ADAM PAVITT

The words to ‘No Arms’ came to me through a quite strange encounter. I was catching a train between Coffs Harbour and Sydney and it was the middle of the night when a new passenger joined the train. The smell of alcohol was strong on his breath and he started to mumble as he sat down in the seat right in front of me. As he went into his rant, for some reason , i took up a pen and started writing down what he was saying. Writing in the half-light i saw the strangest words appear on the page. “It’s contaminating the atmosphere, poison in the sky. So excuse me for breathing, accidents happen. Just when you thing something good in the world is going to go on, there’s no need to argue. You know i’ve got no arms”. It was a strange moment and within a minute the man had drifted off to sleep. I kept the words in my song book and waited for a melody to arrive for a few years.
In later years as i learned of Australia’s greedy sale of large quantities of uranium throughout the world and began to hear terms like ‘preemptive strike’used in the public arena, the song evolved into being about the insanity of war.
The words “no arms” to me speak about the possibility of a world without weapons and war. A Utopian vision of a peaceful world. The words “no arms” also references the waste and destruction of war in regards to amputees. You see the victims in every war-torn country, young and old they lose their limbs in the senseless violence that plagues our planet.
Us humans are a strange species. Brought up with action figures and toy guns. Coaxed into joining the army to get some discipline, a trade and see the world, we are not told about the gun that is going to be pointed at the back of your head when you don’t want to fight in the heat of a battle. Time and time again war has brought out the very worst in human nature. Mass murder, genocide, rape, torture, environmental destruction and cultural decimation all go hand in hand with war! No longer do the leaders of countries lead their troops into battle. No the puppeteers play with the lives of many in the cowardly comfort of the senate. The war is waged from afar and we the public are offered sanitised images via satellite. until we are desensitised enough to play the latest video reenactment of a conflict scenario.
The biggest losers in terms of lives lost are often everyday people. Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 there have been over 100,000 civilian casualties! All this on the premise of Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction. No weapons have been found and now a country is in chaos because some people think ‘war is the answer’. The oil flows from the wells and the money flows out of the country. A shallow democracy is imposed and the streets are safer. Try telling that to the people of Iraq who have lost loved ones, family and friends to the horrors of this war.
For me ‘No Arms’ stepped into it’s own when Cameron spike-Porter added the final acoustic guitar riffs. The chorus run is a bit like a riff from ‘The Police’ and the solo wind downs are so tasty. I have listened to the song alot, as Stefan Ehrenfeld and i put together a film-clip over a couple of months. This involved playing the audio over and over. It is always a pleasure to work with Stefan, as he loves the music and is always open to creative exploration.The eventual fusion of music and images i think captures the vibe of the song well. The song is meant to be hard-hitting and opinionated. It is meant to be bleak and hopeful simultaneously. I hope this song gets to as many people as possible . I also hold hope that one day the horrors of war and conflict will cease to exist…..
Adz