Strange 80s Hits – Think Bensonium

Day 482: Safety Dance, Men Without Hats

Roderick Benson — Wed, 14 Jul 2021 23:00:12 +0000

So during the long journey that was Covid Island Discs I explored different musical themes. One of these themes were strange songs of the 1980s. This song, which was released in 1982, certainly should have made my list as its lyrics are pretty bizarre. The song was inspired by an 80s dance movement which some coined crash dancing which, if you follow the link in this post, evolved from a video game called Crash Bandicoot that was a video game created for Sony to compete against Nintendo’s Mario and Sega’s Sonic hedgehog.

Yet the creators of Crash Bandicoot inadvertently spawned a type of dance move which mimicked the Bandicoot’s move of pelvic thrusts and spinning rapidly with arms outstretched to hit those who were in your reach. Now until I did some reading around the history of this song, I thought the song was a protest against this type of dancing (hence the title safety dance) but in fact I was wrong. The origin of the song is a protest against bouncers who threw out the lead singer Ivan Doroschuk because he was doing a form of crash dancing known as pogoing.

Anyway, my brother was always very bemused by this song and thought it was the epitome of pop music’s collapse in the 1980s (if only he could see what was coming in the teens of the 21^st century). He particularly found the lyric: “you can dance, you can dance, everybody look at your hands” as highly amusing as in his mind it kind of captured the type of folk that would like this song: a little Neanderthal-like as they obediently look at their hands on the dance floor in amazement as a response to the song’s command. Still it is a great one hit wonder in my view and well worth adding to my Covid Island Discs collection.

Day 41: Micky, Toni Basil

Rbenson — Tue, 18 Aug 2020 17:42:39 +0000

My good friend Robert and I had a teenage crush on Toni.

Day 39: Working in a Coalmine, Devo

Rbenson — Tue, 18 Aug 2020 17:41:29 +0000

The original song was performed by Lee Dorsey and was a number one in the 1966 singles charts – the year I was born. 2023 Edit: unfortunately the original video I posted back in 202 has been taken down by Youtube so now I can only find an album version of the song sadly.

And here is the original 1966 hit

Day 37: Video Killed the Radio Star, Buggles

Rbenson — Tue, 18 Aug 2020 17:38:40 +0000

“I heard you on the wireless back in ’52…”
“Ohwa Ohwa”

Day 35: Da Da Da by Trio

Rbenson — Tue, 18 Aug 2020 17:32:04 +0000

Let’s really go crazy. This is one of our Rebekah’s favourite. Love the guitar player.

“I know why you went away. Understand you couldn’t stay.“

Day 34: Pop Muzik by M

Rbenson — Tue, 18 Aug 2020 17:31:18 +0000

The crazy 80s! Do people remember this baby? Well actually this song came out in 1979.

Day 33: Rasputin by Boney M.

Rbenson — Tue, 18 Aug 2020 17:30:15 +0000

OK from yesterday’s post this Segway could have gone the obvious way (I listed three classic rock tunes which I could now cover) or the psychedelic way I shall choose the latter. So yesterday’s song was Eagle Rock by a band called Daddy Cool. The 3 hit wonder group Boney M wrote a hit song by the same name. Yet they also (to my knowledge) had two other big hits and today I share one of the three, Rasputin. What exactly is my next musical theme you may be wondering? Well it is weird, wonderful and often comical music from the one hit wonder bands of the 80s and 90s. Given the shutdown in the UK is going to continue for sometime yet, we might as well take a look at these one hit wonders as they will bring back some great memories and some of the film clips are pretty interesting or, as with this specimen, will give you all a good laugh. Bobby Farrell’s dancing in this clip cracks me up every time.

“Oh those Russians.“

PS: Bobby Farrell died in St Petersburg on the 30^th of December 2010 the same date (not same year obviously) and in the same city as Grigori Rasputin.