Youtube is great for 70s and 80s music videos. Looking for a little Men Without Hats, Kajagoogoo, Duran Duran, Devo, Boomtown Rats, Platinum Blonde? It’s all there, including two of my absolute favourite 80s videos from Men at Work, “Land Down Under” and “It’s a Mistake”
and Platinum Blonde’s “It Doesn’t Really Matter” (I remember seeing Platinum Blonde at a dive club in Halifax with my brother and his girlfriend (now wife) way back in 1983 when they were first starting out. They’d just released the EP that was the precursor to “Standing in the Dark” and they were fantastic. When they next came through the city, they were “too big” to play clubs and I refused to pay to see them at the Metro Centre.)
Anyway, getting back to the point. There’s one 80s song I keep hoping to find on Youtube. Hell, I’d be happy to see it turn up on the Internet at all, even on a lyrics site or Wikipedia, but it’s just not there. The song was called “Pills Are Painless”. I can’t remember who sang it (it was a Tony Basil-ish female singer but it could have the female singer of a mixed group and not a solo artist — I just don’t recall) but it did the rounds of the few music video shows that were on Canadian TV in the pre-Much-Music early 80s. I’m guessing it came out in 1983 or 1984 or thereabouts. I can only remember the tune, flashes of images from the video, and snippets of the lyrics:
He takes them in all shapes and colours
[something something]
He takes one, he takes two
He feels good if he takes a few
It’s a matter of [something] that I think he lacks
[something something]Chorus:
Pills are painless
[something] is [something-ainless]
Steel is stainless
And Bill is brainless
I’d be happy if I could just find the lyrics so that I can sing it to myself without humming breaks, though seeing the video again would be awesome.
Just goes to show that the Internet doesn’t have everything you’d ever want to know. 😉
Updated December 13, 2008, based on Brittany’s comment below (Thanks, Brittany, for finding it — and thanks Eva for uploading it back in August):
“Painless” by Eva Everything:
Check out her Youtube channel.
Lyrics (may have a few mistakes as there were one or two places where I couldn’t quite decide what she was saying):
Oo oo oo
oo oo oo oo oo
Oo oo oo
oo oo oo oo oo
He takes them in all shapes and colours
He wants to feel what they do
He gets red, he gets light
He can’t afford to be uptight
It’s a medical affliction that he takes them for
Problem’s gotten worse, he must have more
For Pills are painless
Thrills are veinless
Steel is stainless
And Bill is brainless
Oo oo oo
oo oo oo oo oo
Every day he wakes up in a coma
Revival is just a state of mind
You take one, you take two
You feel good if you take a few
It’s a medical affliction that he takes them for
Problem’s gotten worse, he must have more
For pills are painless
Thrills are veinless
Steel is stainless
And Bill is brainless
Oo oo oo
oo oo oo oo oo
What’s for breakfast, Bill?
(Dah, what…scrambled brains)
Your painless proposition to deploy daily doldrums downing pharmaceutical feasts with dipsomania doesn’t deter deleterious dependence. Now I can’t knock a little inconsequential chemical courage but you’re a zero falling into the nano-negative integers so fast…you’re disappearing
You can’t get a brain transfusion easy
‘Cos donors are very hard to find
He gets live, he gets dead
He eats the inside of his head
It’s a medical affliction that he takes them for
Problem’s gotten worse, he must have more
For pills are painless
Thrills are veinless
Steel is stainless
And Bill is brainless
(repeat X 2)
So, the moral to the story is this:
The Internet *does* have everything you’d ever want to know, if you just wait long enough — or remember enough to search properly. 😉
Oh, and Eva Everything is awesome.
Life Begins at 41...or maybe 43 