I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself

With Burt Bacharach's passing at 94 the tributes are pouring in along with those lengthy lists of memorable songs.  I've written twice about Burt in Is Christopher Walken The Burt Bacharach Of Acting? and on his wonderful 1990s collaboration with Elvis Costello, Painted From Memory.

Here are four favorites (lyrics on the first three by brilliant Hal David), starting with Colin Hay's version of I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself.

Next up are two from Dionne Warwick, Anyone Who Had A Heart, with its odd-timing and rhythms (a Bacharach trademark), and Alfie, a simply sublime combination of musical composition, lyrics, and a perfect vocal, creating a very odd tune, and the title song for the movie which made Michael Caine, playing a rotten guy, a star.

 

 

Last is Burt and Elvis with the title song from their album Painted From Memory.

Ghosts Appear And Fade Away

After Men At Work, for a brief period in 1983 the biggest band in the world, broke up a couple of years later, Colin Hay, lead singer and composer or co-composer of their material, hit a pretty rough patch.  He relocated to Los Angeles, his solo records flopped, and he spent most of the 1990s playing to tiny audiences in whatever venue would have him.  In the early 2000s he began a career revival due to his steady commitment to playing on the road, being featured in the series Scrubs, and having one of his songs on the platinum soundtrack for the movie Garden State, written and directed by Zach Braff, who'd gotten to know Colin via Scrubs.

Where his Men At Work songs were often jokey and light, Hay's solo work is more personal.  He is also quite a storyteller in his solo shows.

Let's start with a couple of tunes Colin reworks from his Men At Work days; my favorite, Overkill, and, of course, Down Under.  On Overkill, stick around to watch the audience.

Overkill is about the thoughts that keep you awake in the middle of the night.  Happens to me.  Those thoughts have always been worse than the actual problems faced when awake, because then I can do something about the problem other than worry.  It's what Colin is referring to when he sings, "Ghosts appear and fade away".

Here are a couple of his solo tunes, Waiting For My Real Life To Begin and I Just Don't Think I'll Get Over You.  On the latter, you can listen to a few minutes of Hay's funny stories.