On October 13, 1977, Lufthansa Flight 181, a Boeing 737-230c jetliner travelling from Palma de Mallorca, Spain to Frankfurt, Germany, was hijacked by four members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Over the course of the 122 hour-long ordeal, 86 passengers were taken as hostages, the captain, Jürgen Schumann, was murdered, the plane was flown 10,000km, finally arrived in Mogadishu, Somalia, and conclude with the German counter-terrorism group, Grenzschutzguppe 9, recapturing the plane, killing three terrorists in the process.
A year later, Los Angeles-based technopunks The Screamers would release “122 Hours of Fear,” a song outlining the experience of the hijacking, sung from the perspective of one of the hostages. Forty-three years later, Halifax’s Like A Motorcycle have revisited the single to introduce their new sound, along with a new drummer.
The track opens with the line “be quiet, or be killed,” though in the case of Like A Motorcycle’s reimagining the song takes on a vibe that’s more eerie than the menace heard in the original.
“As a band, we’re obsessed with this song and its corresponding low-budget, live video,” explains the band. “When we started experimenting with electronic sounds/synths we immediately knew we wanted to do something with this song but wanted to dramatically alter the atmosphere.
“This song is just so irresistibly snotty at every moment but something about ‘AM I DISTURBING YOU?!’ has managed to really burrow its way inside of our collective Borg minds. It’s become a thing one of us will just blurt out, hands on hips, being a dramatic idiot and we all chime in. We’re basically children; works every time.”
Like a Motorcycle crank up the pace over the course of the track, mimicking the sense of impending doom that grew over the course of the hijack. Unlike some fictional characters in some B-grade slasher film, the story behind “122 Hours of Fear” is all the more unnerving for having been experienced by some very nonfictional people. In an effort to get into the spirit of the season, they have bluntly gone right for the jugular.
The cover marks the one-year celebration of their album, Dead Broke, which was officially released on October 30th of 2020. The band also notes that it’s their first cover, the first track they’ve recorded, mixed and released independently, the first time they’ve introduced electronic elements into their otherwise live-off-the-floor recording process, and their first song with drummer Clare MacDonald, who can normally be seen playing with Halifax indie-pop four-piece Hillsburn.
Overall, “122 Hours of Fear” is Like A Motorcycle’s friendly, albeit seasonal, way of reminding fans they’re still here.
“After this extended shitshow, a spooky cover in anticipation of our year-late-Halloween-release show seemed like the perfect way to kickstart the reemergence of our live show, new line up and the new sounds that we’ve been able to explore.”