If your kids can’t choke on them, then they’re not real toys.
Looking to get fired up for another run through the electric fenced rat race this week? As always, The Nest has you covered with another melody from the past that is much more motivational than a piece of stale cheese. It’s Monday, and that’s the day we strive to earn our musical reward from that labyrinth of lost earworms we like to call the Dusty Vinyl Archive! DJ Scratchy’s got another most excellent tune to make your trek through the corporate grind just a little less grinding, while the Sponkies raise enough money to send another lab rat to its death. Oh geez, the awful, awful things we did in the 80’s…
While the early 80’s is best remembered for ushering in a “new wave” of artists from the UK into the American pop music market, it’s easy to forget that we were also importing a lot of our music at the time from the land down under. Australian rock was booming forty years ago, bringing bands like Men At Work, INXS, Midnight Oil, Icehouse and of course Pseudo Echo into the US mainstream. Unfortunately for us, one of the bigger Aussie music successes that got lost in the journey to the Northern Hemisphere was an outfit called Moving Pictures.
The Shelf Critter Theatre edition of moving pictures.
In 1981, the sextet called Moving Pictures released their debut album Days of Innocence, which became a huge hit in their homeland. The first single released from that album became Australia’s second biggest hit of 1982 after only the legendary “Eye of the Tiger”… and was notable enough to cross over to the US market where it made it up to #29 on the Hot 100 in 1983. That song is the uplifting anthem for the common man, “What About Me”…
“What About Me” is one of a handful of songs from earlier in the decade that was re-released in 1989 and became a second-time hit… although this time it just missed the Top 40 at #46. It was the 1989 second chance this tune got that put it on the map for me… and I’m so glad. This is an excellent song (It would be even more excellent if there was a HQ audio version on YouTube) that gets better and better as it reaches its crescendo in the final chorus…
Me!?!? What about me!?!?! I’m doing just fantastic, thank you so much!!!
So why did Moving Pictures stall out in the US despite releasing a song that spent two extended stints on the charts? Well, blame their label Elektra Records… who were slated to have the band tour the US in 1983 along with some of that year’s biggest names in rock. Just before those gigs were slated to start, the company went through a re-organization that left Moving Pictures out in the cold… and ultimately, out of the American consciousness. Thus why their magnum opus, and one of the most beautiful songs of the entire decade, ultimately landed here in the Dusty Vinyl Archive dumpster…
I’ll bet Fat Possum Records could’ve turned them into stars in the States.
What about me? Well, I’ll be back next Monday with another song that gets overlooked at the counter of a corner shop…
The song is unknown to me, but the squirrel is cute, and I saw my favourite girl Mitzi, so thank you and have a nice Monday. Wet snow here and a neighbours cat sleeping on our sofa.
Mitzi is going to be pleased to know she has fans all over the world. She also wants to know if she can crash on your sofa with the cats…
Lady Mitzi is always welcome, a lady who knows how to spend this life.
I totally forgot this song… but thanks so much for sharing… it is the perfect song for lots of eye-pee a bottle of wine and bittersweet memories of childhood…. thanks again for bringing back a real gem… the 80’s were not only aquanet and cyborg like shoulders… they were sentimental and full of love too (sort of)
We are the world, we are the children. Yes, for the decade of greed, there were a lot of sappy feel good songs like this… but none of them as good as this one in my opinion.
I don’t recall hearing this song a LOT back then for some reason…..it’s a message song with a message that still goes unheard. “What About Me?” is something I hear a lot of people say these days……… I think that squirrel looks like he’s giggling – did the photographer have short shorts on????? 🙂
Pam
The photographer’s legs haven’t seen the rays of the sun since the first year of the Clinton Administration… so that can’t be what he’s all giddy about. Maybe he just won the squirrel lottery…
I’ve never heard this song. It’s unique, I’ll give it that. I like the squirrel photo. Cute.
The squirrel photo is a classic I like to reuse a lot. it’s not often you can catch a VERY happy looking squirrel like that…
Wow. I haven’t heard that song in a long long long long time. I had no idea they were from the land down under. Tell Mitzi not to lean against old cars like the girl in the video or she’ll get dirt on her dress. That said, I’m going to have “Tom Sawyer” running through my head all day as Monday’s Ear Worm. You know how ideas bounce off of each other. Moving Pictures Band – Moving Pictures Rush – Tom Sawyer – Mark Twain – Sacramento. See I’m already doing the Kevin Bacon thing. Thanks ES for making my old dusty brain work this morning.
There is only six degrees of separation between you and every musical act in history… that is pretty cool. Don’t worry about Mitzi…. I’m not sure she could lean back against a car like that. I hear she’s a bit too top heavy for that maneuver…
I remember that song! Should have known Electra was behind their lack of success. Queen was once with them too and a contributing factor to their not doing very well in the states. Happy Monday.
That would have been a shame had they stuck with Elektra and Freddie and the boys only wound up as “the little people”…
We probably wouldn’t have had Bohemian Rhapsody as a single.
Wow, that was a blast from the past! I haven’t heard or thought about that song in ages. Maybe decades. Of, of course, being oblivious me, I had no idea the group was from Australia.
I can tell where your sweet spot for pop music is because you seem to recognize almost every obscure DVA song I post from the 1988-90ish era! I would have never guessed they were from Australia either… though the band was so anonymous that they could have been from Uranus for all I knew.
ody N biskit; we haz been offline a bit; and total lee un post ree lated; did dad see de nooze peace last week that went viral…. bout de colored squirrelz of India !! ☺☺♥
Nice song, and I’d never heard it before.
I like the SCT moving picture! Very cool! 🙂
Ah, the 80s, decade of the power ballads…