Song 355: This week’s playlist track is Down Under by Men at Work, written by Colin Hay and Ron Strykert. When this 45 hit the U.S. in the fall of 1982, having already topped charts elsewhere, my Berkeley housemate Bob and I watched the group perform it on a TV segment, and he latched onto it right away. It took me a few more radio spins before I got it, but once I could sing along with the lines, the cut’s understated humor had me hooked. At the time, I had an Australian songwriter friend who had already told me about vegemite, so I immediately grasped that lyric, but for most of the other slang I had to guess, and I guessed wrong in more than one case, not that it mattered or affected my enjoyment of the record. Thanks to Wickipedia, I now know that a fried-out Kombi means an overheated VW van rather than a group of wasted traveling companions, but here in the Northeast, just as in the land down under, when you hear the thunder, as I have a few times lately, You better run, you better take cover, so that warning was always well understood.
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