Europe, "The Final Countdown"

Ground Control to Major Tempest  

THE VIDEO Europe, "The Final Countdown," The Final Countdown, 1986, Epic 

SAMPLE LYRIC "It's the final kee-yount-down / [lots of signature keyboard riff] / the final kee-yount-down / [still more keyboards]" 

THE VERDICT Okay people, I'm warning you now: This post goes severely off-topic, even for me. 

Well, actually technically it's not off-topic — I mean, it is all relevant to "The Final Countdown" in one way or another. But do I actually talk about the video? Umm... let's see. 

I honestly could not be happier that at this point in history, this song is firmly associated with pompous weirdos. Seriously, there could be no greater tribute to Joey Tempest et al. but for this to be more or less the theme song for Gob Bluth, as masterfully played by Will Arnett on the dear, departed Arrested Development. 

If you are the one person left who hasn't seen this show, what are you waiting for. Do it before the movie comes out and inevitably leaves us all with a funny taste in our mouths. I'm not saying it's going to be Sex and the City II bad, just that with this much build-up, it's going to have to be like, well, I don't even know what in order to appease the fans. 

Then again, oh snap — "The Final Countdown" was also Bryan Danielson aka Daniel Bryan's intro music in ROH. What, WWE wouldn't pony up for that one? Then again, I guess "The Ride of the Valkyries" is a little more, you know, classy. But still, I would sing along with him! Plus I feel like it would allow them to play up his awesome angle as sort of an accidental ladies' man. 

Anyway. "The Final Countdown." Why are we here? I had kind of wanted to save this one until I had something I was counting down to, but eventually I didn't feel like waiting. This is mainly because I recently purchased Singstar 80s — yes, the karaoke video game — and it's got "The Final Countdown" on there, and so now I have it pretty much permanently stuck in my head. 

Sadly, this is more or less the only metal or even metal-ish song on that game— there's no Poison or anything (that said, I think I have "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" on not one but two other karaoke games). They do a weird job with it, too — there's not enough singing at the beginning, so they make you sing along with the keyboard. "Da da da da, dadadadat-da!" over and over again. 

But singing "The Final Countdown" does force you to remember what a totally bizarre song it is. You sometimes forget when you're listening to it, 'cause Joey's weird screechy voice is really easy to hear as nonsense syllables, but this song actually has a plot.

 

It's about a manned space mission to Venus. I guess you could see it as a sort of internal monologue for the astronauts. Supposedly Joey Tempest copied the premise directly from was inspired by "Space Oddity." (Which was inspired by 2001 — how far back can we trace this thing?) But trust, this is no heir even to "Major Tom (Coming Home)". Possibly though it is an heir to First Spaceship on Venus. 

Okay really though, this is interesting. So Stanley Kubrick directs 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is written by Arthur C. Clarke, who based it partially on various pieces of short science fiction he'd written. That film inspires David Bowie to write "Space Oddity," which is a dialogue between "ground control" and "Major Tom." I guess he didn't want to call him "Major Dave" lest it seem like it was about himself? (Or maybe Hal said "I'm afraid I can't let you do that, David Bowie.") 

Somehow a lot of accounts mix Elton John's "Rocket Man" into this lineage, since they're sort of thematically similar. As a moment's Googling just told me though, my long-time intuition about that song was correct — "Rocket Man" is not a "Space Oddity" hanger-on but is indeed based on the Ray Bradbury story "The Rocket Man." 

Fun fact about me: I am not much of one for science fiction, but I have a deep affection for Ray Bradbury. I read The Illustrated Man, which includes "The Rocket Man", at my dad's suggestion when I was ten, and loooved it. I've read a lot more since, but it's still my favorite. 

In any event, Elton John's "Rocket Man" is on a separate mission from "Major Tom." However, he is not on a separate mission from the much less well-known song by the same name that apparently Bernie Taupin nabbed that song from. Sigh. Anyway, that "Rocket Man" was based on the Bradbury story, so we can still count it as separate from this whole "Major Tom" genealogy. 

Anyway, then we get the sort of beginning of the bad 80s genealogy. Bowie ushers in his 80s phase by releasing a second song referencing "Major Tom." Instead of a space hero, he's just a junkie. I'm sure it's a bunch of metaphors or whatever, but for me it's just like 80s David Bowie is not that good. 

From here though, it only gets cheesier with 1983's "Major Tom (Coming Home)." Oh wait, to clarify, we've now moved on from David Bowie to Peter Schilling. In any event, it offers much more specificity as to what the hell happened up in space, and seems to offer us a vision of Tom as peacefully reconciled to his own demise. Or sort of hallucinating at the end and believing his home to be in space. Whatever. 

All of this finally brings us to 1986, and Europe. Instead of just "Major Tom", now we've got a group of astronauts doing a sort of group internal monologue. The "her" in this one is Earth, not a wife and kids as in Bowie or Schilling. But Europe's major addition to the whole "Major Tom" mythology is his destination: Venus.

 

Venus? Really? I mean yes, it rhymes with "seen us." Now call me old-fashioned, but I am pretty sure "Mars" and "moon" rhyme with quite a few things, too. I mean Venus just does not seem hospitable. I remember learning all the different planets in third grade or so, and it was like well Mercury's close to the sun and way too hot. But then Venus is like, covered with poisonous gases. So why not, I don't know, the moon? It's right there. You're all bouncy on it. It's not crazy-hot. Plus given that all these songs are about the space program of the 1960s, the real-life objective was clearly the moon. 

But if Europe want to go all exotic, why not Mars? Mars does seem to be the one that people feel is most feasible. I can think of like, dozens of Bradbury stories that take place on Mars (I mean, The Martian Chronicles is more or less just Mars-related stories!). But I can only think of one that takes place on Venus — "The Long Rain," which is also in The Illustrated Man. Spoiler alert: It doesn't go too well for those astronauts. 

Mercifully, Europe don't have the last word in the "Major Tom" mythology — I'm sure there's actually much more of it than what I'm chronicling here, but I'm limited by what I know about. 

In any event, the most recent addition I can think of comes from one of my favorite TV shows, The Venture Brothers. In their first season and in what I still think is one of their finest episodes — "Ghosts of the Sargasso" — they basically do "Space Oddity." Masterfully, as always, it combines being hilarious and containing a plethora of pop-culture references with creating a complex, detailed world for the characters. 

"Major Tom" was sent to space by Dr. Jonas Venture, his wife remarried the "Action Man" (who then is revealed to be a member of Team Venture), and so on. Oh, and a lot of it is a combined homage to one of the earliest episodes of Jonny Quest ("Mystery of the Lizard Men," which also takes place in the Sargasso Sea) and to numerous episodes of various Scooby-Doo shows (all the ones featuring ghost pirates). I mean, how can I not love this? 

Hmm, wasn't there something I was supposed to be talking about? Ohhh right, the video, the video. 

Well. We basically see Europe performing live-ish (in their homeland of Sweden, by the way) interspersed with footage of their "control room", as well as shots of various places in Europe (the continent, not the band! There's likely also a lot of Sweden in there, but I'm bad at recognizing this stuff). A lot of the footage has old-school computer text — you know, green or yellow text on a black screen with a blinking box cursor — superimposed over it. 

But yeah, that's about it. I mean, unless you really want a lot of descriptions of Joey's flared nostrils, crazy perm, and Johnny Nitro necklace. But really, do you want that? Wasn't learning about all these weird songs related to "The Final Countdown" more worthwhile? Maybe?

Europe, "Cherokee"

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.