The Men Were The Men Back Then

Amidst the news last week of the deaths of Dick Clark and The Band’s Levon Helm was that of Greg Ham’s passing.

As I was a high school kid in the early ’80s, the name was immediately recognizable as the saxophonist for the Australian band Men At Work.

Men At Work arrived on American shores at a time when I had just developed enough interest in music to be listening to a lot of radio, but I hadn’t ventured much beyond mostly Top 40 stations. Most Saturday mornings, I’d tune for at least a portion of American Top 40.

The first time I ever heard – or even heard of – Men At Work was when Casey Kasem announced their song Who Can it Be Now? debuting on the countdown. It was August, 1982, and I had just entered high school.

By the end of that weekend, I seemed to be hearing the song hourly on one or more station as I surfed the band.

Men At Work was the first band that truly blew up on my watch. Who Can It Be Now? was quirky, New Wave rock full of irresistible hooks and punctuated by Ham’s honking saxophone bursts.

Within the next several months, both Who Can It Be Now? and Business As Usual, Men At Work’s debut album, had topped the charts. As 1982 closed out, the band’s second single, Down Under, was duplicating the success of Who Can It Be Now? and I received a cassette of Business As Usual for Christmas which I wore out.

I remember reading an article on the band over that break and quotes from the members that they were already tired of Business At Usual. The album had been released in their homeland in 1981 and the band had its follow-up ready for release.

(Columbia, who had signed the band after Business In Usual took Australia by storm, rejected the album twice before belatedly issuing it here – well played Columbia)

That follow-up, Cargo, arrived quickly on the heels of the debut in the spring of ’83. I recall a neighbor being the first of my friends to get a copy and how eager we were to hear it.

Cargo was a success, but not on the scale of Business As Usual, which would have been unrealistic to expect.

That autumn, Dr. Heckyl & Mr. Jive became the third single from Cargo to reach the Top 40 and the first hit by the band to not reach the Top Ten.

Just over a year after Men At Work had burst onto the scene, it was over.

Men At Work would issue one, final album in 1985, but during the lengthy break, the band was reduced to a trio of lead singer Colin Hay, Ham, and guitarist Ron Strykert.

Two Hearts came out as we began summer break before our senior year of high school, but it was greeted with indifference and Men At Work broke up with little fanfare.

Here are four songs from Men At Work…

Men At Work – Who Can It Be Now?
from Business As Usual (1982)

As catchy as Who Can It Be Now? is, the song’s accompanying video certainly hastened Men At Work’s breakthrough in the US.

MTV was about eighteen months from availablity in our are, but I caught the clip somehow and was amused and captivated by lead singer Colin Hay’s portrayal of a paranoid recluse and his lazy-eyed glances into the camera.

Men At Work – Down Under
from Business As Usual (1982)

Hailing from Australia made Men At Work an exotic import to us and Down Under played on that aspect with its playful, eccentric take on the band’s homeland.

(as well as teaching us about vegemite)

Men At Work – People Just Love To Play With Words
from Business As Usual (1982)

Though the two hits were the most memorable songs on the album, Business As Usual could have had another hit single or two had the band not had Cargo waiting in the wings.

Be Good Johnny got a lot of airplay, but the delightful People Just Love To Play With Words would have made an ideal choice as a third single.

Men At Work – Overkill
from Cargo (1983)

Cargo, like many a blockbuster follow-up, wasn’t quite as good as its predecessor, but it did contain Men At Work’s finest moment.

Overkill was as quirky and engaging as the previous hits, but it was also wistful. The song always made me think of rainy, empty streets illuminated by streetlights in the early morning hours as most of the world is asleep.

(perhaps because I so often heard the song on the radio that spring, as my friends and I – having finally gotten our driver’s licenses – would be out late, killing time)

Nothing Like The Threat Of Armageddon To Stoke An Appetite

Thanksgiving, like the once annual airing of The Wizard Of Oz used to be, is an event.

Yeah, some people make it out to be dysfunction junction (and for them, maybe it is), but getting to watch football all day on a day which usually would be spent slogging through work is a brilliant concept.

And, of course, it is a chance to feast.

It’s like being king for a day.

Bring me gravy! I shall gnaw on this turkey leg in a slovenly fashion as these superhumans on the television perform amazing feats for my amusement!

OK. It’s not necessarily that dramatic and, as the Lions always play on Thanksgiving Day, the feats are not always amazing in a good way.

(though I cannot imagine how empty a Thanksgiving without the Lions playing the early game would be – it would be like a Halloween without a visit from The Great Pumpkin)

One Thanksgiving was spent living in London, eating some take-out pizza in an ice-cold flat.

And, in a cruel twist, my favorite team was making a rare Thanksgiving Day appearance. They would lose, in overtime after a bizarre coin toss snafu to begin the extra period.

It was a game that would have been maddening to have watched and it was maddening to miss.

Thanksgiving hasn’t been brilliant every year, but that year – no food, no football, no heat – is really the lone one I recall as being truly miserable.

As a kid, our parents dragged us off to mass. I mean, you have the day off school and can sleep in and lounge on the couch; the last thing you want to be doing at an early hour is trudging off to church.

When I was fifteen, the priest decided to use his sermon to rattle off a laundry list of accidental nuclear exchanges between the US and USSR that had been narrowly avoided.

(this was 1983 and two months earlier there had been all of the hullaballoo surrounding the television movie The Day After)

I kept having images of an extra crispy bird and excessively dry stuffing.

It was a bit of a bummer.

It was also a year when my team had a Thanksgiving game and Detroit bottled them 45-3.

But, global tensions and football smackdowns aside, I have no doubt that the food was good.

That autumn, I was still listening to a lot of Top 40 stations, but Q95, an album rock station out of Indianapolis, had caught my attention as well and 97X was exposing me on a semi-regular basis to modern rock for the first time. Some of the songs on the radio that Thanksgiving…

The The – This Is The Day
from Soul Mining (1983)

Yes, it’s the M&M song and I say good for The The’s Matt Johnson for banking some nice coin after being essentially ignored in the States (I think that the project had a bit of success across the pond).

As for the song, it reminds me of my buddy Streuss who loved The The in college and it also reminds me of Paloma who loved The The when we met.

Men At Work – Dr. Heckyll And Mr. Jive
from Cargo (1983)

By the end of 1983, Men At Work, who had burst onto the scene a year earlier, was over. It was amazing how massive they were and how quickly it ended, but their quirky music still sounds delightful twenty-five years later.

Dr. Heckyll And Mr. Jive was their third hit from Cargo, following Overkill and It’s A Mistake on the airwaves. I still think the former is their finest moment, but the latter did little for me.

I don’t actually recall hearing Dr. Heckyll And Mr. Jive on the radio much, but I always smiled at the line, “He loves the world except for all the people.”

(some days, I concur)

Michael Stanley Band – My Town
from You Can’t Fight Fashion (1983)

Cleveland’s Michael Stanley was a major act in the Midwest in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Living on the Indiana/Ohio border, their music found its way onto many of the stations to which I was listening.

There was a lot of economic malaise in the first few years of the ’80s, especially in the Rust Belt. The punchy, anthemic My Town was rock straight from the heartland and its sing-a-long chorus got it a lot of airplay, especially when stations began editing in a shout out to their respective city – Cincinnati! – into the song.

Rufus And Chaka Khan – Ain’t Nobody
from Stompin’ At The Savoy (1983)

I wasn’t much into R&B growing up. There was one station and, on occasion, I would end up there, but, unless the song crossed over to the pop stations, I wasn’t likely hearing it.

Ain’t Nobody crossed over big time and it hooked me the first time I heard it.

The Grammy Awards

The Grammy Awards aired the other night.

I watched The Simpsons.

During the first few years in which I was suddenly fascinated by and paying attention to music, it was – like most people of a certain age, I suspect – through pop radio. The idea that there were awards given for songs was a compelling one.

I think the first Grammy Awards show I remember was the one from 1981 and Christopher Cross’ slew of trophies for his debut album from the prior year.

At the time, Cross’ shiny trinkets undoubtedly validated my affection for the cassette of Christopher Cross, which I had made one of my first musical purchases.

Though that album has retained a special place in my psyche, it wasn’t long before I realized that, for the most part, the Grammys was a bit bogus and not to be taken seriously.

Through the years, I’d sometimes catch the show and sometimes I wouldn’t.

I did have the opportunity to once fill out a Grammy ballot. An ex-girlfriend worked at a law firm that had some musician clients and, thus, the firm was a member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

This girlfriend’s boss knew that she was an aspiring singer and, having no interest in performing the task, handed his Grammy ballot to her.

I don’t recall the specifics, but a voter was allowed to vote in so many categories and this girlfriend blew through most of her allotment notching a straight ticket.

(it was either for Joan Osbourne’s Relish or Shawn Colvin’s A Few Small Repairs, I can’t remember)

She handed the ballot to me with a few picks remaining.

It truly destroyed the last bit of mystique that the Grammys held for me.

In February, 1983, I most certainly was excited to watch the Grammys. Here are songs from four of winners for whom I’d have undoubtedly voted…

Men At Work – Down By The Sea
from Business As Usual

During the second half of ’82, Men At Work became a sensation with the release of Business As Usual, one of the biggest selling debuts ever. By the time the Australians won Best New Artist, the album had already spawned two mammoth hits with Who Can It Be Now? and Down Under.

Though the two hits were the most memorable songs on the album, Business As Usual could have had another hit single or two had the band not had the follow-up Cargo waiting in the wings.

Though I wasn’t fond of the laid-back Down By The Sea, the song was a nice change of pace from the manic vibe of most of the album and it’s grown on me over the years (likely because of Paloma’s affection for the song).

Toto – It’s A Feeling
from Toto IV

Toto won fifty or sixty Grammys – ok, it was really six – for Toto IV including Album Of The Year. Sure, there were the twin titans of Rosanna and Africa, as well as the lesser hits Make Believe and I Won’t Hold You Back, but the entire album is a stellar set of pop/rock gems.

It’s A Feeling was moody and mysterious – not so dissimilar from Toto’s early hit 99 - and one of my favorites from Toto IV.

A Flock Of Seagulls – D.N.A.
from A Flock Of Seagulls

When A Flock Of Seagulls arrived with I Ran and their self-titled debut, I quickly adopted the Liverpool quartet as my own. I was hearing the music of the future and I wasn’t about to be left behind.

A Flock Of Seagulls relied heavily on synthesizers and electronic drums, but there was also plenty of guitar as on D.N.A. which won the band a Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance, beating out nominated songs by Dixie Dregs, Maynard Ferguson, King Crimson, and Van Morrison.

Pat Benatar – Shadows Of The Night
from Get Nervous

Pat Benatar was one of the major acts of the early ’80s and Get Nervous became her fourth straight platinum album when it was released in late autumn of 1982. She was fetching in spandex and her songs were on every crude mixtape I was making from the radio.

Get Nervous provided Benatar with one of her signature songs in the dramatic Shadows Of The Night and the song earned the singer a Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance.