Mondays - How accurate is this?

Mark L · Loudmouth

Mondays - How accurate is this?

iang · Someone's Looking At You

Mark L wrote:
Just stumbled across the NME review from July 79: 'A masterpiece! Following a series of competent but average hits, the Rats put out their tongues and pull from their pockets - just in the nick of time - one of the greatest pop pieces of the decade. Bob Geldof proves his genius and in a single stroke justifies his 'mouth'. I Don't Like Mondays defies description; you'll hear plenty of it soon. For the moment, let's say it's a gradual, imploring pomp ballad - the sort of thing Ian Hunter has been after for years but never quite achieved - that stretches and twirls with arrogant patience and pride. Apparently controversial, the story concerning the manic lust of a young girl who shot a handful of people in America because she despised Mondays, it avoids trivialising the subject and rolls out as a moving and mighty documentary, vigorously commercial. The atmosphere is massive, the message defiant, the Geldof vocals stupendous, the arrangement breathtaking, there's strings,harps and elaborate pianos and swelling chests. A record that pushes the Rats amongst the all-time greats. Number one for weeks and weeks and weeks. No messing'.

iang · Someone's Looking At You

I would say it was spot on Lookin, Mary, Clockwork, She's So competent but average. .But the first flash of real genius in my view was the Springsteensque Rat Trap.

Jules · The biggest Geldof fan in the world, bar none!

I wouldn't call the earlier songs just average by any stretch of the imagination.

noelindublin · Loudmouth

I prefer Like Clockwork to Mondays but I have a very even handed liking for all the Rats music so saying one song is somehow fantastically better than another is something I've never really felt I've had to do.

I certainly would think that Like Clockwork and Mary Of The Fourth Form were above average in anybody's book, but who knows what great music these NME guys were privy too? Look out kid, they keep it all hid.

Thing is, if you've got say twenty NME reviewers then you will have twenty different opinions, so in the end it's all down to one persons individual taste. Hadn't seen that review of Mondays before and I am surprised it is so positive. Maybe it was slipped past the editor while he was out partying.

In the end Mondays was a hit and people bought it in great numbers around the world so that's musical democracy in action. Radio play and tv appearances and live gigs are going to make people buy a record rather than if some mook at the NME thinks it's good or not.

ArrGee · Back To Boomtown

Mark L wrote:
Just stumbled across the NME review from July 79: 'A masterpiece! Following a series of competent but average hits, the Rats put out their tongues and pull from their pockets - just in the nick of time - one of the greatest pop pieces of the decade. Bob Geldof proves his genius and in a single stroke justifies his 'mouth'. I Don't Like Mondays defies description; you'll hear plenty of it soon. For the moment, let's say it's a gradual, imploring pomp ballad - the sort of thing Ian Hunter has been after for years but never quite achieved - that stretches and twirls with arrogant patience and pride. Apparently controversial, the story concerning the manic lust of a young girl who shot a handful of people in America because she despised Mondays, it avoids trivialising the subject and rolls out as a moving and mighty documentary, vigorously commercial. The atmosphere is massive, the message defiant, the Geldof vocals stupendous, the arrangement breathtaking, there's strings,harps and elaborate pianos and swelling chests. A record that pushes the Rats amongst the all-time greats. Number one for weeks and weeks and weeks. No messing'.

Pretty accurate, except the part about them being pushed among the all-time greats. Sadly, it didn't do that.

I have to confess, Mondays isn't my favorite moment from the Rats, but I can hear why it's popular.

suss · In the Long Grass

iang wrote:
I would say it was spot on Lookin, Mary, Clockwork, She's So competent but average. .But the first flash of real genius in my view was the Springsteensque Rat Trap.

Broadly agree with this. Whether I was a bit intimidated by punk I don't know but No 1 didn't get me rushing straight out to a record shop, nor Mary, which I think is a solid song that perhaps needs more of a hook to set it apart. I'd argue She's So Modern was the turning point for the band, whatever Bob's misgivings about the song, as that was the one with (for me) a far wider appeal. Funnily enough this view was shared whilst chatting to another fan at Islington.

Clockwork is another great song but was never a chart topper in the making.

Rat Trap was just different league. Without that I'm not convinced the stage was set for Mondays. Have always wondered how Mondays would have fared as a debut single. It's strong enough to have been a hit regardless I think, but not for a month at the top. I also think anything that followed that were it the first single would have sunk without trace. In other words, Rats were a top top new wave band at their zenith when it got released, and rode the crest of the wave on it. Had Mondays set their 'style' they'd have carried no credence as bona fide new wave artists and struggled to maintain any impact, imho.

The only real shame is they couldn't hold that wave for much longer and wiped out relatively quickly in terms of real hits. Mondays certainly would have fuelled Geldof's desire to experiment with styles. Understandably he must have felt untouchable during 1979, but we all know how quickly the star faded.

Summary:- great song without doubt, review quoted wouldn't have happened without Rat Trap setting them up, and song was probably both a blessing and a curse to them.

noelindublin · Loudmouth

iang wrote:
I would say it was spot on Lookin, Mary, Clockwork, She's So competent but average. .But the first flash of real genius in my view was the Springsteensque Rat Trap.

I think Ian that Joey's On The Street Again might also qualify as one of their real flashes of early genuis and certainly it has later echoes in Rat Trap and I'll give it a certain Springsteen quality though I'm no expert of Springsteen and have always thought the Boomtown Rats had a sound more in awe of Dr Feelgood and raw r an b music than necessarily BS.

There are no real weak songs on the debut album and the early demo track A Second Time shows Geldof could do 'emotional songs' pretty well as the rock and roll bluster/punk/new wave/pop.

Because Mondays is so familiar we tend to dismiss it a bit, but remembering back to the seventies and hearing that intro and then Geldof's voice still brings me chills. The review seems to have been written by someone who had just heard the song a few times and it was all fresh and a new 'sound'. What marks the song down a bit for me was that only Fingers and Geldof really feature, unless you count backing vocals and the occasional hand clap. Still it is very distinctive and looking at YouTube it has been 'covered' by hundreds of amatuers, much more so than any other Rats song.

Funny thing is that the band originally wanted all guitars and no piano. I think Fingers was drafted because they couldn't find another guitar player. Must check the details of this but I think Garry Roberts said this in one of his interviews.

-- Edited by noelindublin on Tuesday 5th of June 2012 12:54:39 PM

suss · In the Long Grass

noelindublin wrote:
Funny thing is that the band originally wanted all guitars and no piano. I think Fingers was drafted because they couldn't find another guitar player. Must check the details of this but I think Garry Roberts said this in one of his interviews.

-- Edited by noelindublin on Tuesday 5th of June 2012 12:54:39 PM

Would have to check interviews etc but from memory it was more a case of they had enough guitars but didn't want to exclude a mate, hence finding 'room' for keyboards. Strange to think that if there wasn't that sentimentality (if my memory is accurate) there wouldn't have been Mondays in that form. That said, if current Rats interpretation had been released in 79 I'm fairly confident that would have been massive on the back of Rat Trap too.

noelindublin · Loudmouth

Fingers does some lovely piano work on Joey's On The Street- the little bit before/during the lines: 'When Joey moved away/A lot of the kids said' etc

I am sure I read or heard somewhere in an interview that having a piano player was not in the bands original plans. This seemed remarkable to me seeing as how Fingers piano has always been important to the bands sound. Fingers and Garry Roberts were friends so maybe this is why Johnnie got the gig. I can't imagine the band without JF, and the pygama clad pianist certainly gave the Rats a distinctive look!

I also found an audio interview with Garry Roberts from Lionheart Radio in Northumberland ( from 2009) in which he says the band became 'too arty' after the first three albums.

ArrGee · Back To Boomtown

suss wrote:
iang wrote:
I would say it was spot on Lookin, Mary, Clockwork, She's So competent but average. .But the first flash of real genius in my view was the Springsteensque Rat Trap.
Broadly agree with this. Whether I was a bit intimidated by punk I don't know but No 1 didn't get me rushing straight out to a record shop, nor Mary, which I think is a solid song that perhaps needs more of a hook to set it apart. I'd argue She's So Modern was the turning point for the band...

I never heard of the Rats until She's So Modern, so there is a lot of truth in that. It was Like Clockwork that really caught my interest. Until then I was I was far more interested in the Stranglers and the Pistols due to my peer group having the tapes and hearing them constantly.

I probably only started to listen to the Rats as they were on the same Revolver show as the Stranglers in mid -1978. I didn't watch TOTP.

noelindublin · Loudmouth

Like Clockwork was a bigger hit in the UK compared to She's So Modern (#6 Vs #12) despite the fact that She's So Modern is more upbeat and 'poppy'. Like Clockwork always had a strange sort of feel, very distinctive and the superior record for me. It was undoubtedly one of the records that made the Rats stand out for me.

The first time I heard Looking After No 1 was when I bought the 'famous' Vertigo sampler which featured the song along with numbers from Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Dead Boys, New York Dolls. This sampler was called New Wave and mainly features American punk bands except for the Rats and The Damned. I actually got into the band after A Tonic For The Troops came out but you have to start somewhere.

http://eil.com/shop/moreinfo.asp?catalogid=352305

ArrGee · Back To Boomtown

noelindublin wrote:
I actually got into the band after A Tonic For The Troops came out but you have to start somewhere.

I suspect many did. I was aware of the Pistols with Pretty Vacant and Holidays in the Sun, and the Stranglers with Peaches and No More Heroes in 1977, but The Boomtown Rats weren't on my radar at all. I hadn't really heard The Jam nor The Clash until 1978, The Damned until 1979 and the Ramones until 1980. Not really too surprising given I was only 13 in 1977, and was expanding my musical knowledge bit by bit.