On January 22, 1980 The Boomtown Rats third single from The Fine Art of Surfacing, "Someone's Looking At You", had a new single entering the UK charts at #45. The "gently humorous song about paranoia" peaked at UK#4. "I wrote Someone's Looking At You in 1980," said BobGeldof in 2013. "But when we rehearsed it again the Guardian front page was Obama spying on the American people ...This shit has actually gotten worse".
The Boomtown Rats have reformed in a big way this year and have declared 2020 the Year of the Rat. A UK Tour to support Citizens of Boomtown, their first album since 1985, begins in March.
On July 15, 1979 the new Boomtown Rats single, "I Don't Like Mondays", entered the U.K. charts at #15. Within a week it would be number one. The smash hit was inspired by a school shooting in California earlier that year.
On January 29, 1979 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer opened fire on children arriving at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego from her house across the street, killing two men and wounding eight students and a police officer. Principal Burton Wragg was attempting to rescue children in the line of fire when he was shot and killed, and custodian Mike Suchar was slain attempting to aid Wragg.
Spencer used a rifle her father had given her as a gift. As to what impelled her into this form of murderous madness, she told a reporter, “I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.”
The quote inspired Bob Geldof of The Boomtown Rats to write the #1 smash "I Don't Like Mondays".
Geldof has heard about the shooting at a radio station in Atlanta when the telex machine started printing up wire copy about the shooting.
“I read it as it came out. Not liking Mondays as a reason for doing somebody in is a bit strange. I was thinking about it on the way back to the hotel and I just said 'Silicon chip inside her head had switched to overload.’ I wrote that down.”
“And the journalists interviewing her said, 'Tell me why?' It was such a senseless act. It was the perfect senseless act and this was the perfect senseless reason for doing it. So perhaps I wrote the perfect senseless song to illustrate it.” “It wasn't an attempt to exploit tragedy,” That hasn't prevented comedian Russell Brand from joking about the Live Aid organizer:
"Bob Geldof...no wonder he's such an expert on famine, he has been dining out on 'I Don't Like Mondays' for thirty years"
Brenda Ann Spencer is eligible for parole in 2019.
Boomtown Rats: the band's name says it all. Parasites amid prosperity, rodents on the make in the sewers of power, a great band name from an era of great band names. As much as Clash or Damned or Sex Pistols - or Stranglers, Buzzcocks and Lurkers - the name forever tags the band as part of the class of '77, when the barbarians finally arrived at the gates of an increasingly stratified and stultifying Rock City.
-Charles Shaar Murray, from the liner notes of the remastered CD.
In September of 1977 The Boomtown Rats released their self-titled debut album. Despite Bob Geldof's sneery vocals, the Rats owed more to the Rolling Stones than to anything the punks were up to. Something Geldof addresses in this interview:
Geldof says the purpose of new wave bands like the Boomtown Rats is to re-energize the music scene following what he describes as a blank generation between 1969 and 1975. Forget Pink Floyd, Geldof says it wasn't until the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Jam, Dr Feelgood and Graham Parker came along that rock got interesting again. Saint Bob figured The Boomtown Rats were somewhere in between the punkers and the pub rockers.
"Mary in the 4th Form" was the U.K. 15 single in the long tradition of tributes to young girls in uniforms like The Yardbirds' "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl", The Mindbender' "Schoolgirl", and The Police "Don't Stand So Close to Me" .
"Joey's On the Street Again" is less punk than an Irish take on Springsteen . True Rat fans adore the deep cut "I Can Make It If You Can". The album peaked at #18 in the U.K. album charts,
