I am the final silence
The last electrician alive
And they called me the sparkle
I was the best, I worked them all.
New ways, New ways;
I dream of wires.
We opened doors by thinking,
We went to sleep by dialing 'O'.
We drove to work by proxy,
I plugged my wife in just for show.
New ways, New ways...
I dream of wires.
So I press 'C' for comfort
I dream of wires, the old days.
- Gary Numan
from Telekon (1980)
Needlessly personal sidenote : I was five when my cousin, infinitely cooler than I (i.e. he smoked) and big into KISS (hardcore from my G-1,'Wow, that's like, Satan!' POV), played the album 'Telkon' for me on my clunky little brown plastic Fisher Price record player (the coolest disc that device usually saw being my The Electric Company LP). I was pretty shaken by the sudden realization pop music existed, even more so by the fact people did this as art, and could be publically odd & challenging in a way, say, the Children's Television Workshop could not. It was admittedly confusing, soon after hearing Devo's Whip it on the radio (fairly traumatic lyrics). Still, if at this age you stayed up really late, maybe even past ten, with your AM radio turned down low, you'd often catch a 'strange' song or two : Save A Prayer...Send Me an Angel...Call Me. I had no way of knowing at the time this was 'New Wave' until hearing this term used by the infintely-wise Samantha Taylor of CBC's Video Hits a couple of years later. This immediately clarified everything (S.T. did this for many others undoubtedly, at least in Canada, pre-Much Music). Regardless, this is musically the strongest song on the album, which according to the sleeve notes is directly inspired by Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, written and recorded before Blade Runner. The album itself, Telekon, has just been re-issued by Beggars Banquet featuring, among various alternate versions and instrumentals, a version of Erik Satie's Third Movement from the Gymnopedies.