Men at Work - Business as Usual

Several months ago I wrote about the band's 1983 album Cargo and I mentioned that I loved the big hits on the album and was really disappointed with the album overall. I think my exact words were "I remember being profoundly disappointed in the record. Two killers, and filler. It's not an album I've heard in decades." Okay, those were my exact works, that's the nice thing about cut and pasting. I began to wonder if I had been carrying around a lot of unnecessary baggage with respect to the album. After all, this is an album that's sold in excess of 10 million copies world wide, and half a million of them right here in Canada. If it was shit people would have noticed. Wouldn't they?

As fate would have it a little while ago I found a copy in the dollar bin (sadly the store has since closed as their landlord decided they wanted to jack up the rent. Bad for them, bad for me ... but I was starting to run out of space) that was in decent shape. It was the white cover which still throws me off, as I remember really agonizing over whether or not to get the yellow or the white - I liked the yellow cover. The album cleaned up really well, and the first side was pristine. The second sadly had a small scratch that looked worse than it was, and the pop it generated was between songs ... bonus.

I still find it interesting my prevailing opinion before dropping the needle was still two killers, and filler ... simply based on reading the song titles. The album opens right off with "Who Can it Be Now" and it's still awesome. I will admit there was a time when the song felt overplayed, but with the passage of so much time it felt like an old friend. Then "I Can See it in Your Eyes" came on, and I'd forgotten how good this song was. I'm already being forced to revisit my long held assessment of the album. The first side was pretty good, and of course it didn't hurt that the two classics were on side one.

Flipping it over, the second side kicked off with "People Just Love to Play with Words" which was another one of those how did I not remember this song moments, it's a quirky song that got better with a couple spins. "Be Good Johnny" I did remember, and back in the day it was a song that didn't work for me, but it was catchy, and now it felt like a post card from an old friend. All of the songs were all enjoyable, and admittedly the wow factor generated by the two big songs wasn't present on all of the songs but it didn't mean they were throwaways either. The closing track "Down by the Sea" I remembered as soon as I heard it. It was an ambitious song, and honestly in terms of texture and mood is one of the best songs on the album. It's not a catchy single, it's a piece of music. It's so good. I suppose this is the definition of a deep cut, and being the last song didn't get any deeper.

I enjoyed this far more than I expected, which was a surprise. No doubt in a little while, given my impaired sense of object permanence I'll go back to thinking of Men at Work as a great singles band, which is sort of business as usual for me (I'm sorry, but I really wanted to work that in somewhere).

I'll just make a note to myself, that this was actually a really good album.

Garfield - Strange Streets

I'd seen this before in the bin, but kept flipping through the stacks. I'd see it a few more times, each time stopping to look at it a little more. There was something kind of cool about the cover where the stylized Celtic knot had the dotted yellow line - it was a strange street for sure. I pulled the record out of the jacket and I was struck by the centre image. There was the familiar Mercury label, the same one I'd seen a thousand times on BTOs Head On album. Well, I'd bought things based on odd associations before - like when I had to buy anything that Solid Rock Records released (this was generally a good thing) who knows maybe this was a hidden gem. There weren't any real scratches or rash, just a lot of dirt and dust - it seemed to clean up okay, but we'll see how it goes. The album opens with the title track, and this wasn't straight ahead pop, or rock. It was leaning to the progressive, but with a pop bent. Oddly enough the vocals reminded me of Mi...

Hoodoo Gurus - Mars Needs Guitars!

The first time I got this album it was a gift from my old roommate Otto. For a goofy little nebbish he would occasionally surprise me with some left of field musical treasures. Although, I still think he was reaching a little when he brought home the new "Led Zeppelin" album by Kingdom Come and forced me to listen to "Get it On" over and over again. I'd not listened to Mars Needs Guitars in a long, long, long time. The first thing that I jumped out at me was how David Faulkner's vocals reminded me of his fellow countryman Peter Garrett from Midnight Oil. I think the reason this never occurred to me was at the time I didn't have any Midnight Oil until Diesel and Dust in 1987. I'm not saying it was all the time, but there were a couple of songs where it stood out. Not a bad thing, just a thing. Even at the time this felt slightly out of step with what was going on in 1985. It seemed like everyone was using drum machines and synthesizers and having t...

Saturday Night Fever - The Original Movie Soundtrack

It was going to happen sooner or later. Nostalgia is a cruel Mistress...she can dull the sharpest edges and over time can even soften the hardest of opinions. I found this in the dollar bin, and frankly at a dollar I was worried about what this would cost me. Not only from a monetary perspective, but my time, and more important my credibility. Fourteen year old me was screaming "Don't you dare. DON'T DO IT! Put it down. Walk away!" Then there was grey bearded me holding it and looking at it, thinking, "How bad could it be? I actually kind of like "Staying Alive" and me buying this record won't bring disco back, and no one will have to know I bought this." I pulled the album out of the bin, and carefully took out the records. They'd seen better days, and there were a couple of decent scratches that would no doubt make their presence known later. The jacket was in decent condition, and both of the albums had the original sleeves. I dusted the...

Old Enough to Forget

Search This Blog