A band I'm struggling to like, but slowly getting to grips with, album by album, track by track, is Spock's Beard. I
should like them. All the elements are there: prog rock, great lyrics, and of course the Star Trek connection. But somehow it's become hard work, though I think I'm finally beginning to warm to them.
And so they feature in our “More than words” section. Prog rock bands of course often write very deep and meaningful lyrics about diverse and often weird subjects, but I feel this deserves inclusion because it is about something at once normal and mundane, and also totally surreal. It's in fact the opening movement, if you will, to a suite which goes under the banner heading of “A flash before my eyes”, and it concerns the last moments before death, as the subject of the song sees a truck come screaming towards him at an intersection and knows he is about to die. The song traces his life in that “flashing before your eyes” phenomenon that's supposed to occur just before you die.
The ballet of the impact --- A flash before my eyes, part 1 (Spock's Beard) from “Octane”, 2005.
Music and Lyrics by Dave Meros and John Boegehold
The song is itself split into three parts; the first, I guess the overture, is called “Prelude to the past”. It's followed by “The ultimate quiet”, a slower, more moody and atmospheric instrumental, until “A blizzard of my memories” kicks in the lyric as the guy realises he's about to die. But it's not just that, oh no.
There are unspoken but written narrative passages that accompany each section of the suite, and in order for the song to be properly appreciated, it's necessary to reproduce them below, along with, and before, the lyric, as it is more the former than the latter that tell the real story, and make this song such a triumph, and so different to many other prog compositions.
The juxtapositioning of the ordinary, everyday things like the coffee cup on the seat, Jagger singing and the fact that one of the thoughts in the guy's head is that he has just paid off this car, with the wholly supernatural, like angels dancing down from Heaven, and his sudden fear that Heaven may not exist after all, that all that may await him after this life could be darkness, really makes the song.The whole of “A flash before my eyes” takes up more than half the album, over thirty-one minutes of the overall fifty-five.
So this is the song itself with the narrative underneath, and then the lyric.
9:27 a.m., today...
Suddenly, I'm aware of everything that surrounds me. About fifteen feet to my right, there's an old man picking out roses at a flower cart. He's leaning on a carved wooden cane, but barely maintaining his balance as a flurry of pigeons rises from the sidewalk around him. A few steps away on the corner, there's a little blonde girl with a pink plastic purse, holding her mother's hand as they wait to cross the street. I see all of this through the delicate, miniature rainbow made by the sun reflecting off the coffee spray from my "world's greatest dad" cup, which a moment ago was balanced on the passenger seat.
The intersection of West Lexington and Grant Avenue has become the cosmic nexus of all I am, ever was and will be. As profound as all of that seems, some small part of my brain is distracted by the irony of Mick Jagger singing "You Can't Always Get What You Want", coming from the radio of the speeding truck that has just begun ripping through my newly-paid-off, freshly washed Honda Accord.
So, is this it? Is this where an army of angels appears in blinding white light to sing me to my eternal rest? Is this where I sink forever into that darkest bog of dreamless sleep? I never really bought either poetic scenario, but it looks like I may finally get the answers to all of those herb-fueled philosophical questions that sprung up from endless, all-night discussions in college. Of course, this is a lot sooner than I ever imagined having to confront the ultimate reality.
There is one thing I know for sure. If I ever wake up, this is going to hurt like hell...
”The windshield explodes/ Like a bomb packed with diamonds.
There's a deafening silence; /Time flows to a crawl.
As the ballet of the impact/ Spreads out across the blacktop,
Angels dancing like raindrops /In the air as they fall.
So this is how it goes.
So this is how it ends.
A flatbed runs a red light:
No time to comprehend,
As a blizzard of my memories
Lights up like fireflies
In the sliver of an instant
In a flash before my eyes...