Throw Your Arms Around Me

NOTE TO READERS: if I write something in italics and parenthesis... please imagine me looking around to make sure no one's paying attention to me before whispering the thing I'm saying in parenthesis as you read it.

Neil Finn then

Are you familiar with Neil Finn? Maybe you know of his name because he recently joined Fleetwood Mac. Maybe you're familiar with his solo career or one of his more well known bands, Crowded House or Split Enz.

In the early to mid 80's I had an awakening to music... I went from being a more or less vapid listener of whatever was the cool thing based on the folks with whom I surrounded myself to discovering a combination of sound and content. I needed something other than dance music. I needed something other than rhythm and melody. I needed poetry. I needed content. And I needed something that I could imagine myself singing in front of an audience as they admired me and my cool band. Oh don't pretend you didn't do the same thing with whatever your musical choice was.

If you follow my blog at all then you've already heard about this when I talked about "the The" and if you recall that was 1986. Two other bands I had discovered in 1986 was "Hunter's & Collectors" and "Crowded House". So while my peers were listening to Eddie Murphy... yes that Eddie Murphy, sing my girl wants to "Party All The Time" or Prince singing "Kiss" or maybe even Steve Winwood singing "Higher Love", I was listening to something else.

Neil Finn now

Not to single out these two bands that I had mentioned... there were some great tunes out there that crossed genres like "Sledge Hammer" by Peter Gabriel or "West End Girls" by Pet Shop Boys and a whole slew of others.

With myriad hits like "World Where You Live", "Don't Dream It's Over" and "Something So Strong"... Crowded House was an instant Success. It didn't hurt that they had the street cred of Neil Finn from the already successful Split Enz, New Zealand's most famous and successful band ever... well at least in 1986. But a lesser known member of the band was Nick Seymour. We'll come back to him in a little bit.

Hunters & Collectors

Hunters & Collectors, another band from down and under hit me from out of the blue with a song that punched me in the gut, made me want to sing and made me want to do that weird thing I called dancing and most people probably called "Bil having some kind of seizure again" and it made me feel a little... (dirty). The song... introduced to me as "The Slab" was originally titled "Betty's Worry" and had a specific lyric that if one thinks about it... tells you what the song is about.

(Here we go)
Oh yeah
Better get my head down there
Oh, where?
Down there in that cavern where heaven grows

Okay, I'm leaving that there for you all to figure out for yourselves. But man does that video reek of the type of male behavior that's been rampant in the news of late.

Back to Hunters & Collectors for a moment. The lead singer was Mark Seymour... older brother to Nick Seymour mentioned earlier as a member of Crowded House. Mark had this great song, originally released as a single and played a little harder and faster, it was re-released in 1986 on their "Human Frailty" album and then again in 1990 as a slightly better produced version. The song was called "Throw Your Arms Around Me" and while I imagine it was probably well known in Australia and possibly throughout the UK and Canada... it was a much lessor known song here in the States... that is until it was covered by Neil Finn.

Neil Finn essentially covers the mellower version and it's also been covered by Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam as well as several others... usually from Australia or New Zealand where the song is more of a national classic despite never having been a hit by it's original performer.

These days I hear it a lot while listening to 92.5 the river and its been on my mind that I'd like to get the Hunters & Collectors version out there again. I know that won't happen... but at least you now know it exists and if it's a song you dig.... maybe you'll go check out the original(s).