Live It Up - Mental As Anything, 1985

 
 

How can you see looking through those tears
Don't you know you're worth your weight in gold
I can't believe that you're alone in here
Let me warm your hands against the cold

A close encounter with a hardhearted man
Who never gave half of what he got
Has made you wish you'd never been born
That's a shame cause you got the lot

Hey yeah you with the sad face
Come up to my place and live it up
You beside the dance floor
What do you cry for let's live it up

If you smiled the walls would fall down
On all the people in this pickup joint
But if you laughed you'd level this town
Hey lonely girl that's just the point\

Hey yeah you with the sad face
Come up to my place and live it up
You beside the dance floor
What do you cry for let's live it up

Just answer me the question why
You stand alone by the phone in the corner and cry

(Hey Baby)

How can you see looking through those tears
Don't you know you're worth your weight in gold
I can't believe that you're alone in here
Let me warm your hands against the cold

If you smiled the walls would fall down
On all the people in this pickup joint
And if you laughed you'd level this town
Hey lonely girl that's just the point

Hey yeah you with the sad face
Come up to my place and live it up
You beside the dance floor
What do you cry for let's live it up

Let's live it up
Live it up
Mmm live it up
Hey yeah you
With the sad face
Come up to my place
Come up to my place Baby

Hey yeah you with the sad face
Come up to my place and live it up
You beside the dance floor
What do you cry for let's live it up

 
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They are about as Australian as you can get - satirical, self-deprecating and fun-loving. After a 1976 college party performance, art school pals Martin Plaza and Reg Mombassa's new band earned the nickname Mental As Anything.

By the early 1980s, the band was scoring on the Australian national charts with clever hits like, If You Leave Me Can I Come Too? Mental As Anything achieved international notoriety with the release of their 1985 album, Fundamental. Included on this was their biggest hit, Live It Up. It was already charted at #2 in Australia, and #3 in the UK, when it was included in the soundtrack to Crocodile Dundee. The huge success of this movie gave the song, and the band, exposure in the European and American markets. (But that was the '80s, when just about everything Australian was cool. Every third commercial utilized an Australian accent to try and sell us something.)

Although still touring today, Mental As Anything is back to being a local Australian group. The two founding members, Plaza and Mombassa, quit the band to further pursue their careers in the visual arts...and to work on a new band, Dog Trumpet.