Down Under by Men At Work is more upsetting than you thought

Comments · 1K

• GO

  @gonvillebromhead2865 · 9 months ago

  "He would play these wee bottles as percussion". Thank God you clarified he was Scottish before that quote came out.

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• KM

  @kmully8873 · 9 months ago

  The irony of a GREEDY company buying a nursey rhyme and suing a band whose song was about corporate greed.

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• LA

  @laurelf.1363 · 9 months ago

  “Can’t you hear the thunder?  You better run, you better take cover” always sounded ominous to me.

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• TH

  @thehaikulibrarian · 9 months ago

  I recall part of the defence argument was that Greg Ham was a jazz musician, and that in jazz terms he was "quoting" Kookaburra. Quoting in jazz in common and not an issue.

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• SH

  @ShipReK66 · 9 months ago

  this song lives rent-free in my head.

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• LA

  @laurelf.1363 · 9 months ago

  I don’t think they should have lost that copyright lawsuit.  The flute solo may be reminiscent of that tune, but it’s different enough that I never connected the two.

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• RU

  @RudyAdrian · 9 months ago

  After spending $4.5 MILLION dollars in lawyers' fees, Larrikin Publishing got about $100,000. As Colin Hay says in the documentary (on Netflix) - "They didn't really win - they just lost less than us". Great video, Mr Mongoose :)

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• MY

  @MyMusic-cd3do · 9 months ago

  We sang Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree -eee (and variations of the lyrics) since I was a toddler, and didn't even realize that the flute carried that tune until the lawsuit and then I was like, oh yeah, that's definitely the same melody, (in the video, having him sitting in a gum tree playing that riff probably didn't help their case much) but rather than plagiarism, I saw it more as a nod to something close to probably every Australian's heart, and in a song about things very uniquely Australian, a very fitting tribute. But greed .... Just glad we didn't have to pay royalties every time we sang it as kids, or plagiarized the tune to new lyrics.

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• TH

  @thepagecollective · 9 months ago (edited)

  BTW, I was a kid in the US and I remember the Americas Cup loss. So it made an impact here. It's funny how it seems like the same kind of misinterpretation of Born in the USA as a patriotic song when it was a searing indictment.

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• BR

  @BrianJNelson · 9 months ago

  I&apos;m surprised that you didn&apos;t mention that the entire song is about a giant drug binge.<br><br>The first stanza is about &quot;getting high on zombie&quot;, which is weed.<br>The second stanza is about &quot;buying bread in Brussels&quot;, which I believe is a reference to heroin.<br>The third stanza is about &quot;lying in a den in Bombay&quot;... an opium den.<br><br>And yeah, when you work out what each of the bridges actually means, about &quot;hearing the thunder,&quot; it makes the entire song quite the anthem. Once I was old enough to figure it out, it was clear this guy was travelling the world on a drug trip, but people were warning him that Australia was being overrun and taken over by outsiders and moneyed interests.<br><br>Powerful stuff.

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• PO

  @polyrhythmia · 9 months ago

  Who truly comes up with a song in a vacuum?

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• JO

  @John_Zzz_Official · 9 months ago

  Such a classic song. R.I.P. Greg Ham.

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