I Wanna Rock

I’m a massive Ben Elton fan. I’ve read all of his novels, watched countless hours of The Young Ones , Blackadder , Mr Bean and the Thin Blue Line and last year went to see We Will Rock You, which was (in the words of Vyvyan) was Brilliant! The storyline goes like this …

The time is the future, in a place that was once called Earth. Globalisation is complete!

Everywhere, the kids watch the same movies, wear the same fashions and think the same thoughts.

It’s a safe, happy, Ga Ga world. Unless you’re a rebel. Unless you want to Rock. On Planet Mall all musical instruments are banned. The Company Computers generate the tunes and everybody downloads them. It is an age of Boy Bands and of Girl Bands. Of Boy and Girl Bands. Of Girl Bands with a couple of boys in them that look like girls anyway. Nothing is left to chance, hits are scheduled years in advance.

Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality

But Resistance is growing. Underneath the gleaming cities, down in the lower depths live the Bohemians. Rebels who believe that there was once a Golden Age when the kids formed their own bands and wrote their own songs. They call that time, The Rhapsody.

Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see

Legend persists that somewhere on Planet Mall instruments still exist. Somewhere, the mighty axe of a great and hairy guitar god lies buried deep in rock. The Bohemians need a hero to find this axe and draw it from stone.

Is the one who calls himself Galileo that man?

He’s just a poor boy. From a poor family

But the Ga Ga Cops are also looking for Galileo and if they get him first they will surely drag him before the Killer Queen and consign him to oblivion across the Seven Seas of Rye.

Who is Galileo? Where is the Hairy One’s lost axe?

Where is the place of living rock?

Anywhere the wind blows

Aside from the great music and fantastic stage show, the one thing that struck me is the message behind the storyline. It’s a pretty powerful social observation and commentary on monoculture! You could almost do a search and replace on the storyline above with corporate culture, and the software industry, and the banking industry, and so on. Ga Ga world … I’ll have to remember that one.

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