25 YEARS OF RECORD COLLECTING: MUSICAL MEMORIES 1982 - 2007

 

6. 'Big Pig'

 

“It’s a hungry town”

 

 

Now if you were a ‘Smash Hits’ obsessed teenager in the 1980s, you may have been thinking about Rick Astley’s seminal ode to porcine walkabouts ‘A Ruddy Big Pig came down our street’ once you had read the topic title. However this ‘Big Pig’ comes from the country that gave the world ‘walkabouts’, a country where pigs are probably outnumbered by kangaroos, koalas and wallabies, from a land down under “where beer does flow and men chunder”. Well if you are from that continent and at least 30 years old then you might remember ‘Big Pig’ but I wonder, does anyone here in the UK remember this Australian group? Although never making it big over in the United Kingdom, they still might be fondly remembered if only from the band providing a brilliant record as the theme tune to the long running ‘Def II’ travel show ‘Rough Guides to the World’. In addition to the ‘Rough Guides’ series, you might know this band’s tunes from such films as ‘Young Einstein’ and ‘Bill and Ted’ (‘Breakaway’), whilst imagining an (approximately) 8 piece male/female band all dressed in workman’s aprons might reboot a few memories of this band’s work such as the single ‘Hungry Town’. Unfortunately as I only have their songs recorded onto old VHS and C90 tapes it is a band whose album I am always looking out for in second hand record stores and as I haven’t yet found a copy at ‘Mr. Sifters’ maybe it is time for a trip to Australia.

 

nope.... not me, i bet neil b has though :)

Do you remember the ‘Def II’ show with Magenta DeVine (also from Network 7’s ‘Pink Caravan’ and that ’Sigue Sigue Sputnik’ video). ‘Rough Guides’ outlasted ‘Def II’ by many years and if you can remember the theme, well that’s ‘Big Pig’.

I remember the name but that's about it really.

 

They had two Top 100 entries :

 

"Hungry Town" (No.91)

"The Breakaway" (No.89)