The Boomtown Rats
It’s a sad fact that Live Aid and all the other shit that’s gone on with Sir Bob Geldof through the years has hidden the fact that the Boomtown Rats were a pretty fine band with a string of uptempo new wavish singles that also did well chart wise.
Like a lot of bands, they hitched a ride on the punk comet’s tail and got lucky courtesy of motor mouth / legs Bob Geldof. Included here on the strength of their rip roaring hi energy debut single Looking After No 1 / Born To Burn (1977 Ensign). A fine bit of power pop punk new wave shenanigans !!!
Looking back, the Boomtown Rats made a number of fantastic new wave toons. Also consider Mary Of The 4th Form (1977), She’s So Modern (1978) and Like Clockwork (1978). Punk or New Wave or whatever. Damn fine! Live Aid seemed a long way off back then when they were knocking off John Travolta off having the #1 spot for the gazillionth week in the singles chart with Rat Trap and ripping up his picture!
Ironic then that one one of ther first/worst bits of PR (NME 16.7.77) was when the unlikely pairing of the Boomtown Rats and Skrewdriver saw a ‘fan’ of the latter group cowardly sucker punk Geldof on stage. Geldof to his credit carried on.
An excellent summary comes from the sleeve notes from one of their many greatest hits compilations
Merely picking out two or three songs by The Boomtown Rats would not help you form an overall picture of their music, as it would with many acts of their era. To gain a clear-cut impression, you must look thoroughly at everything from the reggae-tinged “Banana Republic” and the snotty-nosed abrasiveness of “She’s So Modern:’ to the skatalited hi-steppin’ “House On Fire.” “Even when we started,” said Geldof, “our influences were ludicrously wide. We listened to everything – reggae like Marley, Toots, and Johnnie Corke; U.S. black music from R&B to Philly sounds to the old bluesmen; English ’60s stuff like the Stones, Them, and the Pretty Things; straight pop like the Beatles, and so on, a ton of other stuff, songwriters, rockabilly, country, garage bands”.
This was a great deal to assimilate for a bunch of lads from Dun Laoghaire (pronounced dun-leary), Ireland. Formed in 1975 in guitarist Garry Roberts’ kitchen in Dublin, they were so disorganized at first that Geldof began as the manager and Roberts was lead singer They quickly sorted out the long-lasting original lineup from a community of friends and distant relatives. No small amount of attention was focused on Geldof, already a controversial figure for the scathing wit of his rock criticism as an Irish correspondent for Melody Maker.
They impulsively chose the name The Boomtown Rats for themselves, after Woody Guthrie’s gang of down-and-outsiders from his autobiography, Bound For Glory. The new Rats played sets for two to three hours at a clip, amusing themselves with their own versions of R&B hits and onstage pranks. They eventually named a pointless dance after themselves and called upon fans to “Do the Rat” On one occasion they handed out internal organs as dance contest prizes. Such behavior did not go unnoticed by the media.
It was their live performance that won them the attention of Nigel Grainge, who signed them to his London-based Ensign Records label. The Rats’ future was to be in England, “so we moved” stated Geldof, “because London is the center of the music business” In fact, they could hardly afford to live in London so they shared a great house in Chessington. The famous local zoo was more orderly. The young Rats gigged back and forth across Great Britain with Chessington serving as rehearsal and residence facility. They embarked on their first full-scale tour of England in the spring of 1977, including five dates with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Their first U.K. chart single came along in August, “Looking After No. l,” the first socalled new-wave 45 to be playlisted by the BBC. The Boomtown Rats subsequently became the first new-wave band to be offered an appearance on “Top Of The Pops.”
Their self-titled debut album was issued in November, along with another top-charted U.K. hit, “Mary Of The 4th Form” At year’s end, Capitol Radio named them “Most Promising Group of the Year” and the LP won “Best Album of the Year” Around the corner in early ’78 was a new single, “She’s So Modern,” from the second album, A Tonic For The Troops, which also included the follow-up summer single, “Like Clockwork”.The stage was set for the release of “Rat Trap” in October, the first new-wave 45 to hit #1 on the British chart. The impact of this was not lost on Columbia Records in the U.S., who issued Tonic in January’79 (with a “bonus” track in the form of ‘Joey’s On The Street Again” from the first LP). Geldof and Johnny Fingers agreed to a grueling tour of radio stations across the country (32 cities in 33 days!) to boost the album’s release as well as the U.S. issue of “Rat Trap”
While in Atlanta during the tour, one radio station’s wire service ticked out the story of Brenda Spencer, the troubled schoolgirl whose wild shooting spree in San Diego made front-page news. She explained herself simply: “I don’t like Mondays” Geldof composed the song on the spot, originally as a reggae. Back in Los Angeles after the tour, a studio demo was recorded with grand piano and vocals. By the time “I Don’t Like Mondays” was introduced onstage in Loch Lomond, Scotland, the song had been transformed dramatically. Lt became the Rats’ second #l million seller in England and was voted 1979s “Single of the Year” in the British Pop and Rock awards. Moreover, it broke the Rats in regions they’d never imagined.
Arthur Levy
TalkPunk
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