Artista: Les Savy Fav
  Canción: Reformat (Dramatic Reading)

The original script for this is lost and even the band can’t tell what we meant in some parts,
but we know what we were thinking and that’s what counts.
So the story of Reformat is of a problem aboard a sub and then the execution of a Sailor.
In the first act, inside a submarine,
a group of sailors are playing poker and discussing life on board the vessel.
Some complain of the Captain’s instance on pushing their sub, the oldest in the fleet, to her limits.
The Captain sees himself reflected in the old sub and wants to prove both of their strengths.
The boat is the last commissioned diesel sub in a fleet where all the others are nuclear.
Note here that it is Les Savy Fav’s understanding that diesel subs operate thusly:
Its diesel engines run while the ship travels along the surface releasing exhaust and taking in clean air.
These gas engines charge large batteries.
The batteries are used while submerged because they don’t consume air or give off exhaust.
One day the sub is driven too deep and does not have enough battery power to surface.
The captain decides that he wants to feed the engine the air reserved for the sailors,
gambling that there is enough air for both breathing and the engine.
When the engineer forbids it the captain kills the engineer
and cuts open the exhaust pipe to the engine.
This will turn out to be folly.
The next section relates to the final part of the song- "And when he opened it up….".
It is the story of the Parents of a young sailor
who died in the submarine disaster which the captain caused by cutting the air pipe.
It is about the shock and horror they feel when the news of their sons death is delivered.
The final part relates to the middle section of the song.
The idea is that by some surreal twist of Naval law the captain,
who is the only survivor of the submarine disaster,
is sentenced to be executed on Television.
The newsman assigned to cover the event has mixed feelings about the assignment.
The moment of The captain’s death act’s out the final 3 couplets of the first section
"In a basket…" That makes perfect sense.