MEN AT WORK – "Down Under"

knowing it was coming up, i concentrated on this more than usual when I heard it on capital gold the other day. i actually found myself quite moved by the song’s central idea that everywhere the singer went he could find an aussie being cheerfully vulgar, and everything would be alright. mind you, i was already a bit primed for this reaction after witnessing, and admiring, some spectacular public drunkenness outside the covent garden walkabout last week.

Pinkchampale #4 – my office isn’t far from the Covent Garden Walkabout – are you sure this public drunkenness was Aussies and not disgruntled Arsenal or Chelsea fans after the “Champs League” semi-finals?

The flute and the percussion intro (sounding like a pinball machine) are the hooks here, and it’s one I remember fondly. How you feel about the subject matter possibly depends on how you feel about Aussies: personally I can honestly say I’ve never met an Aussie I didn’t like – an Aussie friend told me there were plenty she didn’t like but they generally didn’t come over here. But the rhyming of, for instance, “speaka my language” and “Vegemite sandwich” shows a band not taking itself too seriously and producing a highly listenable shuffle into the bargain.
Men at Work had a dramatic and brief impact – for a week or two their single and album were at number one in the US and UK simultaneously, which is rare enough but must be unique for such a new band. I’ve just looked it up and the “Business As Usual” album was top of the US album chart for 15 weeks, replaced by “Thriller” which stayed for 17 weeks. An Aussie invasion of the US predating Crocodile Dundee by three or four years.

Incidentally – Eurovision Watch – the first semi-final was on last night, and I note that Finland’s entry is by a band called Waldo’s People. The boy’s been moonlighting!

eritian – no it was early on saturday evening. a load of aussies taking advantage of the unseasonable weather by playing a pissed-up game of aussie rules in the street. with attendant risks to passers-by and parked cars. all quite entertaining to witness, though clearly destined to end in a massive ruck.

glad it’s not just me who was confused by the men at work without hats

Loathed it when it came out and for some time, having only caught a glimpse of the video, actually thought they were a bunch of hippies (the flute didn’t help). However, come their next single, ‘Overkill’ all was forgiven as I thought this was a little gem.

#17 – I like the idea of Americans finding as much to identify with as Australians. I have to admit that as a twelve year old Londoner, Brussels and Bombay sounded exotic to me.

It made me wonder if other countries have their own “Down Under”. As I might have mentioned elsewhere, for West-Coast Canadians of a certain age, Spirit Of The West’s “Home For A Rest” seems to occupy a similar role, with it’s themes of travel and references to traditional music (the flute in Down Under echoing the Australian nursey rhyme Kookaburra).

Despite it’s “high-particpation afterlife”, I struggle to dislike this. It’s one of those songs where any reservations I have (based on grim nights in theme pubs) are simply worn down by the melody.

‘Dreadlock Holiday’ is probably the most famous example of that.

We don’t really do “road” songs either

About as Australian as Rod Hull.

# 24 – Not quite, Erithian. Hull went to Oz by himself as an adult in his mid twenties. Ifield was a child of eleven and went with, I repeat, his Australian parents.

#25 – Sorry, Lee. I’m afraid I don’t agree with you at all.

Thanks for the welcome, Tom – glad to join the conversation at last!

#23 Agreed about the album – there are at least four tracks on it that I prefer to this, including all the other singles.

I don’t mind this too much although I can’t get too excited about it either. Whereas my feelings for Phil Collins were soured by his association with prog (of which I had been an avid consumer only a few years earlier) Men at work had no such baggage, however there’s something a bit pedestrian about them as performers which is why I don’t care too much about them now.
I can’t remember whether the Castlemaine XXXX Australian stereotype pre or post dates this tune. I know Barry Humphries had promoted the idea back in the 70s(?) but I don’t think it was too mainstream then.

To the suggestions that Americans bought it because it echoed back their own experience of being abroad I can only offer a dumbfounded “wha..?” Americans don’t go abroad, and they certainly don’t think about how they’re perceived when they do. (This from someone who spent his adolescence in Latin America. Something like <30% of the country has ever left it, and if that figure includes people who came from elsewhere we’re hovering around <10%.) Besides, very few Americans (and people, surely) pay such close attention to lyrics as such a proposition would require.

I certainly had no idea that it was about Australians abroad; if asked, I would have said that the rhyme for “under” was “plunder.” Australians as lawless pirates; Mad Max and that.

From a Yankee perspective this is of a piece with the early-mid-80s (ca. 1982-1986, with outliers like Plastic Bertrand and Martika at both ends of the decade) phenomenon of global pop peeping its head in, a strange and not often replicated experience within US borders. Nena and Men Without Hats (yes, easily mixed up) and Baltimora and After The Fire and Falco and Trio and a-ha and even Dexys misidentified as Irish could be slotted into that category, not to mention all the standard British material we were getting. (Apologies to any upcoming bunnies I may have spoilt.) Exotic but not too exotic, bouncy and synthy (mostly) and with a strong visual hook, it was a cornucopia of bizarre one-offs and wild outliers just waiting to be steamrolled by homegrown juggernauts like M*d*nn*, B. Spr*ngst**n, M. J*cks*n and Pr*nc*.

I don’t know if the standard U.S. attitude towards the MTV pop of the 80s, a combination of gobsmacked glee at the weird variety of it all and a pitying condescension at its uselessness (because so few of these bands were ever Serious Album Artists in our country), has gotten much play in the UK. Most Americans are surprised to learn that Dexys and Madness, e.g., ever had more than the one song. Always remember that most Americans have to be reminded the rest of the world exists.

EDIT: And I see that Kogan’s made some of my points already. Grist for the mill.

I’ve just looked it up and the “Business As Usual” album was top of the US album chart for 15 weeks, replaced by “Thriller”

Yes – “Business is Usual” is absolutely UBIQUITOUS in American thrift stores and garage sales. It is everywhere, propelled by this and “Who Can It Be Now?” In addition to the point about Americans not being habitual travelers, I’d also add that for Americans, Australians are fantastically rare creatures; I’ve met two, maybe three in my lifetime (counting a German who moved there after college), and they have the same appeal as aliens in Star Trek – an incredibly foreign species that by some stroke of luck speaks a recognizable, though adorably odd, version of our language.

I don’t mind the band at all; they have some underrated singles in “It’s A Mistake” and “Overkill” (great hooks throughout that one, kind of a rewrite of “Who Can It Be Now?” but not bad). This one work very well, it’s sort of silly on the surface but does have a sweet idea about finding companionship where you least expect it. I don’t think it’s so much that everywhere you go you run into drunken Australians and thus never get into contact with other cultures – it’s more like those days traveling where you’ve really enjoyed getting into contact with other cultures, it’s been very fun thank you but god would it be nice to talk to somebody *familiar* to get back in my comfort zone for just a little bit. So he’s in this “den in Bombay,” or Brussels or whatever, runs into what seems like a scary situation, this giant muscular guy…but it turns out he’s found a friend, a fellow countryman, someone who may also be feeling traveler’s blues! Nice story. I guess for me the real daydream is that I’d be traveling in some ridiculously far-off place (I am actually going to pass through Mumbai later this year) and, just as I’m getting burnt out on the joys of exploration, run into, not a godforsaken fellow American, but one of them quirky Australians I’ve heard so much about.

And welcome aboard to Rory!

Walk like an Egyptian?!!

#30 – The stereotypes predate this, although the “Don’t give a XXXX” campaign came afterwards, once the brand went global in the wake of Fosters’ success (and around the same time, the old Aussie joke went global: Why’s it called XXXX? Because Queenslanders Australians can’t spell “beer”). Barry Humphries was the one who popularised the word “chunder” through his Barry Mackenzie strip in Private Eye, which spawned two Australian films in the early 1970s; Humphries was also the one who suggested the name “Bruce” to Cleese and co. for the Monty Python “philosophers” sketch. The hats with corks were a creation of English cartoonists at around the same time, although they’ve since been taken up by Australian souvenir manufacturers.

#32 – I didn’t want to suggest that Americans in general were bigger international travellers than Australians, just that a city like Brussels would seem more exotic to you (and us) than to UK people who heard its name on the news every other week thanks to the EU connection. I know that differences in annual leave and the range of potential domestic options create different travel situations in the US and Australia.

#33 – Yes, “Down Under” topped the Australian charts well before 1983. 1983 was when their much-anticipated second album came out locally (mid-year, Wikipedia reminds me, which sounds right, because I was one of the ones doing the anticipating). You’re right that the song was played to death during the America’s Cup campaign, but that didn’t happen until September that year. Billboard says that it topped the US charts simultaneously with the UK charts, and claims it was because “their funny, irreverent videos became MTV favorites” (“Who Can It Be Now?” had already been a US number one for the band, and Business as Usual topped the US charts in November 1982). I notice that Wikipedia claims that the America’s Cup win was what popularised the song internationally, which I will now go and amend!

And true, Men at Work were of the generation that recalled the hippy trail, but the ones buying most of their records weren’t. The band were in their late twenties when they had their hits, but early ’80s school-age record buyers like me knew nothing of hippy trails, and our older siblings who were off travelling in their early twenties (post-uni) were going to Bali and London, not Bombay and Brussels.

And of course the Pogues’ “Thousands Are Sailing” for the Irish.

More recently, what songs would continue Tom’s idea about the UK charts mirroring the history of Brits’ global travel? – any number of Ibiza anthems? “Pure Shores”, at least in the context of the film it soundtracked?

Snif – yes we did notice your America’s Cup victory up here! I understand the national mood was such that you could have renamed the beach in Sydney “Bondy” for the occasion. It was the period when Aussies were emerging from the “cultural cringe” with musicians and film directors asserting themselves (“Gallipoli” was a massive success here), leading up to the bicentenary in 1988. And even if “Down Under” wasn’t a great cultural artefact, as a sign of greater confidence in the nation it was unmistakable. (You’d just got the Ashes back too.)

Ain’t Going To Goa.

It’s strange looking back on this that it never struck me as any sort of ‘novelty song’ back in the day. I think perhaps it was more accepted in the early 80s that comedy had a part to play even in “serious” muisic. Artists like Elvis Costello, The Specials, XTC and The Police all displayed a sense of humour in the their songs (albeit rather dry at times) and groups like Madness obviously incorporated much humour and silliness into their music without ever being dismissed as a novelty act. Maybe I just saw this as ‘serious music with humorous lyrics’ rather than a comedy/novelty song.

Snif – Erithian’s quite right. Your America’s Cup win was big news here too, if only for the fact that the Yanks finally lost a contest they were never supposed to lose, rather than the Ossies winning it. I seem to recall that the bloke at the US boat club where the cup had always been on display was loathe to relinquish the trophy even though they were no longer the holders. This was always replicated, of course, by the English cricket authorities always insisting on the Ashes remaining at Lords even when Australia held them, which was and is more often than not.

…And to some extent both “California Dreaming” and “California Girls” are about being displaced Californians missing various aspects of home life. And of course “Homeward Bound” was an autobiographical tale of Paul Simon’s yearnings for his American homeland whilst sitting in Wigan or Widness station (depending on which version of the story you believe)

48: I’ve mentioned somewhere in the archive, haven’t I, that ’twas me who conjured up that story about Homeward Bound and Widnes North station (as it was in the early 70s) in a throwaway remark I made in the Liverpool Uni student newspaper. I was amazed when, years later, it seemed to have become common knowledge. It was going to be Runcorn originally, but I thought that was much too obvious with Runcorn station being on a viaduct surrounded by an industrial landscape.