Down Under (song)

Genesis

The song was written in May 1978 by Colin Hay and Ron Strykert in Melbourne, as the band Men at Work did not exist. Only in 1979 did the group - whose name is derived from traffic signs in English-speaking countries ( " Road Construction " ) - in the La Trobe University in Melbourne.

Since 1979, the band with flutist Greg Ham played the song in its present form. Only in October 1981, the American Peter McIan produced together with sound engineer Jim Barbour at Richmond Recorders in Sydney for CBS Records Australia Ltd.. the first recordings with the band for their debut album Business as usual, which was released on November 9, 1981 in Australia and on 22 April 1982 in the United States. This Men at Work is one of the few pop bands who have started their career with an LP. First single release from this was Who Can It Be Now, which penetrated into the United States after the publication in June 1982 to number one.

Publication and success

CBS decided shortly thereafter, also decouple the third title of the album, Down Under as a single and bring in the U.S. in October 1982 the market. Down Under / Crazy ( Columbia # 03303 ) was born on November 6, 1982 in the U.S. Hot 100, as the previous single was still in the U.S. Top 10.

The debut album with the weird texts from Hays was now six -platinum, selling 15 million copies worldwide, including six million in the U.S. alone, and introduced simultaneously with the single in the U.S. and in the UK charts at. The single was number one for four weeks in the U.S., six weeks in Australia and three weeks in the UK. The Gold status for the single was in 1983 awarded by the American RIAA.

Down Under was in the cast Colin Hay (vocals / guitar), Ron Strykert (guitar / vocals), Jerry Speiser (drums / vocals), John Rees (bass) and Greg Ham (saxophone, keyboards, vocals, flute, harmonica ). The presented in ska and reggae rhythm song is included in B minor. An existing four bar flute part of the multi-instrumentalist Greg Ham was part of the overall cost. The often also for the English-speaking world outside Australia not understood intuitively song tells the story of the world prepare existing Australian backpackers who reported all of his home, where the beer flows in amounts that women are hot ( "glow " ) and men they tear ( " plunder " ) and pass in the second stanza because of excessive beer consumption ( " chunder " slang for " puke " in English actually "vomit "). The rest of the world took notice of the Australian Vegemite sandwich, a concentrated yeast extract, which is used as a spread. Part of the text is Australian slang: the traveler is traveling in a super-heated ( "fried -out") VW Bus ( " combined " ) and obviously smokes marijuana ( "head full of zombie "). Criticized the greed of some Australian bosses who bothers to live together. The title was initially intended as a B-side of Keypunch operator.

Down Under was played by the band during the closing ceremony of the 2000 Summer Olympics. The group sold 30 million albums worldwide. In May 2001 the Australasian Performing Rights Society gave a list of the best Australian songs of all time Down Under with fourth place. Down Under is now regarded as one of the unofficial Australian national anthem as Waltzing Matilda.

Plagiarism dispute

It was not until 28 years after publication in 2008 of plagiarism by the music publisher Larrikin Music Publishing were collected by means of an action against the composers due to copyright infringement in May. Supposedly tribal part of the flute arrangements from Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree ( The Laughing Hans sits in the old gum tree ), a book written by Marion Sinclair Australian scout song of 1934, has been claimed for copyright protection until 1975. The still well-known song are borrowed from the chorus of the comprehensive 92 bars original for Down Under a total of two cycles. These two measures are part of a comprehensive four bars flute passage. The adopted two measures account for 5.8 % of all cycles from Down Under, what is to be regarded as insignificant. The other side argued that the children's song Kookaburra was written in a major key, while Down Under would be held in a minor key. Moreover, only two measures were criticized what was qualitatively and quantitatively insignificant. For the musical layman this minor match is not recognized.

The process laid bare in Sydney that Larrikin had acquired in 1990, the original 6100 Australian dollars after the author Sinclair died in 1988. The composer was during the lifetime of copyright infringement will not be noticed, even though she knew the world hit. The music publisher Larrikin managed the rights now for Norm Lurie, the managing director of the music publisher Larrikin, which itself belongs to the multinational company Music Sales. Lurie taught the opposite side in the Melbourne newspaper The Age, "Test before you violated the copyrights of others ".

On 4 February 2010 came the final judgment of the Australian Federal Court in Sydney, Down Under after which contained substantial parts of the original and therefore the defendants to pay damages to the music publisher Larrikin to be determined in the amount of copyright infringement.

On July 6, 2010, the claim for compensation was set at 5 % of the received since May 20, 2002 royalties that are paid to the music publisher Larrikin. The court made ​​it clear that strictly speaking it is not copyright infringement, but a violation of the trade practices Act ( Trade Practices Act 1974) was present. The music publisher had originally demanded 60% of all previous bonuses, which the Court rejected as exaggerated and unrealistic. From the amount of compensation of about 670,000 euros can be concluded that the record company the band must have achieved since 2002 with this song revenues of the equivalent of about 13.4 million euros. Extrapolated to 28 years since the publication of the approximately 35 million euros revenue with only one song would be - a "real hit".

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