Contraband Best Of [Best of]

My personal favorite, "Overkill," was highlighted as lead singer Colin Hey performed it acoustic on NBC's "Scrubs." Add in "Who Can It Be Now?", "Be Good Johnny", "Dr. heckyll & Mr. Jive", and "It's A Mistake" and you've got a solid set of reasons to invest in this CD.

A real "best of" compilation would include "I Can See it in Your Eyes" and "Blue For You".

A real "greatest hits" compilation would include "I Can it in Your Eyes". (After all, Men at Work only had five hit songs: "Who Can it Be?", "Down Under", "I Can See it in Your Eyes", "Overkill", and "It's a Mistake".)

It's telling, by the way that Men at Work has released just as many "greatest hits" or "best of" compilations as it has studio albums: three of each. The compilation to get is "The Essential Men at Work".

This album contains 6 songs from Business as Usual (including a live versionof I Like To), 5 songs from Cargo, and 5 songs from the relatively obscure final album, Two Hearts. I remember when Two Hearts came out. I saw it once in a record store but didn't purchase it right away. The next time I came back, it was gone. I never had heard any songs from Two Hearts until I got this CD, and, as it says in the liner notes, many people don't even remember that Men At Work ever even made a third album.

I was thankful to see that the 11 songs from the first two albums do an excellent job of showcasing the best of the Men's output while disregarding songs that were less enjoyable. Colin Hay's strong and rich vocals and Greg Ham's saxophone/flute/keyboard versatility were, and are, the highlights of these songs. "Who Can It Be Now" was the band's first big hit, largely on the strength of the unforgettable sax hook. "Down Under" was the classic hit about the traveling Australian that turned into an unofficial national anthem. "Overkill" is probably the best song on the album, a haunting song about stress, overwork, and worry with Greg Ham's best sax performance. "It's a Mistake" sounded light-hearted at first, until you listened closely to the lyrics and realized that it was a song of angst and fear of nuclear war (remember that the song came out in 1983). "It's a Mistake" also spawned a classic MTV video, culminating with the priceless look of "D'oh!!" on "General" Colin Hay's face as he goes to stub out a cigar in his ashtray and accidentally pushes "The Button".

The rest of the songs on the album from Business as Usual and Cargo don't disappoint. I suppose some would have quibbles with some of the selected songs, but I was quite happy with the ones they chose to include. As for the 5 songs from Two Hearts, well, they are.... OK. They aren't bad songs by any means, certainly they are better than some of the aforementioned songs from the first two albums that were left off this CD, but they aren't anything particularly noteworthy, either. Remember what I mentioned above about Hay's vocals and Ham's instrumentals? Well, both Hay and Ham were involved in the creation of Two Hearts, but their hearts just don't seem in it (no pun intended). The album faded quickly out of the record stores and got almost zero airplay, and when one listens to these songs, it is easy to see why.

That having been said, I still highly recommend this CD. Anyone who remembers the Men fondly will enjoy it, and anyone who may have only heard "Who Can It Be Now" and "Down Under" (both of which can still be occasionally heard on the radio) will get a nice cross-section of this band's music. Well worth picking up for any 80s music fan. The liner notes contained in the CD are a nice little short history of the band and make a nice supplement to the disc.