Fairy Tale Spotlight: Next Time

I have been into a Japanese band called the Seat Belts for a long time. The owner of this group is a woman named Yoko Kanno. She has made many kinds of music in her career. Much like my previous blog concerning Hazmat Modine's "Bahamut," Yoko also made a fairy tale song with a very clever story to it that makes you think critically about the effect chaos has on our society.

The song is called "Next Time." Before I get into too much detail about it, I am pleased to present you with the complete lyrics. A link to the actual audio will be provided at the end of the blog. And now, here are the complete lyrics to Yoko Kono's "Next Time!"

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We are the spooks
Behind all ideas
We wreck and we ruin
And we gloat and we creep
Call us the jinx
The hex or the kinks
But don't misconstrue our intention

We loosen screws
And cross all the wires
Rattle and shake
And we set all the fires
We will destroy
All that you create
'Cause we are the trolls of invention

Comatose radios
A speciality 'case you don't know
Broken hose overdose
We cause all these problems just so
You'll try harder next time

We come at night
And we gave you fire
Visit your dreams
Where we plan and inspire
When you are awake
You have new ideas
Emaculate gadget conception

Crash and burn, unconcerned
Your stamina is delighful
Bruised and blurred, live and learn
We cause all these problems just so
You'll do better next time

La la la...
Without us, you'd still be in the dark ages
Stumbling 'round wishing you had light
Make and we break so you make and we break everything again
Break so you make and we break so that the new age can begin

We are the spooks
Of all new ideas
We wreck and we ruin
And we crush and we creep
Call us the jinx
The hex or the kinks
But we are the souls of invention

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I found this song a very long time ago. I was still a kid when I was finding out about Yoko Kanno through her work in the anime Cowboy Bebop. I loved the music on that show which made me look into other music she did. As it turned out, I ended up getting a copy of just about every track she released.

This particular song puzzled me at first. The lyrics are sung by a man named Mr. Francesco Sansalone. He slurs and mispronounces nearly every word. It took me a bunch of tries just to figure out what he was saying. After listening to it for like the 30th time, I started to figure out what was going on. A fairy tale was being told in the form of a song.

The story is about a bunch of creatures called the "Trolls of Invention." The idea of it was that every machine made by man was innately perfect and would work forever. Enter the trolls. They would come in and essentially break the machine. When the human returned the next day, they would realize that what they thought was a perfect machine was really not. To remedy this, they would build a better machine that trumped the old one entirely. This was the goal of the Trolls of Invention: Progress.

The trolls represented chaos being introduced to a perfect system. When one thinks of the word "chaos," he may see something like an explosion or the destruction of something. In reality, it was chaos that seemed to push man forward. This is actually a very real concept.

Humans seem to thrive best when they are pushed with adversity. War inevitably leads to industrial revolutions of some kind. The stagnancy of a population does not lead to any sort of progress. In fact they tend to go insane. People tend to be content with what they have if nothing interferes of it. Change is often difficult to accept and generally unwanted altogether.

Imperfection is the key to moving forward within reality. Everything breaks and must be fixed. And the idea of fixing something should not be to create the same thing but to make something better. The Trolls of Invention simply represent this concept in the form of little demons.

I am very glad that I finally got to talk about this song. It is something I have carried with me since I was young. I hope it will inspire you as much as it did me.

If you want to hear the song for yourself, it is available at YouTube at the following link: Click here!

Thank you for reading my blog! Did you enjoy it? If so, you can comment below, or you can email me at tkadeauthor@gmail.com. Also I write and public books! You can check out my selection at www.tkwade.com! Thanks!