No Planet B
Song from The History of the World Backwards
November 2007
Cm Gm
Tadpoles when they get leggy
Cm Bbm
Leave the pond and start to crawl,
Cm Gm Bbm
Can't go on the same way anymore.
Cm Gm
Pumping oil from where it's safest
Cm Bbm
Underneath the sand,
Cm Gm
New Orleans Olympic Bid Committee,
Cm Bbm
Miss Afghanistan.
Cm Gm
Like Caucescu at his barbecue,
Cm Bbm
Ice Age dinosaurs,
Cm Gm Bbm
Can't keep doing what we've been doing no more.
[chorus ]
Cm
In the future
Gm
Sci-fi's set in the past:
Cm Bbm
Backwards History!
Cm Gm
The cargo cult was retro market:
Cm Gm Bbm
Ain't no planet B.
Long ago in the Amazon
A plane crashed to the forest floor.
The survivors of that wreck all dressed
As Ringo, George, John or Paul.
We worship our Goddess,
She gave us ancestors,
Yoko Ono
Brought together the Fab Four.
[chorus ]
In the future
Sci-fi's set in the past:
Backwards History!
The cargo cult was retro market:
Ain't no planet B.
Pumping oil from where it's safest
Underneath the sand,
New Orleans Olympic Bid Committee,
Miss Afghanistan
Like Caucescu at his barbecue,
Ice Age dinosaurs,
Can't keep doing what we've been doing no more.
[chorus]
To explain the Caucescu line, I remember hearing that when the Romanian dictator was overthrown he was in the middle of a barbecue. I've never seen the news footage myself, but I heard that the angry mob captured and killed him he was flipping the sides of beef on the garden grill. I like to picture him in the pin-striped apron and novelty chef's hat , but I've asked Nicky to find the actual stills, which footage may mean I have to relinquish some of those choice details.
Okay, so that explains the incident the line refers to, but why is a forgotten despot referred in the song at all? No Planet B a song about not being able to carry on in the same way as before, a song with the refrain "can't keep doing what we've been doing no more". And there is something about the image of a dictator who has so continuously failed to heed the flashing red lights of the political climate that he is seized in the middle of a family barbecue, which is like how we are carrying on ignoring the warning signs of ecological collpapse. There is a sense of a seismic change in the offing, but everyone is still sitting out by patio heaters and pouring concrete as if there were seven spare planets rather none. With Causcescu's fate it is almost like scenes from an epic film are super-imposed over a home-movie. And that's same sense of disruption we often have when we look at, say, post-Katrina photos of domestic paraphenalia scattered in the street seven blocks away.