Business as Usual

Men at Work

1982: CBS CK 37978

1. Who Can It Be Now?
2. I Can See It in Your Eyes
3. Down Under
4. Underground
5. Helpless Automaton
6. People Just Love to Play With Words
7. Be Good Johnny
8. Touching the Untouchables
9. Catch a Star
10. Down by the Sea

“Be Good Johnny” is the reason I got this album originally, and it’s justified the acquisition every time I’ve replayed it. Colin James Hay’s vocal is superlative in its expression of a mood of the beginning of the 1980s, and it reminds me every time of that thrill of dangerous territory touched on in the almost throwaway delivery of the line “so tell me…what kind of boy are you, John?” In fact although Side One (ah, there I go dating myself again, and yes I did own this on vinyl) has a few good songs on it, it’s Side Two that kicks ass…from “Be Good Johnny” to the end it’s FINE, much more solid that the first half of the album and much more likely to make me yearn for more.

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Comments © 2005 Mark Ellis Walker, except as noted, and no claim is made to the images and quoted lyrics.