This next review is an example of
how sometimes I think I’m done an artist in the Odyssey, only to find myself
inspired to buy another album.
Disc 702 is…. Crazy World
Artist: Scorpions
Year of Release: 1990
What’s up with the Cover? It’s a key for the
door to some parallel universe. We know this because the door is slightly ajar
on the right hand side and we can see it does not simply open to more scrub
plain. The parallel universe that is slightly revealed looks pretty ordinary
but I assume it’s as crazy as ours, given the title. Or maybe the universe
where doors stand in the middle of the plain and serve as portals to somewhere
else in the crazy world we’re already in. But I digress…
How I Came To Know It: I knew this album when it came
out, but only bought it recently.
How It Stacks Up: I now have three Scorpions albums. Of the three, “Crazy
World” must fall to the bottom of the list. Since this is the last review of
the three, here’s a summary of how I feel about all the Scorpions in my
collection:
- Blackout: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 290)
- Love at First Sting: 2 stars (reviewed at Disc 309)
- Crazy World: 2
stars (reviewed right here)
Rating: 2 stars
This album is bittersweet for me. I bought it to be reminded of a great
time in world history, but recent events make it harder to appreciate it the
way I once did.
I am a child of the Cold War, and most of my teenage years were spent
with the ever-present danger of World War III, Mutually Assured Destruction
(MAD) and assorted other nuclear terrors. In 1984, Iron Maiden even did a song
called “2 Minutes to Midnite” which
was a reference to the proximity of the Doomsday Clock to Armageddon.
So it was a special day for me in 1989 when I turned on the news one
morning to see ordinary people clambering around on the Berlin Wall, tearing it
down. I had never lived a day in my life without that ever-present symbol of war
and here I was witnessing it, being destroyed by people who had simply had
enough of living in a world divided.
I remember crying tears inspired partly by my fellow man’s ability to
forgive and move forward as well as a fair bit of plain old relief. I settled
down on the couch – skipping all my classes to just watch that God-damned hateful
wall get dismantled, one tiny piece of concrete at a time.
The Scorpions are a German band, and so they had lived with the Berlin
Wall in a much more visceral and real way than I ever had. In 1990 they
released “Crazy World” with an anthem to commemorate the reunification of their
long-divided country.
That anthem – “Wind of Change”
– is why I own this album. For some, I’m sure this metal ballad is hokey, with
its overwrought whistling intro and its candle waving chorus. I admire its
sense of open wonderment that maybe the whole terrible Cold War was really
ending. This song perfectly captures a moment in time when we all felt safe to
dream about a better world again. As Klaus Meine sings it:
“The world is closing in
Did you ever think
That we could be so close, like
brothers
The future’s in the air
I can feel it everywhere
Blowing with the wind of change.”
For us iconoclastic metal-heads, who had been weaned on a cynical
embrace of death and war, it was an odd shift. Five years earlier, Iron Maiden
had sung about the doomsday clock hands threatening doom. Three years earlier Megadeth
had asked “Peace sells…but who’s buying?”
Now we were now being told by one of our earliest metal legends to take a
chance on optimism. It was a weird and welcome moment.
The rest of “Crazy World” is fairly forgettable – if inoffensive –
eighties metal fare. At times it is even a little offensive – like the Frampton
guitar effects on “Money and Fame”
which sits very out of place on the album overall. Other than that, the guitar
riffs are strong, but at times feels derivative of better albums that came
before, like Iron Maiden’s “Powerslave” or Judas Priest’s “Defenders of the
Faith.”
As a Scorpion’s album it certainly doesn’t hold up to the masterpiece that
is “Blackout” and it falls short even of the merely OK “Love at First Sting.” Still,
it matters to me. It shows that metal music can be hopeful and triumphant when
it wants to be. This is something all metal fans have always known, but with “Wind of Change” the rest of the world
got to see it too.
In fact, the second best song on this album is “Don’t Believe Her” which could easily be made into a pop hit if it had
been produced with a bit more sweetness.
But as you’ll recall, I promised bittersweet. Given the trouble raging again
in Eastern Europe it is hard to feel the same optimism I felt about this song
even as recently as two years ago. Earlier this year the Doomsday clock ticked
its way all the way forward to 1984 levels, and uncertainty again rules the
future. Much as I love “Wind of Change,”
it is getting hard to whistle along that close to our collective graveyard.
On this last listen, the song had me welling up for a very different
reason. There’s no Berlin Wall to track our progress this time and those
distant memories that Klaus promised us would be buried in our past forever are
coming rushing back.
But then I reminded myself that the history of the human race is a
river, not a series of arbitrary plot points on some clock. I listened to the
chorus of “Wind of Change” with fresh
ears:
“Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night
Where the children of tomorrow share
their dreams
With you and me
Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night
Where the children of tomorrow dream
away
In the wind of change.”
And I realized that while I draw breath, I’m still the children of
tomorrow. We’re still here despite the odds twenty-five years ago. And even when
I’ve blown my last breath, there’ll be another generation of children waiting
to share the next magic moment like the one I experienced watching the wall
collapse.
And “Crazy World” may be an average album, but it is never leaving my
collection. Not as long as I can still dream away in the wind of change.
Best tracks: Don’t Believe Her, Wind of
Change
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