January 7, 2008 – 7:45 pm
(The street I lived on from January 1987 until I went to college in August 1992; I was there for breaks from school until August 1995, but it was never really home after 1992, not really.)
In 1987, I discovered Europe. Not the continent, the band.
And I fell in love.
Now, I know that some people think that they’re terribly cheesy and in a lot of ways, I’d agree. (I’d argue, though, that musically they were no worse than any of their contemporaries in their peculiar little subgenre and in many cases they’re better.) Their songs are often mawkish, awkward, derivative and plain difficult to listen to now, 20 years later. On The Final Countdown album, in addition to the title track, there’s a power ballad about some girl named Carrie, one about rocking the night away (the video for that one is in a Hard Rock Cafe), a song about the Cherokee tribe and one about ninjas. Yes, ninjas. Also a song that might about bloody highway death or beating up a mugger on a running track, I’m not completely sure–and that’s after reading the lyrics.
But you know what? It doesn’t matter that the songs are, essentially, Velveeta.
In 1987, I was 13. We’d just moved from the Tidewater area of Virginia to the northern Detroit suburbs. I felt more out of place and unpopular than I probably was, but I do know this: I was deeply unhappy and remained so for a long time. My parents’ marriage was clearly going down the tubes, I was having to spend a lot of time with my father’s family–none of whom seemed to understand me–and I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on (as all 13 year olds do, really).
One of the few bright things in all of that teenaged angst (and compared to what I’d go through a few years later, that angst was nothing) was my small pile of cassette tapes which I’d saved nickels, dimes, and quarters for–Europe, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Guns ‘N Roses. I didn’t get an allowance, so anything I wanted to buy extra for myself had to be bought from lunch money leftovers, hence the scraping together of the loose change. So those six months when my mother thought she’d taken them away from me? I was totally sneaking them into my room and listening on the sly (while reading her romance novels, she was particularly fond of ones featuring sheikhs and hapless English lasses). I was also able to circumvent the parental lock she’d put on MTV because it made me grumpy. Looking back, I’m pretty sure it’s being a teenager that was making me grumpy, not Adam Curry and his big hair.
Of them all, Europe was my favorite, though. I’m not completely sure why, but possibly because of all the hair bands that were getting a lot of radio play at the time, they were the least popular and who doesn’t love an underdog? I do know this, though: they were the first music that I had that was mine that wasn’t my parents’, wasn’t my sister’s. Mine.
In many ways, Europe was my first fandom. I bought magazines with interviews and pictures of them–my bedroom wall was plastered with Joey Tempest’s face; I had all their albums, even their eponymous self-titled debut which, at the time, was nearly impossible to get in the US (my copy was a vinyl LP); and then there’s this little fact: I wrote execrable fan fiction about them. Which has disappeared into the ether forever and ever amen and thank God, because what I remember about it is truly cringe-worthy. It’s one of the little ironies of my life that I lived on Mary Sue Street at the time.
And you know, I stuck with them for years, before moving onto more socially acceptable bands: R.E.M., Guadalcanal Diary, Indigo Girls, The Connells, Ani Difranco, John Wesley Harding. But always, there in the back of the cassette collection, then the CD collection, and now the MP3 collection, was Europe. I’d pull the songs out once in a while for a listen, and initially, it was in an ironic sort of way. But now? I listen to Europe because I like them, because in a dark time their music brought a little light to my life and it does me good to remember that.
One of the most interesting things about Europe, though, is that they really do seem to get what it’s like to be a fan–one of the singles from their 2004 album is a song about how they were fans of Thin Lizzy back in the 70’s and how much that band meant to them–and there’s something just so earnest and fannish about that and how can you not love them for it?
(Also, I’m totally convinced that Joey Tempest likes SF/F. It’s a persistent theme throughout their music from the 80’s, I mean, “The Final Countdown” is about space travel! To Venus! Many light years to go! Things to be found! Totally science fiction!)
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