1199. Men at Work / Cargo. 1983. 2.5/5

No one, surely not even the band themselves, would have imagined the plaudits that came their way after the release of that debut album “Business as Usual” back in 1981. That album, one where you can hear an episode reviewing it back in Season 1 of this podcast, had two cracks at both the Australian and US markets, essentially through the song “Down Under”. The bleeding of that song into international markets allowed the band the exposure that most other local bands could only dream of with their first album, and meant that the expectation of what to expect on the follow up would lead to two things – the pressure for the band to follow up its success by writing more songs that would again capture the imagination of the listening public, but also a ready-made leap in album sales when the new album was actually released.
The success of the debut album actually led to the release date for “Cargo” being put back somewhat significantly. As “Business as Usual” was still making solid sales, their record company felt that releasing this album too soon would be detrimental to that money-making machine. “Cargo” had been written and recorded throughout the first half of 1982, and was ready for release by mid that year, so it was pretty much another nine months on before it actually saw the light of day. The first single from the album was released in Australia in October of that year, a full six months before the album eventually made the record shelves. That release date, 40 years ago this week, had been preceded by the second single a few weeks earlier, and the success of both of those songs on the singles chart gave the album a huge push when it finally came to light.

This album continues with the interesting mix of song styles and musical direction that the first album started, though the direction here is perhaps in a more commercial bent. It majors in the age of new wave mixed with the pop sensibilities that were around in that era of music, eschewing any pretence of incorporating rock into the mix. Once again, there are songs especially such as “Settle Down My Boy”, “Blue for You” and “I Like To” that all have that reggae blended new wave style that, while I can listen to it when it comes from bands such as Men at Work and others like The Police, I don’t especially love it. The mix of Greg Ham’s saxophone does tend to soften the reggae part and bring to the surface more of the new wave part when it is used in the songs here.
While the album flows together nicely from start to finish, it is an acquired taste. Anyone coming in looking for a combination of the energy that comes from the band’s best known singles will possibly feel disappointed. Those singles are catchy, and were released as singles because of that. But the other songs on the album are a mixture. We have those three I’ve just mentioned that have their own style, and then you have a song such as “Upstairs in My House” which mixes the sax and new wave keyboards with Colin Hay’s beautifully pitched vocals soaring through the song, which makes it one of the highlights. In other tracks the instrumental pieces that proliferate sometime feels as though they have freeform experimentalising on them, where the music continues on just for the sake of filling some space. On numerous listens, sometimes those songs just seem to track longer than they should.
So beyond the bulk of the album, the singles do poke their heads above the waterline to make themselves heard. The opening two songs are “Dr Heckyll and Mr Jive” and “Overkill” which get the album off to an excellent. “High Wire” sits in the middle of the album and lifts it profile there as well, while “It’s a Mistake” still provides the riposte that energises whenever it appears.

Like I mentioned during the review part of this album, the band’s first album was still around the charts at the time this was eventually released, and it became more prominent again six months later when Australia II won the America’s Cup, when “Down Under” had become the unofficial anthem of the campaign. So in many ways, despite the late release and the particular way they released the singles from THIS album, “Cargo” was still being overshadowed by its predecessor all along the way – at least, that’s how it felt to me at the time.
While this was released at a time before I had begun to seek out and buy albums of my own accord, I did know the singles of it off the radio. Eventually “Business as Usual” became one of the first albums that I did ever purchase. “Cargo” was an album I heard sporadically at friends’ of my parents, and not many places otherwise. Eventually down the track, a few years after Men At Work had ceased to exist, I did get a taped copy of this album on cassette and listened to it for awhile. For several reasons – I was listening to much heavier material at the time, and the age of new wave was well and truly passed – I didn’t get as much out of it as I had with the debut album, and it slipped from my mind.
So I’ve listened to it again over the past couple of weeks, and I have the same feelings about it now as I did then. I’ve been quite happy to have it on and listen to it, knowing it isn’t my preferred genre in this day and age. The comparison with The Police is still there, less than there was on the first album, but there nonetheless. And my main joy of an early episode of the comedy series “Scrubs” is when Colin Hay came on and played an acoustic version of this album’s superior song.

1138. Men at Work / Business as Usual. 1981. 4/5

Similarities have been made in the past between Australia’s Men at Work and England’s The Police. Certainly both bands use the saxophone in their music, which is often a staple of New Wave bands and their style. Along with this is the utilisation of reggae in different ways, although for me it is much more subtle and not as prominent with Men at Work’s songs as it is with The Police, certainly in their early albums. Both bands have a lead vocalist with an automatically recognisable singing style and voice. And both bands eventually had quite a shortened career, The Police with five albums between 1978 and 1983, and Men at Work three albums between 1981 and 1985.Men at Work actually formed in 1979 in Melbourne, and consisted of the Greg Ham on flute, saxophone, keyboards and vocals; Colin Hay on vocals and guitar; John Rees on bass guitar; Jerry Speiser on drums and backing vocals; and Ron Strykert on lead guitar and vocals. From mid-1979 to mid-1981 they built themselves into one of the hardest working and more popular pub rock bands on the east coast of Australia. They had released two singles, one a self-financed independent release of “Keypunch Operator” (whose B-side was a little ditty called “Down Under”), and the second after having been signed by CBS titled “Who Can it Be Now”, the single that topped the Australian singles charts and remained in the charts for 24 weeks. It was with this success that Men at Work had entered the studio to write and record their debut album, one that was released 40 years ago today on November 9, 1981. A week prior to this, the band released the attached single, a song that they had rearranged from a previous version to place on the first album, and that the record company hoped would prove a success in promoting the band nationally and internationally, as well as push sales of the album. That single was “Down Under”.

Business as Usual fits very comfortably into the albums of the era in which it was released. It has the three main singles that were released from the album, all of which were popular on the radio and gave the band the national and international coverage it would have hoped for. This flows into the other tracks on the album, almost all of which are enjoyable on the same scale as those heavy hitters. “Who Can it Be Now” is a great opening track and showcases everything that is great about the band from the outset, including the sax and other great instrumentation throughout the song. This is followed by the mainstream soft rock stylings of “I Can See it in Your Eyes” which I think gets run down a little given the two songs it is sandwiched between. In the end it acts as quite a nice conduit between the opening song and then the overly familiarised strains of “Down Under” which follows it.
“Underground” continues the upbeat progression of the opening tracks, with the fast paced 4/4 timing of the drums and the punctuation of the sax driving the song along with plenty of energy. “Helpless Automation” follows and is written by Greg Ham, who also provides the lead vocal for the track as well. It closes out the first side of the album wonderfully well, with high tempo and once again great drumming from Speiser pushing the song along.
The second side opens with “People Just Love to Play With Words”, and a song that begins to show a different influence in the music, with John Rees dominating throughout with his roving bass riff throughout. This leads into the third single form the album, “Be Good Johnny”, still one of the band’s best. I still love how the song tells the story, without detracting from the actual song at all. It has been sung for generations now, with the name Johnny being substituted with any of a hundred thousand other people's name to suit the situation it gets brought up in.
The final three songs on the album take a much different style than what has come before them. “Touching the Untouchables” slows the tempo right back down to almost a lounge club act, allowing Colin to go back to crooning his vocals throughout with Greg’s sax coming into the mix with a greater influence. “Catch a Star” is very much in the reggae groove, the most noticeable of all the songs here that that genre is an influence on the band’s music. “Down By the Sea” closes out the album in a slower moodier pace than much of the album before it, resting on Colin Hay’s vocals dominating the sludgy pace of the track and the saxophone creating the atmosphere of the last moments of the album.

Most of you will know the story of the album’s most famous track “Down Under”. It helped propel the album to number one in the US, an amazing achievement for an Australian band’s debut album. It then became the unofficial anthem of Australia II’s campaign to be the first foreign based syndicate to life yachting’s most famous trophy, the America’s Cup, which they duly did in September 1983, and gave the song another lifespan in the charts. And then in 2010 there was the court case that claimed – and subsequently won – that the signature flute tune in the song had been ‘borrowed’ from the famous ‘Kookaburra sits in the old gumtree’ song from the 1930’s. Greg Ham, who had introduced the flute piece into the rejigged song that found its way onto the album, took the decision hard, believing that now he would always be known as the man who had plagiarised the piece. He suffered from anxiety and depression as a result. Two years after the decision, Greg Ham was found dead in his home after suffering a fatal heart attack at the age of 58.

With radio being a dominant force when it came to listening to music in those early days of the 1980’s, I knew all three singles from the album long before I was able to get this album. It wasn’t until sometime in 1984 that I purchased by cassette copy of Business as Usual, and it was one of the first albums I ever bought with my own money, and it was on the back of those three singles. And once I got it I enjoyed the whole album and didn’t just concentrate on those songs I had, by that time, known so well. As you might imagine from my review here, it was the first two-thirds of the album that really captured my attention and that remains the same now. The final three tracks on the album aren’t poor, they are just different in style from those that came before it, and so I could quite happily not listen to them if I chose that way.
This remains one of the best albums ever released by an Australian artist. It topped the charts in Australia, New Zealand, the US and the UK, and was followed up by the excellent Cargo which also sold extremely well. Not only was it the best selling album in Australia through 1982, it was the 12th best selling album in Australia in 1983, two years after its initial release. That's the sign of a terrific album.