Flash and the Pan

Dear James,

Remember how all this madness stated, many many months ago last November? Ah... As you will have noticed, I've been blogging less of late. This is mainly due to my slow realization that my career at times resembles that of Andy Millman in the second series of Extras. It's not got that bad yet, and that whiney bloke from Coldplay hasn't performed any impromptu concerts, but I often feel like it's heading that way. This in turn leads me to withdraw from the world and watch bad TV. Don't worry, it's a May thing: I'll perk up once we get to my birthday.

So, to cheer me and the world up, here are some classic videos from Flash and the Pan, the best thing to come out of Australia before Jason Donovan. First up is Waiting For a Train, where they manage to match every line in the song with a visual image, although this doesn't explain the strange dancers.



Down Among The Dead Men manages to copy Holding Out for a Hero five years before the latter was released. If anything is more indicative of the poverty of modern music compared to that of the 1970s, it's the absolute dearth of comedy songs about the Titanic. And what do pirates have to do with the Titanic anyway? So many questions unanswered.



The advent of modern video technology in the early 1980s allowed Flash and the Pan to make even crapper videos, as seen in Media Man. If this video came out now, people would laugh about what a witty pastiche it was of 1980s videos. Sadly for Flash and the Pan, they're the punchline. Which makes it all the more confusing that they should have been responsible for the best wedding song since Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You, John Paul Young's Love Is In the Air.



Oh hang on, Wikipedia says they only produced it and wrote the English lyrics, the original being a Portuguese song called O Amor Está No Ar, written by Agostinho dos Santos and João Teixeira. But the Portuguese page for Agostinho doesn't mention the song at all. In fact, here's him singing Love is in the Air with Johnny Mathis, and it's a completely different song. Eh?