humanoid of Terminator 2 - had come to Earth from outer space, and was often dismayed by the magnitude of the senseless suffering he encountered here - I am not aware of him having had a musical role, so I think his mention is intended to evoke the connection of our world to a realm of sentient entities that transcends our ordinary terrestrial existence -
The call is to 'pick up your arms' - come to the defense of something - the speaker's weapon is a Fender - a brand name for an electric guitar - the viewpoint character is a member of the 'army of sound' - his way of giving 'service to the squad'
'back to the fields and forests,once again I am a part of the natural world (as opposed to the artificiality of the manmade environment) - I feel again my participation as a living creature, a citizen of the biosphere - and the powerful music I am a part of playing emanates throughout the human and natural world - so powerful it shakes 'the trees and the ground'
now I am one of them'
The rest of the song evokes a tremendously powerful musical experience - in which all play in unison, the shared song of our soul (OUR (not THE) national anthem) - in a way that produces a kind of worldwide epiphany - everyone sees themselves as the star they are -
'jamming the world back into place' plays on the polysemous word 'jam' - to forcefully put into position /to improvise music together
and when the smoke slowly clears away (interpret this for yourself, friends) the allegorical guitar is in our hands, to use our life to play the music which expresses our REAL self
- may it be so