Ready to Walk the Dinosaur again?

Eighties funksters Was (Not Was) are back. It's been 20 years since their biggest hit -- 1988's "Walk the Dinosaur (video)" -- but Don and David Was are plotting a return to the music biz.

The Detroit-based act has a new album -- "Boo!" -- set for release on April 8. The band, which also includes Sweet Pea Atkinson and Sir Harry Bowens, performed the new material during a Valentine's Day show in Los Angeles (with Kris Kristofferson and Brian Wilson) and has their eyes set on SXSW in Austin.

Though the band stopped touring and recording in 1992, the Was brothers have kept themselves busy. Don Was did producing work for artists including Bonnie Raitt, the B-52s and Elton John. David went to Hollywood and produced movie and TV soundtracks.

What are their prospects for a total rebound? Pretty good, if you read between the lines of the LA Times review of their February show. "It was chaos. Good chaos," Ann Powers wrote. "The kind that happens in that mythical Detroit, the one Was (Not Was) still brings to town."

[From left, Sir Harry Bowens, David Was, SweatPea Atkinson and Don Was. Photo by Ellen Stone]

Comments

[Big Tex]

My favorite Was (Not Was) line: "Happy Birthday, Dad. I'm in jail!"

Looking forward to the new release. I saw Sweet Pea and Sir Harry singing backup for Lyle Lovett a few years back - they've still got the pipes.

[Marissa]

I'll admit that I wasn't a fan of "Walk the Dinosaur." However, I do love funk(music). It seems that type of music is making a come back on mainstream radio: Gnarls Barkley, Robert Randolph and the Family Band.
I'd welcome it as I'm sick of girls and boys straining, at age 19, they've given up on life and love ::insert melodramatic whine::

[jane]

Sounds like this is definitely something I'll need to check out -- I'm all for anything that evokes a funky Detroit sound, mythical or not.

And Tex -- color me jealous at you seeing Lyle Lovett backed by Sweat Pea (who I think I'm a little in love with, after seeing his picture up there) and Sir Harry.

[Al]

They used this song, "Walk the Dinosaur", for the "Super Mario Bros." movie......which was a huge disappointment.

It was almost as bad as "Street Fighter: the Movie"........

Heck "Doom: the Movie" is a bloody Oscar winner compared to those two hunks o'junk.

[Clark]

"walk The Dinosaur" is not their best song, but it was their closest thing to a mainstream hit so they're stuck with it as their signature for all eternity, just like The Time with "Jungle Love", B-52s with "Love Shack" and Outkast with "Hey Yah". One nice thing about it though; if you ever want to win drinks in bar room music trivia contests, throw out 'It was a night like this forty million years ago
I lit a cigarette, picked up a monkey skull to go'.

[specialkness]

For some reason members of my track team decided that Walk the Dinosaur was my song that season. It went so far that other jumper bought me a plastic dinosaur to use as my run marker for the long and triple jump. It may not be the greatest song of the 80s, but it has super special meaning for me.

[El Mike]

"Walk the Dinosaur" is one of those great "guilty pleasure" songs of the 80's, like Baltimora's "Tarzan Boy": just crank up the car stereo, enjoy the silly lyrics, and groove to the funky beat.

[Ian from Down Under]

Surely Kim Basinger cranking out "Let's Go To Bed" with Ozzie Osbourne has to be the Was (not Was)'s best effort. Although the song reached the highest chart position for the band (#4 in the UK) in 1992, the song is technically an 80's song as the band released it in a different incarnation in the early part of the 80's. And a close 2nd, "Spy In The House Of Love" is also a great track. Possibly some of my hearing problems come from turning this one up way too loud.