“Modern Man Hurricane Blues” by Adrian Belew, Album: Op Zop Too Wah 1997

When I was a boy
Simple times, simple joy
And life was not full of hate and chaos
A modern man
Lives in some kind of hurricane
I need your love to keep me calm
When the world is a storm

Hell fire man desire
Downtown scream siren
Ghetto gun drug lord
Kill children stillborn
Asphalt flesh bone
Trash bag alley bomb

Hey, hey, it's a sin
About the shape the world is in
Hey, hey, it's a shame
Modern man hurricane

Earth dump suck soil
Sewer spit sea oil
Toxic ocean chemical fish
Man made death wish

Hey, hey, it's a shame
Modern man hurricane

I need your love to keep me calm
When the world's a storm

Modern society claims that creates a safe place for humans, but in reality, our life is always under stress, anxiety, pollution and social violence.

You can hear some songs in youtube
I'm down
I see you
Writing on the wall

“Hot Zoo” by Adrian Belew, album: Mr Music head (1989)

Pay here
Chimpanzee
Don't park
Under the aviary
Walk through heatwave afternoon fast food hot zoo

Do the shuffle to the buffalo
See the mad monkey by the lonely pay phone
Let's go fishin' in the air conditioned dark
Man, look at the bite on that great big bark

Waste here
Souvenir land
Don't feed
Nobody your hand
Rest room photograph pachyderm cat house hot zoo

Three sleepy zebra in their living room suits
Joke with a crazy cockatoo
Big giraffe in their injured party hats say
”are you gonna watch our customary nap?”

Eat here
A dinosaur egg
Don't touch
The tarantula legs
March like army ants itchin' for a px
Hot zoo

I dig iguana in their outer space duds
Sayin' “aren't you glad we only eat bugs?”
Closing time, quick! close those gates
Capture a few of these human apes

Exit here
Kangaroo
Don't forget
To come back soon

A song about an afternoon in the zoo. Considering previous animal welfare songs by Andrian Belew (in this album there is also an instrumental song named "Cruelty to animals") we think that this song is ironic by criticizing the practice of keeping wild animals in cage, away from their habitats and their free way of life as a spectacle for human curiosity, recreation and pleasure ground, superiority feeling and of course an income for the owner.

You can hear some songs from this album in youtube:
1967
Oh daddy

“Burned By The Fire We Make” by Adrian Belew, Album : Here (1994)

And when Man gained dominion
over land and the oceans
he began to harm the planet
with his asphalt and his toxins
and to lay the forest bare
and to poison even the air
and he killed every beast
and taught the seas how to bleed

Burned by the fire we make,
what a shame

Then the winds gave in
and the rain knew no season
and the sun came to beat
on a land of sand and diseases
and when God looked down
on the earth and saw it was broken
then the tears of God fell down
through a hole in the ozone

Burned by the fire we make
what a shame

This is the nature of the human race
to kill off anything that gets in our way
poor Mother Earth we disfigured her face
Man is the maker of his own disgrace

Burned by the fire we make
what a shame


Great lyrics that shows us what human really does to planet and consequently to himself. We get burned by the fire we make because we are too immature to control ourselves. Technology is thus like a gun found by a baby who starts playing with it shooting everywhere, even towards him

You can hear a song from this album in youtube:
I see you

"Only A Dream" by Adrian Belew, Album: Inner Revolution (1992)

The woman screams at the windy day;
Her children play in the acid rain.
The water is green and the sky is brown;
the cars and buildings, all broken down.

Now what in the world is happening here?
Will somebody please explain?
Nothing I see makes sense to me—
Maybe it's only a dream.

The deer in the forest or the eagle in the sky,
They see Man coming and they run to hide.
The birds on the shore will no longer fly,
they're covered in oil and they're bound to die.

Now how in the world does that make sense—
The killing of innocent beings?
What in the world is wrong with us?
Maybe it's only a dream.

The air we breathe and the food we eat;
Poor Mother Earth was poisoned in her sleep.

Now what in the world is happening here?
Will somebody please explain?
Nothing I see makes sense to me—
Maybe it's only a dream.

The woman screams at the wind and rain—
It's only a dream . . .
Just a bad dream . . .
What a bad dream . . .


Environmental destruction is something so irrational, so absurd to happen (the most logical and clever species acts in such a way completely against instict for survival and concern about future generations, so artist wonders if all these are only a bad dream

You can hear a song from this album in youtube

Big Blue Sun

Men In Helicopters by Adrian Belew, Album: Young Lions, 1990

wouldn't it be great...
to see the african plains
before they lay them to waste...
and only the bones remain

wouldn't it be poetry...
to shoot holes in the poachers we see
with an elephant gun...
men in helicopters fly
shooting rhinos from out of the sky
why do we always assume the planet is ours to ruin
what a legacy...
we're leaving behind...
what a legacy

wouldn't it be something...
for the men killing dolphins
to be caught up by their necks...
in their greedy fishing nets

wouldn't it be irony...
if the tuna fish canneries were to fall into the sea...
dolphins and the whales still left alive
cry to the stars in the deep blue night
'there's nowhere to hide,
the people on earth will not be denied'
what a legacy...
we're leaving behind...
what a legacy

wouldn't it be odd...
if there really was a God
and He looked down on earth
and saw what we've done to Her

wouldn't it be just...
if He pulled the plug on us and took away the sun
men in helicopters fly
shooting rhinos from out of the sky
why do we always assume the planet is ours to ruin
oh, and all the dolphins alive are cryin' to the deep blue night
'there's nowhere to hide,
the people on earth will not be denied'
what a legacy...
we're leaving behind

Great lyrics about aerial hunting of endangered species with high tech means and weapons that leave victims with no chance to escape. A devastating method, either a pervasive hobby and bloody desire for trophy or for greed. We’ve dealt again with the hunting of endangered species in Megadeth’s “Countdown to extinction”. The song refers to the nowadays illegal aerial hunting in many countries in Africa, but is a practice that keeps on existing because many body parts of the victims (horn of rhinos, tusk of elephants, etc) are believed to have therapeutic properties or are luxurious items for ornaments. But aerial hunting keeps on being a sport for some game animals like deers in USA, New Zealand, etc, and for some kinds of wolves, like those in Alaska.

You can hear this song among others in myspace
Myspace 1
Myspace 2

The Lone Rhinoceros by Adrian Belew, Album: Lone rhino, 1982

I'm a lone rhinoceros
there ain't one hell of a lots of us
left in this world

I stand alone in my concrete cell
where people stare and toss me Coke cans
I guess it's better than being poached
but I'd give my horn just to see my homeland

I'm a lone rhinoceros
there ain't one hell of a lots of us
left in this world

They say I am ugly,
call me a beast
I hear them snicker
when I'm half asleep
Is beauty such a big commodity
I always heard it was only so deep

I'm a lone rhinoceros
there ain't one hell of a lots of us
left in this world

I know the zoos protect my species
they give me food, collect my feces
but I can't help it, I miss the past
I'll never again see my good old mudbath

A song about wild life in cage. A rhino is sad because he’s closed in a zoo, away from his homeland and habitat. Keeping wild life in cage doesn’t serve knowledge and educational purposes. It’s a remnant of colonization era, when many rich collectors invade exotic places and steal cultural and archaeological items from exotic tribes and nations, capture strange and rare animals and kept them in cage in the zoos. Sometimes they also captured humans of exotic tribes and kept them in cages beside the cages of lions and rhinos. No respect of the way of a different life, no matter how good the living conditions in cage are. It’s like prisoners in a luxurious prison, do any of us prefer such a thing from freedom? The only educational message of keeping life in cage is the perpetuation of human superiority attitude towards other forms of life.

you can find this song to hear it in mp3 in the link below:
ADRIAN BELEW Free MP3 Download (stream)

You can hear some songs in myspace