16: Mr Roboto - Styx

Right. Ready?

Voice.

Hello.

Now you've tripped off.

You had one job to keep your mouth quiet.

It was kind of intentional, Michael.

Hello and welcome to We Can't Rewind, We've Gone Too Far.

A podcast where a Scotspan, an Irishman and a Bulgarian discuss the worst, silliest and weirdestest fuck music videos.

Hello, I'm Neil.

Hi, I'm Neil.

Hi, I'm David.

Do you believe I'm lying down?

Well.

Uh, not really, no, actually.

Are you actually lying down?

Well, I'm sitting on the bed, I'm half reclined.

Just the microphone suspended above your head.

It's actually really, really precariously just balancing.

It's, okay, you know the way cheap mic stands are really like, well, they're not well balanced unless there's a sandbag on them.

Yes.

Well, this one here, it's balanced just enough.

And if I move it, it will fall on me.

So I'm trying not to touch it, but it's within about six inches to me.

It's good to have an air of danger in your podcasting.

Well, it keeps me sharp.

The time for 80s prog rock has finally arrived.

We're breaking our rock opera virginity with Mr. Roboto by Styx.

Trust us, no one is less happy about this than us, especially me.

Mostly, but not entirely, because the song is neither prog nor rock.

And the video is just, well, I guess this is what we're discussing today.

The video itself is directed by Brian Gibson.

The history of the song is definitely there.

It was the opening single of Styx's rock opera album,

Kill Roy Was Here,

which itself is named after a famous World War II era graffiti tag.

The album is partially a mockery of the fundamental Christian groups

who led the quote-unquote anti-rock crusades.

I am not sure Styx would be my first choice for mocking anyone in the rock world,

but here we are.

Watched Styx take doing the robot to its natural conclusion

by dressing up as actual robots,

join our hero,

blonde guy,

and singer guy

in a dystopic Blade Runner-esque

prison break

slash rock opera performance.

As it turns out,

I've only discovered this

after writing the intro

of the blonde guy.

His character name is

Johnny Chance

and he's played by

the guitarist Tommy Shaw

and the singer guy

is Kilroy.

Kilroy himself played

by the key wordist

Dennis DeYoung.

So,

that's the thing.

This video made my

fucking head hurt.

There's kind of a story

running through this

which is the video

opens with

Johnny Chance,

the blonde guy,

walking into what turns out, according to the Wikipedia,

to be the museum...

Museum of bad taste.

It's the rock museum.

It was the rock museum, apparently.

Because basically I spent half an hour trying to figure out

what the fuck was going on in this video,

and I only really learned all this through the Wikipedia afterwards

after putting my head through a fucking brick wall.

So he goes into the rock museum,

and there's robots kicking about,

and then there's a prison break,

where it seems to be humans imprisoned by robots,

And I think the keyboardist gets out with the help of a robot.

Or is it a robot?

Or is it the singer dressed up as a robot?

Part of what confused me is there's a line,

my heart is human, my blood is boiling, my brain IBM.

Which made me think, which one is, you know, good lyric, I guess.

But which made me think, oh, is the guy a cyborg?

Yeah, with his parts made in Japan.

Things about that.

So that made me think you might be a cyborg.

but judging by the video, he's just dressed up as a robot.

So let's just ignore that lyric.

Basically, he seems to be breaking in, saving the blonde guy,

and then they go back to the rock museum for some reason.

And these things in a robot's ear.

I didn't really understand the rock museum because, I mean, it didn't really establish it.

It just, I didn't, I didn't pick it up.

It doesn't look like a rock museum.

Oh, like a museum to begin with.

I noticed Elvis.

And did you notice Elvis?

I mean, if he's meant to be like a statue, he's like, he's moving his leg really, really

at the very beginning.

Oh yeah, that's like

right at the beginning

of the background.

I don't know, maybe there's a

there's a hidden thing

that we're not privy to

because we don't know

well, I don't know Styx.

This is the problem.

I think Neil, I think you were saying

the album is meant to be

like a concept album or something like that

and none of us could be bothered

listening to the whole album

for the sake of the podcast.

Yeah, because it's Styx.

Why would I ever want to listen

to the whole album by fucking Styx?

Honestly.

Like, I love this podcast

but no.

You do anything for...

Love, but I'm not going to do that.

I just kind of appreciate

the fact that they all

look like, well, no, I was going to say

proto-daft punk, but probably

daft punk looked at them, they were like

we can do this, but better.

They kind of look like daft punk

as designed by racists from the 50s.

Yeah, we're gonna get to the racism.

As far as I can tell, the only reason the robots

look like that is because of

the line, parts made in Japan.

It's the only connection I can find.

I mean, the whole song is a fucking racist mess.

Is it? Well, I mean, probably

not intentionally. Oh, well, yeah,

I suppose he's going Mr. Roboto.

Yeah.

Which is like a pop culture reference in its own now.

Maybe they just really appreciate Japanese culture.

It's possible.

It's possible.

To be honest, in the 80s, probably in the 70s, to be honest,

there was a bit of an Asian fetishization.

It's a difficult word to say.

There's a bunch of songs that talk about Japan and like, you know,

talking Japanese, big in Japan.

There was clearly something going on in there.

I don't know why in the 80s.

It was like Japan establishing in the 80s.

Very hardcore industrial power or something.

Remember the line in Back to the Future?

What's the name of the doctor from Back to the Future?

I won't say Brown, but that's not...

Brown.

Yeah, Doc Brown.

Doc Brown, yeah.

Yeah, Doc Brown goes, he's pulling apart the car or something like that.

Or he's pulling something apart and he goes,

look, it's made in Japan.

And then Mario McFly goes, all the best stuff's made in Japan.

I don't know what the idea was touching with.

oh, Japan made good technology or whatever,

and let's think about them.

That was the starting point,

because they did talk about, like,

obviously, like, with parts made in Japan,

and the whole, like, Asian vibe

on the design of the robots themselves.

Was that the actual starting point of the whole song?

It's just kind of spiraled into this,

a sort of mildly racist butterfly effect.

Don't know actually who the production design

of the whole thing was,

But the design of the robots looks a bit like second-hand Cybermen.

Yeah, they do look so.

I did actually, I read somewhere who the designer was once.

Oh, you actually did research? Nice.

Well, I looked at the Wikipedia.

While you're looking at this, I'm going to mute myself and shake something with a cup.

Or maybe I imagined reading it.

Dave, there's no such thing as Wikipedia.

Oh, that's disappointing.

Where did I get all my knowledge from?

in the 80s was japan starting to become like a non-freeze technology and kicking off again

or did it happen earlier oh it was like the 80s yeah it was mostly the 80s like they started in

the 70s but they didn't get it wasn't like the like well-known worldwide until the 80s really

i found it i'll wait till nelly's back from her top secret mission perfect time to fix my mic

did it fall in your face it's very slowly falling and i don't notice it but it just it's sort of just

on top of me it's just slowly looming over you podcast faster it was basically sony panasonic

those kind of companies just like i come out with like home video cameras vhs betamax is basically

the digital revolution in a way like everything going from like big clunky 70s analog stuff to

like magnetic tape

and then into CDs

and stuff like that

in the 90s

but it was like

that tape revolution

was kind of like

from

can Scott hear us?

of course Scott

has a brilliant answer

to this

and then you had

the game consoles as well

like Nintendo

in the mid to late 80s

as well

like you had all that

okay

oh she's made it again

was that

the ween I meant to hear that

Scott from Japanese

historical impact corner

getting insider information

that's pretty good as well

good

I want to hear more

Sorry, I was checking with Scott from a Japanese corner.

So we heard.

Did you hear the whole thing?

Because I amused myself.

No, only heard a little bit, but it sounded interesting.

I don't know.

It probably makes sense within the song.

Maybe it's not as racist as we thought it was.

It was just a bit insensitive.

Yeah, yeah.

It obviously wasn't intended to be racist, however.

It's just that caricature-y images like that

were obviously a lot more acceptable back then than they are now.

Should we call it a love song towards the Japanese technology?

Sure

Okay I'm calling it this

I've got a secret

I've been hiding

Under my skin

My heart is human

My blood is boiling

My brain IBM

So if you see me

Acting strangely

Don't be surprised

I'm just a man who needed someone

And someone to hide

To keep me alive

Just keep me alive

Speaking of the robots, I found the designer.

The robots were designed by Stan Wilson,

who also worked on Jurassic Park, according to Wikipedia.

Stan Wilson, who had become well-known for his work on Jurassic Park,

designed the robot costume and mask,

which are displayed prominently on the cover of the album

Kilroy was here. Did he make the dinosaurs?

The dinosaurs were real so

he must have just designed the cars.

Dinosaurs.

The general look of the thing

the thing, the video, all

feeds into the fact that I watched Blade Runner last night

which is a happy coincidence but it does

kind of have a bit of a pound shot

Blade Runner looked at.

There's even a shot where I think

he's escaping the prison or something

and there's a sort of Blade Runner

flying car sort of

with a searchlight on him.

Yeah, no, I get what you mean, but...

It does look kind of cool,

considering that obviously the music videos

would have a lot less budget than a proper film.

Does it look good, though?

Does it?

It looks okay.

I hate the colours.

As in, like, luck thereof.

Everything is blue and grey and black.

What's what I'm looking for?

Desaturated monochrome.

Zack Snyder.

Oh, man, shots fired.

Well, I mean, am I wrong?

I'm not wrong.

No, you're not.

Biggest hack in Hollywood.

Yes.

if you've ever seen Soccer Punch

was that him?

yeah it was him yeah

what a bad film

it wasn't that good was it?

nope

it was awful

it would have been fine if it didn't take itself so damn seriously

this is the big thing

it ends with an emotional monologue

and I was just sitting in the cinema

it's the only time I was sitting in the cinema

and I started counting the speakers on the walls

because I was so fucking bored

was it Zack Snyder

who also made Batman boring?

yes

Yeah, he managed to suck the emotions out of any single thing he does.

Sucker Punch has so many problems.

He's like, oh, it's feminist and I'm showing strong female characters.

Bitch, she got fucking the bottomized.

And she was trying to justify her being raped and all this.

Can you please not?

Please just sit in the corner and just shut up.

Ah, I hate him.

Sorry.

Yeah, it was a bad film.

But anyway, I'm kind of intrigued about the rest of the album.

If it is all a concept album about this,

I don't really want to listen to Styx for an hour,

but I'm kind of intrigued to what the actual story would be.

Well, I think there's a second song,

so we can do a bit of research on that.

A second single, I think.

Heavy Metal Poisoning?

Okay, for our listeners at home,

we're now watching Heavy Metal Poisoning by Styx.

It's a bit of, like, Nazi imagery, you know?

That's a fascist moustache I've ever seen.

Yeah, it's pretty fascist.

Pashy moustache.

Pashy moustache.

Okay, it looks like an evil Freddie Mercury.

Okay, so they're burning albums and guitars.

Okay, I guess that's where the whole idea of...

Oh, we're mocking the...

Like the rock-hating Christian fundamentalists or whatever.

Well, it looks kind of like he's an evangelicalist.

That's the idea.

Yeah, I mean, if they had a point to make with the video...

Sorry, with the album.

This video makes it much more obvious.

I think to get

I'll get the video

you need to watch

the other ones

I'm seeing similar links

which is

well

I've just seen Elvis

Really?

Where?

Does it miss?

Oh yeah

you're a bit ahead

yeah okay

They look like they're

about a storm

of capital building

right so okay

we've established

that the album

is roughly about

so how do the

fundamentalist

Christian anti-music

people factor into

the robots

I'm fucking

God

I think we've lost him.

He's lost.

He's done.

How can it be a concept album that jumps from that to robots?

I might have to listen to this fucking album, goddammit.

Like, my best wager is that the connection between the robots

and, say, heavy metal poisoning or whatever they're there,

it's like the robots are probably Christian fundamentalists.

So they're not literally robots,

they're just humans who don't think for themselves.

I mean, allegorically, they're probably that.

They just showed him, like, oh, yeah, literal robots

because they're repeating everything or whatever.

That's my best wager.

I'm pulling stuff out of my ass.

I bet.

Although there is a scene where he seems to be

on some sort of operating table.

Yeah.

Which once again has given me kind of Cybermany vibes

where they're like, are they about to turn him into a robot?

Are they brainwashing him to not like music or whatever?

But he escapes.

He escapes and he runs onto the stage slash museum slash whatever

and then turns into a robot, I think.

The evil robot.

No.

It's just the idea that it's a conceptual album

and the opening track is like a synth-pop song.

And one of the other, like, three or four whatever music videos,

they released from that allegedly a conceptual album.

It's kind of a heavy metal song.

How do you go from synth-pop to heavy metal in a single album?

I did read that basically it's kind of a bit of a David Bowie situation where he's playing a character playing the song.

So maybe that's what's going on with the full album is like each or maybe not each, but like this song and heavy metal are two different fictional bands within the album.

Huh?

Neil, are you confused? Because I'm very confused.

I, I, yes. I'm going to say yes.

It just feels like one of those videos that is trying so hard to say stuff.

And the moment you try to hold on to the things it's trying to say,

it just falls apart because it's just air.

It's like chips for McDonald's.

It's just air.

I'm not a robot without emotions. I'm not what you see. I've come to help you with your problems so we can be free. I'm not a hero. I'm not a savior. Forget what you know. I'm just a man whose circumstances went beyond his control.

Beyond my control

Beyond me control

Just reading from the Wikipedia here.

The song tells part of the story of

Robert Orrin Charles Kilroy,

brackets from rock.

In the rock opera,

Kilroy was here.

The song is performed by Kilroy

as played by the keyboardist Danny DeYoung,

a rock and roll performer

who was placed in a futuristic prison

for rock and roll misfits

by the anti-rock and roll group

Majority for Musical Mortality

and its founder,

Dr. Evett Righteous.

played by guitarist James Young.

Dr. Hadaway.

Just let's call him Dr. Hadaway.

Dr. Hadaway.

Well, this is the other thing.

This is the second robot-related video

that we've watched.

I can't believe I'm going to say this,

but the Hadaway video is better.

I loved the Hadaway video.

Do you think, though,

that they are using the same technology

that Hadaway invented in his lab

to create these robots?

I refuse to believe that Hadaway

deliberately did this,

but I think they may have taken his technology

and turned it into something evil.

The Roboto is a model of robot which does mean you.

Jobs in prison, Kira escapes the prison, overpowering Roboto prison guard.

Okay, so we have the Roboto, which is a model of robot.

Okay, hold on.

So is it...

Did it just...

Yes?

Did they create a name to just make it sound a bit more Japanese, so they can also, like...

It certainly seems that way.

So the Roboto is only one model.

So I wonder what model

Hadway's robot was.

Machine and mensch.

Oh yeah.

So these aren't machine and mensch, these are Roboto's.

Oh god, this is so bad.

Clarifies it.

Crystal Claire, sleep well tonight.

Yes.

Okay, okay, okay.

Focus there, focus.

Okay, so from what you said,

the Roboto is a model of

robot which does many

job's in the prison, but then it's also

prison guard. Is the prison guard a menial

job? I don't think it is. I wouldn't say so. I think

that these robots really need to talk to their

union representatives. Yeah, what the fuck?

That doesn't sound like a menial task

to me. I'm starting to think of like, we are the

buddies in the story. Robots are

like, not... Well,

here's another part that adds to the confusion.

There's one point where he's thanking the robot

in the lyrics. Thank you for breaking me

free, you know that stuff. But is he referring to

Kilroy, I think,

But is Kilroy the evil robot the singer?

Okay, is he referring to the singer

dressed as a robot, or is he referring

to a robot that helped him?

Who cares?

Unfortunately I do, I don't know why.

Okay, should we

like, go back to the lyrics

and do them line by line?

Is that going to help? Oh, why not?

It's called from Japanese Corner.

Konnichiwa.

Genki.

Thanks.

How is mister in Japanese?

Can you hear me?

Yes.

The actual Japanese, as Nelly has posted there,

the word mister is a romanization of the word mister

because there is no word mister in Japanese.

They use different honorifics.

So it would actually be double-added,

but mister is, there's no word mister in Japanese,

so they've just taken the word mister

and romanized it into Japanese characters.

So it's actually like M-I-S-U-T-A, mister.

there's no word

like that in Japanese

that is an English word

that is being pronounced

in Japanese

ah okay

yeah

so they've just kind of

shoved it in for the effect

yeah they've been like

what is the word

mister in Japanese

and then it's come out

with that

and they go

okay cool

without having the knowledge

to go

there's no word

mister in Japanese

language

because they have

different honorifics

depending on your station

so sometimes it's

san

sometimes it's sama

depending on like

your relationship

to the person

rather than mister

cool that clarifies that

this is why he's a teacher

because he can actually

explain shit

thank you Scott

from Japanese linguistics corner.

What corner will we have next week?

Find out.

So we're going back to the lyrics.

Okay, so which part of the lyrics confuses you, Dave?

Maybe we can work through it together.

Sorry.

Mainly verse two.

I've got a secret.

I've been hiding under my skin.

My heart is human.

My blood is boiling.

My brain, IBM.

If you see me,

so if you see me acting strangely,

don't be surprised.

I'm just a man who needed someone

and somewhere to hide

to keep me alive,

to keep me alive, somewhere to hide, keep me alive.

That makes it sound...

Well, even the two half of the lyrics make it sound different, actually.

Because I'm like, does that...

I don't know.

It just gives me a bit of, like, data vibes,

like human body kind of, but IBM brain.

It's just a man.

He's just a special man who needs someone,

somewhere to hide, to keep me alive.

He's just a man with parts from Japan.

I hate this.

Then verse three is that I'm not a robot without emotions.

I'm not what you see.

So that suggests that he looks like a robot.

I've come to help you with your problems so we can be free.

I'm not a hero.

I'm not a saver.

Forget what you know.

I'm just a man whose circumstances were beyond his control.

So he's an unwilling participant in the robot army thing.

So he was a cyborg, but not like cyber man, but doesn't want to be.

He was not completely.

Wasn't that the plot from a Doctor Who episode?

Sounds like it would be.

Thank you very much, Mr. Roboto, for doing the job nobody wants. Yikes.

I kind of interpreted jobs no wanted as just like they were using the robots to do like menial labor and stuff like that.

Cool, but where are the humans then in all this?

Which is why it doesn't make any sense, because the humans seem to be fighting the robots,

but if the robots are doing menial labor for them, why are they fighting them?

Oh, hold on. The problem's plain to see. Too much technology.

Machines to save our lives. Machines to dehumanize?

Kind of reminds me of the plot of Total Annihilation,

if you ever played that.

I have not played Total Annihilation, no.

Basically, people wind up converting,

getting converted to robots,

but then the people who've been turned into robots

start fighting the people who don't want to get turned into robots.

So maybe that's what's going on.

I'm still confused about that.

Machines to save our lives, machines dehumanise.

Is it just like all those machines, they do both?

Through whatever they're doing with the machines to save the humans,

Maybe they're losing their humanity in the process.

Maybe they need some cybernetic enhancement

to survive whatever's going on in the world.

But what has that to do with the lyrics?

I give up.

Shall we move on?

I'm sorry, yes, I give up.

I think we've got plenty of...

Yeah, I'm sorry, guys.

I can't...

What episode are we up to?

16?

Episode 16 has officially broken us.

Hope you enjoyed.

And now we need to stand in a quiet room for half an hour.

Bye.

We'll be back once we get our cybernetic enhancements installed,

which may or may not remove our humanity,

or may or may not make as menial fucking slave robots,

and may or may not cause some sort of uprising in a prison break.

And why does it all end in them going to a gig?

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know, Dave. I don't know.

I don't know.

Okay, okay, let's do it.

Instant dad before we move on.

What?

No.

I'm just not.

I'm just not.

I am not a fan of rock opera, sticks, and this song.

This video is a dullest dishwasher, which matches the song perfectly.

This song almost had me for a split second, with its dystopian themes,

and what almost felt like Nodes the Blade Runner.

Two things I love, but it didn't deliver, and ultimately fell flat.

It's repetitive. It's very dark and does nothing for me.

I won't be singing this in the shower.

As you can tell by the mental breakdown I've just had during this episode,

this video made my fucking head hurt.

It's a decent looking sort of Blade Runner ripoff, like Neil was saying.

The leading man seems to put in quite a good performance as a flamboyant rock opera frontman.

But I couldn't for the life of me figure out what the fuck was going on.

Despite having an explanation on Wikipedia, it still doesn't fucking add up.

Picture me as the meme of the guy with all the red string and the board

trying to work out a conspiracy.

and going slowly mental.

That's what I...

Yeah.

I've never been a fan of sticks,

but this song is particularly bad.

Although the video,

in my humble opinion at least,

deserves to be in the

so bad is good category,

nothing is really redeemable

and overall it can be viewed

as a pretty racially insensitive video

by our modern standards.

Although to be fair,

so can for a lot of other songs

from this era,

turning Japanese and looking at you,

but the cheese is so stringy.

You almost can't avert your eyes.

However you should.

This sucks ass.

So my favourite moment is the cool

matte painting slash model at 3 minutes 25 seconds.

That's pretty much it.

That's the bit where he's coming out of the prison

and the airplane things looking for him, isn't it?

Yeah.

I still can't figure out whether it's a model or a matte painting.

I think it might be matte painting,

but it looks pretty nice.

It's really well done.

It's hard to tell in our 240p YouTube video,

but yeah, it was pretty cool.

I did appreciate that

and my worst moment is

just the general

fetishisation of

Japanese culture

my favourite moment

was four minutes in

after whatever

has happened

has happened

the lead singer

screams in a

blazing falsetto

into a clearly

unhappy robot

and you just see

the robot eventually

just sort of

swat him off

like a fly

I find that hilarious

and the worst moment

was two minutes

ten seconds

a disappointing

lack of commitment

to doing the robot

because he kind of

starts doing the robot

but he just does

one arm movement

and then stops

I'm actually doing the robot right now

but yeah he didn't commit to doing the robot

which is just funny

Favourite parts, theme is Nelly

that one scene got me excited

but it lasted for what like

four seconds and then

disappointment afterwards

The worst part?

Oh the song was too long

Simple as that

I think at the four

four and a half, five minutes

I think it could have cut a minute

The thing is at the end interesting stuff started to happen

so that should have been in

before that cut

so yeah

it was too long

and the ending

should have been

a minute before

the end of the actual song

the shorter version

I mean

total side rant

but I think I mentioned

this earlier

but I watched

the first Blade Runner

for the first time

in like 10 years

last night

oh my god

what a fucking good film

it's good isn't it

I know everyone knows that

it's so morally grey

I love it

yeah we watched

occasionally every

like once a year

or so

that's in 2001

I or no for this video

no

it's a no

from the very depth of my soul

from the depths of my soul

to you listeners who can email us

at gone2farcast at gmail.com

we'd love to hear your thoughts on any recommendations

for videos, look at the show notes

for links to Instagram

and email

and all that jazz twitter

are you ok?

if you're enjoying the podcast

Please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your podcast player of choice.

If you enjoyed the podcast, please send a bad review to my report to make a strictly

bad video in song.

Say goodbye, everyone.

Bye.

Goodbye, everyone.

Bye.

And cut.

That did.

Oh, God.

Yeah, that one nearly broke me.

Fucking hell.