I have many fuzzy memories from the nineteen eighties - Star Wars, my mother, that wonderful Ayatollah Khomeini who taught me the meaning of summer solstice, exploring out in the country or in the parks. Some of the memories are even real! But the most real ones are about the music. I think I repressed some of the times I tried to make sense of eighties music and ended up just crying myself to sleep.
And so in that spirit I started looking up the lyrics to Land Down Under. I discovered that it was written by Men At Work. Not to be confused with Men Without Hats or their antithesis, The Laziest Men On Mars. "Well, that was easy." I thought foolishly. But then I read the lyrics. What I found is more frightening than the glint on Dick Cheney's forehead just before he drinks a tall frosty cup of diet caffeine free Iraqi baby blood.
On a hippie trail, head full of zombie"
Hmmmm I guess that this could be a reference to drugs? Otherwise I don't quite get it...
She took me in and gave me breakfast"
Hey I know plenty of people from Australia and none of them would just let a strange lady drag them into her house and feed them, especially if she made them nervous. These two sentences seem to be completely unrelated!
"Do you come from a land down under?
Where women glow and men plunder?
This is the part that gave us trouble. Sime is from Australia and even he didnt know what they were saying about his country. Apparently the women are radioactive and the men are theives. Given Australia's history as a penal colony I wont dispute the men plundering, but why do the women glow? What happened to them? Do they have super powers? Do they use those powers to stop the men plundering?
You better run, you better take cover."
Hey lady! You just took him in and gave him breakfast, what the hell are you talking about he has taken cover! Do you mean for him to get under the breakfast table? Are you trying to lure him into some sort of oral sex position?
He was six foot four and full of muscles
I said, "Do you speak-a my language?"
So he gets out of this crazy chick's house and goes to buy some bread. Naturally, wanting to report the woman's temptation he tries to speak to the bread merchant. What happens next is shocking.
Hey now I think that's horribly insulting. If I were in a foreign land where the best authority figure was the bread merchant and I'd just been half molested by some crazy woman who cant tell inside from out (and lets face it by this point in the song its pretty clear that there isn't any actual storm occuring) but if that had just happened to me I'd want a mite bit more than a goddamn cheeseburger.
"Sir! This chick abducted me and then tried to lure me into her breakfast nook of inequity!"
"Here have a cheeseburger."
"Thanks a lot, assface."
"I come from a land down under
Where beer does flow and men chunder
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover."
Once again we're advised to run and take cover, but why? Isn't this bread merchant who keeps vegemite sandwhiches in his pockets inside? Won't his bread get wet if he's not? Shouldn't he ALREADY have cover if it looked like a rainy day? However in this one the third line makes sense. Australians do indeed drink beer and, assuming "chundering" is a word for guzzling, than this is correct.
With a slack jaw, and not much to say
Well somehow we make our way to a "den" (read opium den) in bombay India. Well you might not have much to say but I sure do! What the fuck? Is Bombay where you've decided to take cover?
Because I come from the land of plenty?"
And he said,
What man? It wasnt even established that there was a man and now he's trying to tempt you? What is wrong with you Men At Work? And how do you get any work done if you're enduring constant sexual harassment? Also I always thought they called America the land of plenty, and Australia the land of beer and chundering.
Where women glow and men plunder?
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover."
Once again, the narrator is in an opium den, he's pretty well covered. But then again, as in the first part, drugs are clearly involved. So I'm going to say that this is the story of the band self destructing themselves while they fly over the world and use illicit substances all in an effort to escape unwanted sexual assault.
Wow, my childhood memories rock!!!!
This post has been edited by J m HofMarN: 04 June 2005 - 08:50 AM