Songoftheday 11/15/12 - Zwei drei vier one two three It's easy to see but it's not that I don't care so...

After The Fire - "Der Kommissar"
from the album ATF (1983)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #5 (two weeks)
Weeks in the top-40: 14

Today's Song of the Day is a co-opted hit Austrian single covered by an English new wave band. After The Fire came together under keyboardist Peter Banks (not the guy in Genesis) in the late 70s, and released their first prog-rock style album in 1978, which went nowhere. After mutating to a new wave style, their sophomore album produced their first British top-40hit single "One Rule For You" in 1979.

It took another three years for the group to have another hit, and that was a cover of a song by Austrian singer/"rapper" Falco. Named for the German term for "police captain", the song went to #1 in six European nations and Japan in 1981...

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After the Fire took the song with most of its instrumentation intact (though with a little more pronounced guitars) for their English-translated take....

But by the time the song became a hit in the States, the band had already broken up, with guitarist Andy Piercy cobbling together an album to play off the single, and got a minor followup hit single with "Dancing In The Shadows". Meanwhile Falco's version also got US airplay and sales as well.

The same year as the After The Fire version, singer Laura Branigan also recorded a translated cover of the song, "Deep In The Dark"...

Up Tomorrow: Bay Area rocker has some game-show love?