Europe Rocks
by , (6 comments)
And if you disagree, I…will…bite you.
Not really. I don’t feel that strongly about it.
We’re moving into a new office building, and in the process of cleaning 35 years of stuff, I found a shelf of old cassettes. One of them, though, stands out for its sheer quality of good design (sic).
I’m talking of course about Europe’s “The Final Countdown”.
Seriously though, remember Europe? They were the Swedish hair metal/rock band that epitomized the bad side of the genre. And when I say bad, I don’t mean Michael Jackson “I’m Bad, I’m Bad, You know it, come on!” Bad, but actual literal Bad.
This is a band that formed in the late 70s as a progressive rock group. One that added synthesizers to soften their sound, in hopes of getting on the radio. This outfit makes Loverboy and Heart sound like The Who. They give sellouts a bad name.
Take a look at that cover. Such majesty! Apparently the band members committed some kind of space crime, and like the gang in Superman II, they’ve been locked up for eternity in sheets of glass, doomed to float the galaxy. I’m guessing someone heard their music and sentanced them to this reflective-prison.
So who exploded a nuclear blast to break them out, free to record an album of such incredible ineptitude?
Perhaps we can find a clue in the pair of non-rock-star looking characters in the bottom two glass prisons. Upon closer examination, they appear to be extras from a Cure video, circa 1985. So its not them.
Superman? Nah, he’d already moved on to fighting Richard Pryor and his super-computer by then.
Batman? I don’t think the Bat-Wing can break the atmosphere.
Wonder Woman? That invisible airplane was cool, but I don’t think it can escape the gravitational pull of the Earth.
AquaMan? While he did have questionable taste in music, he’s already amphibious and I don’t think he also has the superpower of space flight.
So it had to be that taco stain Green Lantern. Why, Green Lantern, why?
See what havoc you’ve wreaked? The song list is so bad I don’t have a word for it. So I’m going to invent one right now. Horridous. The song list is horridous.
The Final Countdown/Rock The Night/Carrie/Danger On The Track/Ninja/Cherokee/Time Has Come/Heart Of Stone/On The Loose/Love Chaser
If you were to go to the hobby shop and purchase a “Hair Band Paint By Numbers” kit, I’m guessing those song titles would be part of the template. Although any band with a song called Ninja gets at least a thumbs up, if only temporarily.
The sleeve from Europe now graces the edge of my computer monitor so I can admire its horridousness every minute of the day. I love it.
Horridous.
Sorry, I had to say that one more time.
Comments (6)
Paul said:
Man, Tom, that album cover’s so good it hurts! Nice marksmanship on nailing the Superman II villain look-alikes as well…
You strike me as someone who would get a major jones out of this piece of Mr. T wonderment as well: http://www.inzenity.com/mrt/ (if you haven’t already run across it…)
Enjoy, Tom - more “T-ness” than any human being should probably experience in a single dosage…
I think we might need to just convert the Blog into a Europe tribute site and get it over with…
Posted on November 4, 2004
Donovan Beery said:
I think we might need to just convert the Blog into a Europe tribute site and get it over withﾖ
I couldn’t come up with a better way to spend my time if I tried! So who is going to program the “final countdown” to the site’s conversion (so bad it hurts).
Posted on November 4, 2004
Paul said:
I’d like to make one of the seminal contributions to the newly commissioned “Europe”-oriented Blog direction - a band history provided from a completely surreal source: http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/sciencefairprojectsencyclopedia/Europe(band)
What science was involved in the research that went into this?! - Again, perhaps better that mankind not ask such questions…
Tom - any idea who the illustrator on the cover for that was? Useless trivia that should very much be exposed in the midst of this inquiry!
Posted on November 4, 2004
Tom said:
You’ve done a dangerous thing here, Paul, by getting me going. Hold on for the ride.
Who illustrated this masterpiece? Some cat named Les Katz. Holy untended pun Batman, I had no idea that guys’ name would be Katz when I called him a cat. I was looking it up while I typed. Wow.
Anyway, it also lists Art Direction by Joel Zimmerman.
Blink. Blink.
I’m flabbergasted. It took two people to construct this masterpiece. That means there had to have been some brainstorming before they put together this cover. I’m going to take a wild guess that the night before they had a couple of pints of Kalas僕, some swedish meatballs, and watched Superman II.
Les: “Hey Zimm, remember last night in that movie, when General Zod and his gang are imprisoned in those glass jail cells? What if we put the band members in those?”
Zimm: “Brilliant! What else you got?”
Les: “And instead of floating over Krypton, we have them floating over Earth. We throw in a couple of random people encased in other cells. And then…and then, we use that Europa font! Its close to their name, and it looks cool!”
Zimm: “Brilliant!”
I think that’s probably how the creative process happened.
—
Reading more of the liner notes, I notice their fan club is managed by some outfit named “Hot Management” in Stockholm. I don’t have a joke, it just struck me as funny.
They also seem to thank a lot of people with umlauts in their names. Imagine that, being a Swedish band and all. Either that or they’re playing that old childhood game “Place-The-Umlauts-In-The-Surname”. I love that game. Too bad I always lost.
At least they don’t thank their hairdressers like Poison did.
The band also includes this line: “And last, but not least, very special thanks to you!” Well, you’re quite welcome, members of Europe.
See, this is the stuff you miss by stealing “The Final Countdown” on Napster when you were in college. Its only when you buy (or in this case, rescue) the actual album that you can read and then make fun of, the liner notes.
—
Love the Mr. T site by the way. I remember seeing that video when I was about 6 years old. So much funnier now.
Posted on November 4, 2004
Les Katz said:
Jeez guys get a reality whats important check…I did the cover for CBS if I recall, met the snottiest little blonde haired music narcassists (The Band)I’D EVER COME ACROSS, AND GOT PAID..Believe me ,if it had been my concept, instead of them letting me throw in only lttle crumbs of ideas like the trail of floating Marshall stacks in the distance,(Whoop tee do) it might have been a bit more exciting. The Band submitted their concept and more or less that was it.They would barely speak to a “lowly personage “like myself at the meeting.. I’ve got the art, it was a nice piece and my thought are.. Hey You(Europe) make the music and when there’s art to be made.. Leave it or at least accept knowledgeable input from people who have THEIR particular specialty.. That would be me.. And thats ANOTHER reason why I now make furniture instead of Illustrate. Les Katz
Posted on December 1, 2005
Nate Voss said:
Les Katz, you have just summed up the awesomest tale of client/illustrator relationships in the world. “You just know how to draw, so leave the thinking to us. Did you ever see Superman 2?” I’ve found that most illustrators in the world are left completely at the whims of the clients and art directors that they work for. If they want green lazers, then damnit you’ve got to put those green lazers in there. Yikes.
I feel you, man.
Posted on December 1, 2005