Colin Hay was born just south of Glasgow in Scotland. When he was 14, he moved to Melbourne, Australia, with his family. After Men at Work called it quits, he moved to LA.

Early in the set, he says the next one is a very simple song with just a few chords, which is true of most of my songs. This song is about all the extra time I had after I quit drinking. He goes on to play “Beautiful World” from his 2000 album, Going Somewhere.

Colin says that in the original, it is saxophones playing the melody at the start of “Who Can It Be Now?” On guitar, it sounds much more eerie. It sounds like the music they play before going to commercial on Forensic Files. This is great example of the charming and funny stories that he tells about the songs before playing them.

Next is another one from the Men at Work time, “Overkill”, which was on their 1983 album, Cargo. “People seem to still like this one”, he says. 20 years after the release of the song, he ran into someone who said they he really likes the song about the goats. The lyric goes, “Ghosts appear and fade away”. Colin thought it was quite funny that this guy thought the song was about farm animals. This reminded him of a story about when he and his housemates bought a goat because the grass in the yard was getting out of control. It turns out that goats don’t eat grass and it just came inside at night and watched TV with us!

He often gets asked by people if they should go into songwriting. He responds that he wrote this one song in 40 minutes, and it has kept him going for 40 years, so, Yes! He goes on to play “Down Under”, from their 1981 album, Business As Usual. It’s Men at Work’s most popular song on Spotify, with over 878 million streams.

Fun Fact: Zach Braff featured Hay’s music in his 2004 film Garden State and his sitcom Scrubs, which gave Colin a bump in is popularity in the early 2000s.

See the full setlist here.

Cost of a ticket: $77

PlaylistHQ Economic Rating: Worth It +

Rating Scale: Exceptional Value > Worth It > Discounted > Go for Free > Don’t Bother

Quinn Delaney