Men at Work
Men at Work are an Australian rock band that enjoyed its most successful period in the 1980s. The name came to the singer Colin Hay in mind as he drove past a construction site, were sitting on the nine construction workers and only one was doing all the work.
History
The band was founded in Melbourne by guitarist Ron Strykert ( b. 1957 ) and singer Colin Hay. Later came Greg Ham (1953-2012), John Rees and Jerry Speiser added. The group is best known for the two published in 1982 No. 1 hit singles Who Can It Be Now? and Down Under. The song Down Under, a slang term for Australia, is a very ironic homage to her home and is, next to Waltzing Matilda, as a "secret Australian national anthem ".
The published end of 1981 LP Business as Usual was 15 weeks number 1 on the U.S. LP charts and was awarded six times platinum. This makes it the most successful debut LP in the U.S. at all. After the second album, Cargo, which contained the hit overkill and got three times platinum, two members of the band parted. Following the relatively low success of the third album's Men at Work broke in 1985 to finally and the musicians turned to his own projects.
In 1996, Colin Hay and Greg Ham found under the old name back together and it was created in 1998, the live album Brazil. Since then the band with moderate success is still on tour.
2010 found an Australian judge ruled that the flute part entstamme from the famous hit of the band " Down Under" from 1934 written scouts title and nursery rhyme " Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree". The music publisher Larrikin Music, which holds the rights to that Title, therefore, entitled to royalties. The publisher demanded as compensation 60% of total revenue since the publication of the song. Granted but were only 5% of revenue since 2002, these are still around € 670,000. This suggests that the administer for the band Copyright publisher of the title had achieved since 2002 with this song proceeds of approximately € 13.4 million equivalent. Extrapolated to 28 years since the publication would be the approximately € 35 million royalties with just one song. The title has also been used by the Australian airline Qantas Airways for advertising campaigns and played in 2000 at the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games in Sydney.