Line #46 Music/VoxHumana


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/voxfront.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:“My hair points to the sky, the place I’d rather be!”]]
3
4	->''It’s history that cannot be\
5	felt by tiny souls.\
6	Inside this chest beats a plastic heart,\
7	and pleasure is its goal.''
8	-->-- “It’s Sick”
9
10	''Vox Humana (The Alarma Chronicles Volume III)'' is Music/DanielAmos’s sixth studio album, released in 1984. It took the NewWaveMusic of their previous two albums in a much more synthesized direction, with many tracks being outright SynthPop. The ravages of TheEighties spared no band, and this album’s production bears witness to that.
11
12	Appropriately enough for an LP that [[UnintentionalPeriodPiece wears the decade on its sleeve so blatantly]], ''Vox Humana'' was a critique of Western society at that time. InAWorld where greed and commercialism were celebrated, where new technology was as likely to distract people from each other as to unite them, and where [[UsefulNotes/ColdWar nuclear annihilation could have come without warning at any time]]--what could one synth-pop band do? For DA, the answer was to pen bouncy, upbeat ditties that highlighted the absurdities of the world around them, and then pair those with somber ballads about reconnecting with God and their fellow humans.
13
14	The [[http://www.danielamos.com/articles/alarmac3.html story in the liner notes]] continued where ''Music/{{Doppelganger}}'' left off and paralleled the album’s lyrical themes: Terry Scott Taylor’s AuthorAvatar gets overtaken by a storm-breathing giant, comes to grips with the AwfulTruth about society, and shrinks down to the size of an ant.
15
16	It was followed in 1986 by the final chapter of The Alarma Chronicles: ''Music/FearfulSymmetry''.
17
18	!!Personnel:
19
20	* Terry Scott Taylor: lead vocals, rhythm guitars, occasional keyboards, synthesizers, backing vocals
21	* Ed [=McTaggart=]: drums, percussion, synthesizers
22	* Rob Watson: keyboards, synthesizers, percussion, backing vocals
23	* Tim Chandler: lead guitars, 4 & 12 string bass, synthesizers, backing vocals
24
25	!!Tracklist:
26
27	[[AC:Side 1:]]
28	# Travelog (4:25)
29	# (It’s the Eighties, So Where's Our) Rocket Packs (3:35)
30	# Home Permanent (3:00)
31	# It’s Sick (2:18)
32	# William Blake (4:30)
33	# Dance Stop (2:43)
34
35	[[AC:Side 2:]]
36	# Live and Let Live (3:40)
37	# When Worlds Collide (4:20)
38	# As the World Turns (3:47)
39	# She’s All Heart (3:00)
40	# The Incredible Shrinking Man (2:45)
41	# Sanctuary (5:45)
42
43	----
44	!! Provides examples of:
45
46	* EightiesHair: DA’s strangely sculpted hairdos on the cover photo. On the back cover, they lampshade it with a lyric from “Home Permanent”:
47	-->My hair points to the sky, the place I’d rather be!
48	* BadMoonRising and TheStarsAreGoingOut: In “Sanctuary”:
49	-->And should the moon burn red, stars leave the sky,\
50	Remember, remember\
51	Your sanctuary
52	* BrokenPedestal: In “The Incredible Shrinking Man”:
53	-->The clergy dresses you in tights and cape\
54	And so the pressure’s on to make no mistake\
55	In truth, there is no way that you won't break\
56	You’re gonna fall\
57	You’re much too small
58	* ButtMonkey:
59	** “As the World Turns”:
60	--->As the world turns, it slaps me hard\
61	As the world turns, it tells me I’m weak\
62	As the world turns, I drop my guard\
63	As the world turns, I turn the other cheek
64	** “The Incredible Shrinking Man” describes the many ways that the world conspires to make the character (addressed only as “you”) feel powerless and insignificant.
65	* BystanderSyndrome: In “Live and Let Live”:
66	-->Oh no, I’ve got a broken heart\
67	(“We’re so sorry but we gotta run”)\
68	Oh no, I’m falling apart\
69	While you keep on floating\
70	Up, and up, and up, and up, and up
71	* ContinuityNod: “Travelog”’s bridge includes several vocal samples from TV, including Johnny Jacobs proclaiming, “A new car!”--the same sample that was used throughout “New Car!”, from ''Music/{{Doppelganger}}''.
72	* CoversAlwaysLie: Keyboardist Rob Watson wasn’t available for the cover photoshoot. DA asked Leo Sorentino, tour manager for Music/TheChoir, to stand in for Watson--even though they didn’t look much alike at all.
73	* DanceSensation: The liner notes come with instructions for how to dance to “Dance Stop”:
74	-->You may dance any dance that you desire, but in the course of the song when the word STOP! is shouted and the music stops you must FREEZE in whatever position you are in at that moment. In the song you will then hear the crowd voices escalating. Resume dancing again when you hear the word DANCE shouted and the music resumes. Have fun!!!
75	* DrunkWithPower: “The Incredible Shrinking Man”:
76	-->From wells of power\
77	You take a drink\
78	You drown in it\
79	It’s bigger than you think
80	* FirstWorldProblems: After two verses describing genuine oppression, the final verse of “It’s Sick” covers the sort of problems that rich Americans face. Then the lyrics dig a little deeper, pointing out that we’re focused on these trivialities because our real problem--the possibility of nuclear holocaust--is just too big to deal with.
81	-->Our trial is which car to buy\
82	Temptation is that extra dessert\
83	In the land of orange juice\
84	You’re better off with the right kind of shirt\
85	But take away the naïveté\
86	Expose the sources of our fears\
87	We’ll run to missiles if we’re pushed that far\
88	Proceed to blow it all away!
89	* FishOutOfWater:
90	** “As the World Turns” describes being an outsider in the spiritual sense:
91	--->And I never get comfort in the earth or sky\
92	It’s my belief they’re not my home\
93	The world spins one way, but I go another\
94	Against the grain, one often stands alone
95	** In the liner notes story, the narrator realizes:
96	--->I concluded, and retain this belief even now, that the only ultimate disaster that can befall a man is to feel at home here on earth.
97	* ForeignLanguageTitle: Vox Humana, Latin for “voice of the human”.
98	* GiantFootOfStomping: On the back cover, a massive robot foot descends from above to crush DA underneath.
99	-->...Technology was a storm which materialized into a great foot threatening to crush me and all of mankind...
100	* GratuitousPanning: The chorus vocals in “Live and Let Live” bounce from one channel to the other.
101	* GodIsLoveSongs: “When Worlds Collide” is a love song from God to all of humanity.
102	-->When shadows fall\
103	When lovers mourn\
104	And you fight your darkest tendencies\
105	I promise to hold you close to me when\
106	Worlds collide\
107	I'm on your side
108	* HoistByHisOwnPetard: The liner notes mention this happening on a societal scale:
109	-->Yes, we have created the monster. He is the harvest of our sowing.
110	* {{Homage}}: “Creator/WilliamBlake” is an extended tribute to him, with several quotes from his poems.
111	* IncredibleShrinkingMan: “Incredible Shrinking Man” uses this as a metaphor for being a ButtMonkey in 1980s society. And in the liner notes story, the narrator literally shrinks until a tiny rock becomes an impassible mountain.
112	* InsignificantLittleBluePlanet: “The Incredible Shrinking Man”:
113	-->A world accountable\
114	Among the stars a grain of sand
115	* IWantMyJetPack: “(It’s the Eighties, So Where’s Our) Rocket Packs” laments that the techno-utopia never happened--partly because sci-fi technologies never materialized, and partly because people didn’t change that much. The items that sci-fi promised and reality never delivered (at least not by 1984) include:
116	-->[[CasualInterplanetaryTravel I thought by now I'd walk the moon]]\
117	[[FlyingCar And ride a car without no tires]]\
118	[[RobotMaid And have a robot run the vacuum]]\
119	[[{{Robosexual}} And date a girl made out of wires]]\
120	[[SpaceStation I thought by now we'd live in space]]\
121	[[FoodPills And eat a pill instead of dinner]]\
122	[[PostApocalypticGasmask And wear a gas mask on our face]]\
123	[[OurPresidentsAreDifferent A President of female gender]]\
124	I thought by now [[DomedHometown we'd build a dome]]\
125	Around the world, [[WeatherControlMachine control the weather]]\
126	[[VideoPhone In every house, a picture phone]]\
127	Communicate a little better
128	* JobStealingRobot: In “The Incredible Shrinking Man”:
129	-->Machines remind you\
130	that you can be replaced
131	* LackOfEmpathy: “It’s Sick” is about responding to foreign tragedies with complete apathy. The narrator at least has the self-awareness to feel bad that he doesn’t feel bad:
132	-->It's sick! And I got it on my TV\
133	It's sick! When I don't feel a thing\
134	It's sick! And I get a little queasy\
135	When somebody tells me it's only a game, it’s sick!
136	* LossOfIdentity: In the liner notes story, the narrator concludes that lack of change is what causes you to lose yourself. (See Static Character, below.)
137	* LuddWasRight: Sort of: Technology is an extension of man’s collective will. And since HumansAreFlawed...
138	-->The giant was power and power belongs to darkness. It is a [[FrankensteinsMonster Frankenstein monster]] dwarfing us all. It is, among other things, a mass of communication media which man has constructed to unceasingly persuade us that pursuits like fame, sensual pleasures and money will make life worth living. The giant was and is the power-mad system which possesses a death wish, devouring human beings while seeking its own extinction, devoting its wealth, knowledge and skills to creating the means to blow itself to oblivion.
139	* LyricalDissonance: Nearly the entire album. The upbeat songs are the ones about selling your soul to the machine, while the somber songs are the ones about meaningful relationships with others. “Sanctuary” is the most lyrically hopeful song on the album--it’s God’s unconditional promise to be anyone’s sanctuary, in good times and bad--but musically, the moodiest and broodiest.
140	* TheMoralSubstitute: Parodied in “Home Permanent”.
141	-->I gave a toy top to my little brother\
142	It says to “Spin from sin”, and to my mother\
143	I gave a recipe book, it's like no other\
144	Now she makes chocolate Bibles--a witness to my unsaved father
145	* MundaneMadeAwesome: “Travelog” is literally a song about watching TV, but the narrator makes it sound like a grand adventure.
146	* MutuallyAssuredDestruction: The fear of a nuclear war with the USSR looms in the background--or the foreground--of several songs.
147	** “It’s Sick”:
148	--->We'll run to missiles if we’re pushed that far\
149	Proceed to blow it all away!
150	** “Dance Stop” is about crowds who go on dancing even as the bombs explode.
151	--->Contortionists are caught up in the camera’s eye\
152	The music explodes and the bodies fly\
153	They're rating it a ten before they drop and die\
154	“WELL IT HAD A GOOD BEAT!” was their very last cry
155	** “The Incredible Shrinking Man”:
156	--->Look out your window\
157	Here comes a bomb\
158	The dogs of war\
159	Drop it on your lawn
160	* NeverTrustATitle: The album title means “voice of the human”, but this is probably the least-human-sounding music in DA’s discography. The irony was definitely intentional.
161	* OfficiallyShortenedTitle: The front cover has “DA” in large letters, with “Daniel Amos” written inside those in much smaller text--apparently to ease fans into accepting the shortened name.
162	* OppositesAttract: “She’s All Heart”. The verses describe a couple whose differing viewpoints lead to disagreements and misunderstandings, but the chorus keeps coming back to the fact that “They are one heart.”
163	-->She says I complicate things\
164	I say she over simplifies everything\
165	But either way, I still believe we need each other
166	* PortalDoor: The liner notes start with a reference to ''Doppelgänger'''s door, with the narrator in a desolate landscape with a [[WorldWreckingWave storm-wave]] bearing down on him. And those notes end with the narrator stepping through ''another'' mysterious door.
167	* RevealShot: The front cover is a photo of the band. [[https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/voxrear.jpg The back cover]] pulls back just far enough to show the GiantFootOfStomping that’s about to crush them.
168	* SoWhatDoWeDoNow: In “Sanctuary”:
169	-->And should you find you have the things you need\
170	Remember, remember\
171	Me
172	* StopAndGo: “Dance Stop”.
173	* VindicatedByHistory: [[invoked]] “William Blake”:
174	-->You were not mad\
175	I know time will tell
176	* WeatherManipulation: The giant in the liner notes story breathes storm clouds and freezing winds.
177	* WhileRomeBurns: “Dance Stop” is about the masses falling into hedonism in the face of the impending apocalypse, specifically by dancing as the hydrogen bombs launch.
178	-->Well, tell me please how love can be\
179	With a kick/snare giving you a fantasy\
180	“AIN’T NO FUTURE FAR AS I CAN SEE!”\
181	If I could dance, I might agree
182	* WorldWreckingWave: In the liner notes story, the narrator gets overtaken by a black storm-wave-thing.
183	-->There, rolling down upon me, over what appeared to be a snowy plain, I saw a gigantic black wave. It was miles away, but visibly devouring the earth in its approach, its crest lost in murky clouds.
184

Context Music / VoxHumana