How the West Was... What?!
THE VIDEO Europe, "Cherokee,"
The Final Countdown, 1986, Epic
Click here to watch this video NOW!
SAMPLE LYRIC "Chero-keeeeeeee! / OH! / Riding on the trail of tears! / Cher-o-keeee-eeeee /
OH! / Riding on the tra-aiill of teeeears!"
THE VERDICT This Thanksgiving, let us be thankful for many things. Our friends, our families, and our health, sure. But also, let us be thankful for the internet, and things like YouTube and Vh1 Classic, that let us relive those metal memories that so few of us thought to commit to VHS (or Betamax!) at the time. I remember fantasizing that such a thing might exist when I was younger, and dismissing these hypotheticals as improbable in my lifetime, if not impossible. And yet here I am, having come a long way since my first foray onto the Internet circa 1994-1995 (I went to Yahoo! and searched "music." The top hit at the time was
Addicted to Noise).
I mean shoot, a mere ten years after that, I had this blog. And every year that I've maintained this blog (let us think not on the dark times of 2007-2008), it gets more and more do-able. You don't even want to know what I had to do to get my hands on digital versions of music videos in 2004. Suffice to say it wasn't easy, and I didn't exactly have my choice of what I could cover.
And now, here we are, Thanksgiving 2009, and I have my choice of turkey day-related fare. Now admittedly, we have to take "related" with a grain of salt here, as there aren't exactly metal songs about pilgrims or puritans (unless maybe you count songs about witch burnings, though I've always interpreted
"Am I Evil?" as taking place in medieval Europe rather than colonial New England). However, we have a veritable cornucopia of songs about native Americans, or, as every single one of these songs refers to them, Indians.
Taking a liberal interpretation, I've opted to go with Europe's "Cherokee" this Thanksgiving. I know, I know -- this is a song about events that happened nearly 200 years after the first Thanksgiving. But just listen to the drums or
Joey Tempest's hearty "ohhhh-ohhhhhh-
ooooohoooohhhhhh-ohhh-ohhh!" at the beginning of this song and try to tell me you don't enjoy it. The closest to not enjoying this I'll allow is "guilty pleasure."
I mean yes, there are many reasons to hate Europe (the band, not the continent!). Like
Krokus before them, the purely pragmatic (and certainly not artistic!) switch from prog rock to metal. Joey Tempest's total lack of grace about said switch and avowed love of money. Admittedly, this makes it hilarious to read old reader letters in
Circus or
Hit Parader following any interview with him -- his complete and utter lack of artifice, his inability to articulate being in it for anything
but the money really brings out the haters. Plus it's always funny to read who readers think is
not in it for the money. And of course, lest we forget, the perms, wide-neck shirts, necklaces, and constant goofy faces.
And the keytar! Keytar!! Europe aren't afraid to put their keyboard player in their videos (unlike, say, Cinderella), but they go one step further than Bon Jovi and give him a
KEYTAR.
And in this video, they prominently display that keytar all over an impressive-looking American western landscape, as this video bizarrely recreates (like the song) the removal in the 1830s of five native American tribes (including the Cherokee, who I think became most strongly associated with this by the fact that almost a third of them died) from the southeast to... Oklahoma. Yes, the dust bowl.
Not the epic, southwestern landscape depicted here. Look, they're Swedish, we can't expect them to get everything right. I mean, think of their countrymen (and women) in ABBA --
"Fernando" isn't exactly a documentary about the Mexican-American War either. Wait, why are all these Swedish bands writing songs about American history?
This video begins with the afore-mentioned drums and screaming. We see a man and woman straight out of a
Stetson ad setting up camp next to their SUV (a
Jeep Cherokee?). The members of Europe rock out on the hills above them, getting close-ups mainly of Joey's over-emoting and fist pumping. Everyone except Joey pretty much gets backlit throughout this entire video, so it's hard to tell anyone else apart what with the identical perms. Joey's favorite move involves planting his feet, knees bent, and then wiggling his hips while leaning back and shaking his fists.
We then see footsteps mysteriously appearing in the ground, and the man has apparently left the camp site to sit by himself in the desert reading a
Time-Life book about native Americans. The woman looks around like she sees something, and then suddenly we do --
ghost indians!! On ghost horses, no less. This reminds me of one of the scariest things I've ever read -- the short story "Ghost Dance" by Sherman Alexie. (It's in
this quite good compilation if you want to read it.) It's unclear why the ghosts on horses are semi-opaque, but whoever's making the footprints is invisible, but just go with it.
As the sun sets, the woman for whatever reason decides it's a good time to check how she looks in a hand mirror she's conveniently placed near their camp fire. What is this!? War paint has suddenly appeared on her cheeks! (That or she didn't pick up the mirror till after she'd finished her makeup. That or she's
a big Nikki Sixx fan.) She spins around, and suddenly the ghosts on horses have gotten a lot less opaque. We also see a semi-gratuitous shot of a scorpion (the insect, not
the German band).
Oh snap! The non-opaque types on horses appear to be -- umm -- from far away they look like conquistadors, but closer up we see they're US soldiers. They're coming closer, causing the guy to drop his book and run away. This leads up to the main action, which is punctuated by all the members of Europe raising their fists for a big "
OH!" If you thought you couldn't get a good look at the other members of the band before, now they're playing in the dark next to the camp fire. And you can just guess who gets to stand close enough to the fire to actually be visible.
The woman is standing in the campsite all nervous and in the dark, and somehow, in twilight, the soldiers and indians converge and do battle at their campsite. A tipi has appeared amidst all this, and big moments in the guitar and keytar solos keep causing explosions to happen. The man's back, and he and the woman hide behind the Jeep to watch all this. Also let me mention that even though when they show all of Europe it's night, both the guitarist and the keytarist keep getting to play right in front of the battle where it's dusk. Also seriously, where are all these explosions coming from? Their increasing intensity seems to cause all the members of Europe to coordinate their pelvic thrusting and slow head-banging.
The combat goes on for an incredibly long time, but eventually, we see that it's morning again and all the ghosts are gone. The tipi has somehow had only it's cloth bits burned off, and the man and woman apparently spent
the entire night awake and crouching beside the Jeep. They stand up and peer over it, only to see... Europe, silhouetted on a hillside.
Even without the ghosts, this video's ridiculous, and has nothing to do with the Cherokees. It takes place in the southwest, which has nothing to do with the Trail of Tears, and the native Americans they show appear to be Plains indians. However, it must be said that I am guilty of the same, as I am using this crazy, inaccurate version of American history for my own crazy, inaccurate celebration of Thanksgiving. Does this mean I am thankful for the US government's legacy of horrific policies toward native Americans? No. Does this mean I am thankful for Europe (again, band not continent)? Yes.
Let's face it. Much like ABBA before them and Ace of Base after, these Swedes make completely bizarre songs (e.g.
"All That She Wants" -- if
that's all she wants, why not a sperm bank?) that are, nonetheless, relentlessly catchy. Keytar or no, I can listen to every song on this album again and again. And I can really belt along with the lyrics too, which is definitely enjoyable in certain contexts (the shower, long drives). You want to hate it, but something about it just eats its way into your brain, and once there, propagates like something out of the
Twilight Zone (or technically
The Night Gallery). And next thing you know, you're listening to
Out of this World. Even the haters at allmusic like them --
"You could live without The Final Countdown, but why?" -- proving Europe to be, if you'll pardon a truly grotesque simile, the smallpox-laden blankets of heavy metal. The second you accept them, it's already too late.
