After the Fire - “Der Kommissar”
1982
A one-hit wonder that was all (half?) the rage in the senior year gym class locker room (it was fun to yell “chah! chah! chah!” after some rousing rounds of badminton), it was bizarrely tangential to the “Germans are taking over popular music” trend (see: Nena’s anti-nukes “99 Luftballoons”) in that it was a remake of Falco’s sprechen sie Deutsch? version from just months earlier.
Kinda forgotten by yours truly until WDGY brushed it off and it popped up my office’s HD radio* some mornings. I knew the outlines of the Falco/After the Fire versions but notable intel popped up on Wikipedia: Laura Branigan used the “Der Kommisar” melody for her song “Deep in the Dark.” I checked it out — it’s not exactly as weirdo/genius as The Count Five lifting The Yardbirds’ “I’m a Man” to construct “Psychotic Reaction” but still weird nonetheless. Then just recently (August 3rd at 9:00 a.m. … yes I was keeping score) WDGY followed ATF’s “Der Kommissar” with a different Branigan song (the hit that wasn’t “Gloria”). And here I thought WeeGee’s moving into eighties territory was going to be no fun. Play some Rockwell!
*WDGY available on FM 107.1 alternate channel 2. I just discovered that The Power Loon is on 107.1-3 … summer saved?