Europe
The Final Countdown

THE REVIEW

Have you ever wondered why they teach music education in middle school? Well, simple, to create social castes. Indeed, those who play the recorder and those who play the melodica, or, to put it another way, the unfortunate and the privileged (long before those jerks from Big Brother arrived) or, more simply, the lucky and the idiots. While the "melodicists" soared with their instrument, producing memorable melodies, we idiot pipers tried every trick to produce a sound that wasn't an aborted fart from that damn recorder. We had to cover the holes well, we did, but nothing, the hole of an old colitic man's butt was more harmonious! Now, I say, what sense does it make to create a hole under the recorder if it must always be plugged? A classmate of mine whom we called Metternich, because he was cunning, wise, and skilled in diplomacy with girls, tried to attach a chewing gum to it, but nothing, that damn thing farted like crazy. And there was no way to change our minds and switch to the melodica, because the choice was irrevocable, under penalty of a bad grade or suspension. There was, however, our music teacher, a bassoon graduate who one day, seeing a cassette of The Final Countdown going around the class, exclaimed: "Ah, these are Europe! I haven't heard such pompous synths since the days of Emerson Lake & Palmer!"
Now, we grew up on Pupo and Toto Cutugno and had no idea who this EmeronCaz and Paller were nor what these synths were. On the adjective pompous, Metternich, who was also the oldest as he had been suspended for exposing himself to the classmates, hypothesized that it might be some strange sexual practice. Anyway, that nutty teacher packed up his bassoon in all senses and by the end of the year got out of our hair...

For those like me who lived their teenage years in the '80s, they know well that kids back then didn't care much about the effects of Chernobyl nor about the We fuck the world initiative, but they basically had four questions:
1) why if Ralph was a supermaxieroe he flew like an idiot
2) if Tracy Chapman was male or female
3) if in the end the little miller managed to hook up with Clementina
4) how Joey Tempest could be liked by girls.

It was precisely on this last question that answers were not found. Take someone, put them in tight leather pants, give them a Marcella Bella perm, put on three fingers of makeup and you'll have the sex symbol of the '80s. The dramatic thing was that if one of us tried it, for sure they would call him a fag besides the certain suspension (which then I don’t know why in middle school for every damn thing you did they would suspend you).
But another sad episode is linked to the song The Final Countdown and a year-end party. Now, everyone knows the importance of middle school parties, just as it is well known that it was precisely from a bad party experience that the first disorders of the worst serial killers began, from Hannibal Lecter to the Monster of Florence to that communist who ate children. Anyway, the coolest dance was the one with the couple draw when finally I got the prettiest girl at the party, the one I had been hitting on for a while. Until that moment we had been dancing very closely when, suddenly, PAPAPAPAM, PAPAPAMPAMPAM, PAPAPAM, PAPAPAPAPA, The Final Countdown!!!
Shouts of joy from everyone except me who saw my chance slip away to get close to that pretty chick. Not that I cared much, I would have danced a slow one even with I Will Survive in the background (I know many of you can’t help but move when you hear it...), but not her, The Final Countdown was her call to go wild and go wild she did. Next round, new slow dance, but I get the ugliest girl at the party... Now, it seems that the lyrics of that song talk about a missile countdown. Well, I’ve always hoped that when that missile took off it would head straight up Joey Tempest’s ass and rest in peace to his soul!!!