“I’d like to be home with my monkey and my dog,” a woman, following a cacophony of voices commenting on fish, repeats immediately prior to the standout track on Roger Waters’s 1987 album Radio K.A.O.S.
“I don’t care,” disc jockey Alan Ladd interrupts. “Shut up! Play the record.”
When he finally does, a glorious sound silences all the bizarre nonsense talk. “Home,” the best number of Waters’s post–Pink Floyd career, combines dated, very-’80s period instrumentation, the great Clare Torry of “Great Gig in the Sky” fame providing a Floyd feel, and the lyricist’s characteristic way of lulling listeners with hypnotic verbal and sonic patterns before snapping everyone out of it with a jarring “When the cowboys and Arabs draw down at noon in the cool dusty air of the city boardroom” climax.
