Your Attention Please!

Nog een zwaar onterecht vergeten artiest dan maar, de band Scars die slechts één album uitbracht: Author! Author! in 1981. .

Maar ik open deze log niet omdat deze band obscuur is, maar omdat ze tenminste één briljant nummer hebben opgenomen, getiteld Your Attention Please. Dit nummer is een bewerking van een gedicht van Peter Porter, en wordt gepresenteerd als een radio-mededeling waar de climax van de Koude Oorlog wordt aangekondigd.

Het komt neer op: laat huisdieren en bejaarden achter, geef je kinderen euthenasiepillen en duik de schuilkelder in. Dit wordt op droge, serieuze manier medegedeeld achter een speels basrifje, terwijl de laatste alinea wordt uitgeschreeuwd alsof de apocalyps reeds is nedergedaald. Hier het nummer. De videoclip staat ook op joetoep, maar die loopt steeds vast.

Nu is de kwestie dat de enorm toffe tekst van dit nummer nergens online te vinden is. Mijn poging (met nog enkele vraagtekens, suggesties meer dan welkom):

Your attention please!
The Polar DEW has just warned that
A nuclear strike of
At least one thousand megatons
Has been launched by the enemy
Directly at our major cities.

Inmediately after this announcement ends
You have approximately three REPEAT three minutes
To comply with the shelter requirements
Published in the Civil
Defence Code - section Atomic Attack, page 23a.

Anyone found in the street two minutes after ???
will be shot
Do not REPEAT Do not take well-loved pets (including birds)
Into your shelter - they will consume valuable fresh air.
Leave the old and bed-ridden,
you can do nothing REPEAT nothing for them.

A special genocide squad shall dispose ???

Remember to press the sealing
switch when everyone is in your shelter.
Set the radiation aerial, turn on the geiger barometer.
Turn off your Television now.
Turn off your radio immediately this broadcast ends.
At the same time secure all explosion ears plugs
Take down your plasma flasks.

Give your children
The pink pills in the C.D green container,
marked three and nine and then put them to bed.
Do not REPEAT Do not break the inside airlock seals
until the radiation All Clear shows
or your District touring Doctor rings your bell.
Watch the cuckoo in your perspex panel

If before this, your air becomes
Exhausted or any of your family
Is critically injured, administer
The pills marked 'Valley Forge'
(Black Pocket in No. 1 Survival Kit)
For painless death.

This announcement is ending. Our President
Has already given orders for
Massive retaliation - it will be
Decisive. Some of us may die.
But, statistically
It is not likely to be you.
All flags are flying fully dressed
On Government buildings - the sun is shining.
Death is the least we have to fear.
We are all in the hands of God,
Whatever happens happens it is by His Will.
[echo's]