Hopefully everyone has the day off – if not, here’s some commiseration courtesy of actor Bill Paxton and his art-rock/New Wave collective known as Martini Ranch – “How Can The Laboring Man Find Time for Self-Culture”.

Martini Ranch was centered around Paxton and Andrew Todd. They featured a number of notable guest artists on their one and only album, 1986’s Holy Cow, including DEVO’s Mark Mothersbaugh on this track, which helps explain its obvious DEVO-nous. The video’s good fun for playing Spot the ’80s Star…how many can you name?

Martini Ranch got a bit more buzz with another single from Holy Cow called “Reach”, which made the 120 Minutes playlist for a bit. After that, the duo went their separate ways, with Paxton making a much bigger splash a year later in Aliens. But he’ll always be evil big brother “Chet” from Weird Science to me.

“How Can The Laboring Man Find Time For Self-Culture” did not chart.

Used copies of Holy Cow can be found at Amazon.

About the Author

John C. Hughes

John C. Hughes began his Lost in the ’80s blog in 2005 and is now proud to be a member of the Popdose family, where he’s introduced LIT80s’s companions, the obviously named Lost in the ’70s and Lost in the ’90s, alongside the slightly more originally named Why You Should Like…

View All Articles