Livin’ in a Powder-Keg and Givin’ Off Sparks!
Dear Coilhäusers,
I do not have a confession to make. I do not have an abiding and utterly irrational love of Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Not at all. Really, I don’t. Anything you may have heard to the contrary is the most vile and vicious slander. Again: I don’t like it. I sure as hell don’t crank up the volume when it comes on the radio. No Sirree. That’s only a repeated, annoying technical malfunction. I also, absolutely, 100% do not sing along in an overly dramatic fashion. Nope. Not me. Uh-uh.
The last thing I don’t do is lie awake at night, fearful that if my (non-existent) secret love of this power ballad came to light it would utterly ruin my reputation and any future rants of mine would be outright dismissed as they came up against the cold, hard brick wall of “Hey, Forbes is obviously wrong. The bastard likes Total Eclipse of the Heart. End of discussion.”
I mean, after all, it’s a terrible song: the gaudiest kind of syrupy ’80s excess. The video is even more awesome worse, so mind-numbingly ornate it provokes long, detailed thematic dissections. It has dancing greasers, sweaty fencers and dashing lads in suits wrecking elaborate dinners. And ninjas, of course, you can’t forget the frickin’ ninjas. Or the flying hive-mind of choir boys with radioactive eyes. Oh yeah, there’s also an angel. Really.
But all is not lost. If there is something I have no shame in adoring, hidden or otherwise, it’s the brilliant kitchen appliance battering, tracksuit-wearing Norwegian band Hurra Torpedo‘s cover of TEotH (my how I love that acronym. It sounds like an invocation to some grand hell-beast! Come, Great TEotH!). Minimalist and silly but surprisingly poignant, Hurra gives a whole new feel to this song-I-so-don’t-like.
See there? Doesn’t banging on kitchen appliances make everything better? Damn f’in right it does!
And I ain’t confessing crap.
February 11th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
“Or the flying hive-mind of choir boys with radioactive eyes,” is one of the finest sentences that I have ever seen.
February 11th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
There is no joy in this world more pure than the joy of putting on matching track suits with your buddies and destroying a stove with a giant pipe. Thank you for reminding me of these wonderful men, and that horrible, horrible song.
For more people who make music out of trash (or trash out of music), and for those who like their blues a bit on the brown side of ripe, might I sugest a little Doo Rag to cure what ails ya’?
Doo Rag
February 12th, 2009 at 12:01 am
That was massively entertaining.
February 12th, 2009 at 5:37 am
diet einsturzende. love it!
February 12th, 2009 at 6:01 am
Haha… reminds me of the Triplets of Belleville.
Man, what an f’d up movie that was.
February 12th, 2009 at 7:39 am
I also don’t love Total Eclipse of the Heart, and it’s certainly not on my MP3 player.
February 12th, 2009 at 11:03 am
So mr. Forbes, we hear you have a problem with ninjas, eh?
February 12th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
And I for one certainly did NOT want to move to England when this video came out for the merest chance of going to whatever school that was.
Nor did my band in the early 90’s ever do an industrial cover of this song that is really overshadowed by the brilliance of Hurra Torpedo.
February 12th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
How drunk do I have to get you to see an impromptu performance?
February 12th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
WhenI was young I used to turn on the window fan in my living room so it blew our white gauze curtains around my body much like in the video….Making dramatic faces and pantomiming to the lyrics….
..I never did find those bare chested Private School boys…until much LATER in life ‘natch!!!!!
February 13th, 2009 at 12:13 am
When I saw the title of this post, I was holding my breath, hoping some kitchen-appliance-pounding would follow. Thank you for not disappointing me.
Also, is it wrong – or so, so right – that Hurra Torpedo’s performance reminds me of a Rammstein show? Just…with less fire.
February 13th, 2009 at 8:52 am
Definitely a terrible song. I’m horrified that you posted it.
February 13th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
This reminded me of a song that as a child made me violently nauseous…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBlx1JffMQ4
Nothing could make that song better….even if one used a marching band made up of monkey’s who shot off fireworks during the chorus.
February 17th, 2009 at 4:03 am
Hurra Torpedo – that NEEDED to happen. Ridiculous, pointless violence = genius.
And Infamous Amos………… Doo Rag…. thankyou. So very much.
February 17th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
My preferred version of this song, I have to be honest, is the one from the Mighty Boosh; completely out of tune, out of the blue and with ridiculous dancing to boot. Mercifully short.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fev0cwv5otE&NR=1
June 2nd, 2009 at 2:02 am
Total Eclipse get the “Literal Video” treatment. Amazing: