The Hard Facts:

In the UK, V Deep definitely outsold In The Long Grass, and most likely did in most of the world except for the US. It made the top 100 in the UK but not for long.

In The Long Grass sold better in the US, but didn't sell anywhere else, possibly the Live Aid factor.

The Conclusion

V Deep sold far more than In The Long Grass as the US sales were probably fairly insignificant.

The Caveat

This does not take into account sales since 1986, and possible that In the Long Grass shifted a few more copies than V Deep when re-released in 2005 because if I remember rightly it was higher in the Amazon charts.   However, I still don't think the difference was significant.

From Wikipedia (so not 100% reliable, but it will do)

Studio Albums

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boomtown_Rats_discography

NOTE - You may think that Mondo Bongo was as successful as Surfacing from the above, but remember certification is based on orders not sales.   Remember Deep In The Heart of Nowhere went Gold, yet never troubled the charts.

Was always surprised ITLG didn't dent the charts. Held this album in slightly more esteem than V Deep and Drag Me Down was a minor hit (50) and the album followed Bob's organisation of Band Aid, which might have been expected to spark off some curiosity outside of hardcore devotion. 'You don't still like this lot do you' was the unnecessary comment from the employee in HMV in Wolverhampton's Mander Centre when I handed over my cash in Jan '85 and I walked out feeling like I had just purchased something seedy.

diffbrook wrote:

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I first heard "In the Long Grass" back in October 1984, months before it was released. I was in a second hand record store and the album (cassette) was playing in the back ground. I had already heard "Tonight" and "Drag me Down" so I knew it was the Rats. The owner of the shop said it was a fantastic album and really raved about it. He said that previoulsy he had dismissed the Rats, but this Album has made him think again.

If V Deep hadn't happened and ITLG came out in 1982, then maybe the Rats decline would have been less steep.

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 I thought Never In A Million Years was a great single and was very surprised that it flopped. When acts have been around for a few years, there is a tendency for the public to look for something different- a different sound or new look (eg Synthpop, New Romantic foppery, the latest musical fishwives) and the old guard gets moved on. That is generally how the pop music industry works, and it was the same for the Rats.

I even think that if House On Fire had been the first single off V Deep it would have been a bigger hit- not  a much higher placing but it would have climbed higher than number 24. This is just an instinctive feeling I have.

I don't see the Rats as a singles only band, although their success was based to a large extent on 'luck' with singles. There were too many great album tracks and b sides to think that the Rats were riding their luck. I never felt short changed for intelligent content or interesting music.

The interesting thing is that a lot of music fans probably see the Rats cut off point as just after Banana Republic, their last really big hit. If I was to protest to anyone just how great the Rats were I would urge them to listen to In The Long Grass, and see it didn't all end with Banana Republic and the cessation of having hit singles. But anyway music if full of sad sad stories about the lack of justice for various artists whom time forgot or the zeitgeist  was looking the other way.

Interesting Diffbrook when you say that In The Long Grass made the guy in the record store rethink his attitude towards the Rats. I tend to make my mind up about a band after one or two albums, things like liking the singers voice , the bands lyrics- I cannot think of any bands I would have dismissed and then gone and changed my minds about them. Equally there are lots of bands I would feel equivical about and sometimes an album will tilt my opinion in their favour, but normally I have fairly fixed attitudes from the off.  Ps I do like Squeeze!

-- Edited by noelindublin on Monday 19th of November 2012 03:01:12 PM

noelindublin wrote:

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I thought Never In A Million Years was a great single and was very surprised that it flopped. 

I even think that if House On Fire had been the first single off V Deep it would have been a bigger hit- not  a much higher placing but it would have climbed higher than number 24. This is just an instinctive feeling I have.

I don't see the Rats as a singles only band, although their success was based to a large extent on 'luck' with singles. There were too many great album tracks and b sides to think that the Rats were riding their luck. I never felt short changed for intelligent content or interesting music.

The interesting thing is that a lot of music fans probably see the Rats cut off point as just after Banana Republic, their last really big hit.

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1st listen #nomillionyears rubbish but thought #mondays was as well. #housefire would have been #top20.  #joey, #eva, #howard all could have been singles.  #mondays #onehitwonders @boomtownrats

Been trying to think what the phrase or expression is for when someone gets defensive about something they know is inferior...contrary maybe? Can't help but think Bob displays that in extolling what most would consider his lesser offerings.

With SSM, I think it's just in keeping with his view that music is of a time and needs to be in context to life at the time. Maybe it just has no relevance to him now, as opposed to it being a song he actively dislikes or regrets. 

Or maybe he just gets bored with people raking over the popular songs all the time, and tries to provoke  a reaction by bigging up the 'lesser' songs. Wouldn't put that past him .

Geldof has always seen She's So Modern as hit single by numbers. Desperately afraid that their luck would not last he tried to ensure by all means possible a catchy single if it meant throwing the kitchen sink at it. Even the ga ga ga ga at the start was a 'tribute' to the Ramones catchphrase from Pinheads Gabba Gabba Hey.

Joey and Rat Trap and lots of the first album were real memories and experiences from Dublin in the mid seventies. Most fans like She's So Modern and think it sounds very spontaneous but Geldof knew every riff and instrumental break was in a way contrived to make it a hit. He even had Fingers sit at the piano for hours thinking up parts for it, according to a recent interview for Today Fm in Ireland. Mutt Lange weighed in as well with his bag of production tricks.

It's a bit like watching a movie and admiring the great special affects, and then finding out just how the effects were done. It sort of spoils it and you wish you didn't know the background nuts and bolts and you just went with the 'product'. Sometimes not knowing the background to how a song was produced is better.

If Bob doesn't like the song too much, it tells us something about him and perhaps that songs have to come from the heart, rather than being contrived. But as contrivance goes She's So Modern still passes muster.

ArrGee wrote:

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Despite the dated chorus, the song is an absolute gem, a perfect three minute pop song.  I sing it to my daughter from time to time, she thinks it's lame 

-- Edited by ArrGee on Tuesday 20th of November 2012 09:42:28 PM

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 Is your singing that bad, ArrGee??    Maybe you should just play the record.

What's it all to do with V Deep or ITLG though - you lot do ramble!

ArrGee wrote:

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Not sure I should play the records.  There were howls of derision when The Rats were on TOTP recently.  I wouldn't mind, but I regularly sing and play the songs without the same sort of reaction.  

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 Well I have brainwashed my 2 boys by constantly playing Rats CDs in car - and they seem to like them, but I'm sure if I ever dared sing, it would put them right off!  Showed them a TOTP clip recently, but they were just cross because I was trying to point out who was who, rather than letting them watch ...

You'll have to get her to learn Mondays on the piano.

That is a really great point - not one I'd stopped to consider before - but glaringly obvious now you mention it, certainly true of 3rd and 4th.

All adds up to V Deep being the (re)make or break, but the hunger obviously wasn't quite sufficient at that point.

There's an irony around the hunger only developing in the next couple of years.

noelindublin wrote:

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You are totally misrepresenting the  lyrics of When The Night Comes. The song is about being trapped in a dead end job in an office, obeying society's rules, and the only release is getting  drunk, or the thrill of making contact with a fellow worker, for a one night stand. It's about a kind of lonliness and modern disconnection.

Pity you don't appreciate the lyrics and the Rats theme of frustration, boredom, and entrapment in the song. I don't at all see the subject matter as trivial- the comment about the photocopier is something I might expect from a lazy music journalist who hasn't listened to the song, not a professed fan who seems too lazy to see all the pointers to Geldof's pity for someone stuck in a normal everyday life. The line about 'they nail you to your office,and they chain you too your desk' is f****** brilliant.

Of course you can 'read' the song whatever way you like, but I  think your comments are way off, and lots of others see it this way as well. I actually wasn't over keen on the song when I first heard it, but it was the lyrics that made me really take notice.

 

Yours in peace.

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 I get the point of the song, I just don't think it's very good.  The guitar solo is superb but the song itself does not hang together. It's as if the lyrics were written in one place and the song in another and brought together.

when i first heard it aged 15, I really didn' t give a fcuk about offices, so the song meant fcuk all to me.  and now having spent the last 20 odd years in one it means less. the lyrics are facile and pretty dull.  I think it was Geldof's first attempt at rewriting Waterloo Sunset, but it does not connect. 

Rat Trap does connect with the frustration, boredom and entrapment and sounds as if it does. Screaming in high rise blocks rather than catching the train home. 

Maybe it's too adult for me. I still listen to The Rats as a teenager.

You are totally misrepresenting the  lyrics of When The Night Comes. The song is about being trapped in a dead end job in an office, obeying society's rules, and the only release is getting  drunk, or the thrill of making contact with a fellow worker, for a one night stand. It's about a kind of lonliness and modern disconnection.

Pity you don't appreciate the lyrics and the Rats theme of frustration, boredom, and entrapment in the song. I don't at all see the subject matter as trivial- the comment about the photocopier is something I might expect from a lazy music journalist who hasn't listened to the song, not a professed fan who seems too lazy to see all the pointers to Geldof's pity for someone stuck in a normal everyday life. The line about 'they nail you to your office,and they chain you too your desk' is f****** brilliant.

Of course you can 'read' the song whatever way you like, but I  think your comments are way off, and lots of others see it this way as well. I actually wasn't over keen on the song when I first heard it, but it was the lyrics that made me really take notice.

Yours in peace.

noelindublin wrote:

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You are totally misrepresenting the  lyrics of When The Night Comes. The song is about being trapped in a dead end job in an office, obeying society's rules, and the only release is getting  drunk, or the thrill of making contact with a fellow worker, for a one night stand. It's about a kind of lonliness and modern disconnection.

Pity you don't appreciate the lyrics and the Rats theme of frustration, boredom, and entrapment in the song. I don't at all see the subject matter as trivial- the comment about the photocopier is something I might expect from a lazy music journalist who hasn't listened to the song, not a professed fan who seems too lazy to see all the pointers to Geldof's pity for someone stuck in a normal everyday life. The line about 'they nail you to your office,and they chain you too your desk' is f****** brilliant.

Of course you can 'read' the song whatever way you like, but I  think your comments are way off, and lots of others see it this way as well. I actually wasn't over keen on the song when I first heard it, but it was the lyrics that made me really take notice.

Yours in peace.

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 Clever song lyrically I won't deny, and one that has grown on me down the years (poss due to office life ), but I still find it utterly lacking soul when compared with Joey and Rat Trap in the 'street' trilogy.

Clearly another Geldof favourite (his band I'm reliably informed refer to it as When the Wife Comes) and I'm sure I recall some Fingers quote about hearing the track on car radio years later and him thinking it was one of their best too. 

I've never warmed to the staccato verses or the high note 'aaahs' and high note (repeat of) title in the chorus for whatever reason. Chacun a son gout and all that.

suss wrote:

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utterly lacking soul

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 Agreed.  I should have responded in tw@tface style.

....and isn't Blind Date about copping off over the computer, if you analyse it that way?

Granted, some of the tracks found on Surfacing owe rather more to the still marketable Glam excesses of the mid-70s charts, than the hard-edged raw social commentary influences of Tonic but that is somewhat due to two things - Bob Geldof and the boys natural evolutionary tendencies towards the theatrical and the arty, and secondly, the astonishing keyboard contributions of Fingers, which give the Rats their most identifiable point of difference from the myriad of other trendy bands of the day. Indeed, I Dont Like Mondays itself can perhaps be produced as the case-closing exhibit A for the prosecution.

But when all else is said and done, there is a little bit of everything on this record. Were instantly zoned in from the off, courtesy of a supremely crafted pop gem in the form of Someones Looking At You and then with Diamond Smiles - nothing half-baked about the latter  - a really thought-provoking, staccato pop surprise. Were then treated to blasts of hard-out rocking in a variety of guises; short bursts of real energy, histrionics and vocal inflections aplenty, flashbacks to the past both distant and recent, with loads of formula rock, be it of the more elementary and basic variety, or that which might be found donning brand new post-punk threads, with fluttery hooks galore. Then throw in the odd novelty item (Harry Hooper bridge) for posterity, or luck, and an eclectic mix results - Geldof kept things fresh, witty, and always interesting. The album shows the band maturing into an excellent pop/rock group with an appetite for cutting social commentary and the pressures/malaise of everyday life and it refuses to date. They could sometimes be too clever for their own good with some of their arrangements but, at least, were willing to experiment, although arguably too much with the next 2 albums. There's nowt souless or facile about this album but we're into opinions again....!

...and isn't that a great thing?!

-- Edited by Mark L on Sunday 25th of November 2012 08:49:25 AM

Mark L wrote:

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....and isn't Blind Date about copping off over the computer, if you analyse it that way?

Granted, some of the tracks found on Surfacing owe rather more to the still marketable Glam excesses of the mid-70s charts, than the hard-edged raw social commentary influences of Tonic but that is somewhat due to two things - Bob Geldof and the boys natural evolutionary tendencies towards the theatrical and the arty, and secondly, the astonishing keyboard contributions of Fingers, which give the Rats their most identifiable point of difference from the myriad of other trendy bands of the day. Indeed, I Dont Like Mondays itself can perhaps be produced as the case-closing exhibit A for the prosecution.

But when all else is said and done, there is a little bit of everything on this record. Were instantly zoned in from the off, courtesy of a supremely crafted pop gem in the form of Someones Looking At You and then with Diamond Smiles - nothing half-baked about the latter  - a really thought-provoking, staccato pop surprise. Were then treated to blasts of hard-out rocking in a variety of guises; short bursts of real energy, histrionics and vocal inflections aplenty, flashbacks to the past both distant and recent, with loads of formula rock, be it of the more elementary and basic variety, or that which might be found donning brand new post-punk threads, with fluttery hooks galore. Then throw in the odd novelty item (Harry Hooper bridge) for posterity, or luck, and an eclectic mix results - Geldof kept things fresh, witty, and always interesting. The album shows the band maturing into an excellent pop/rock group with an appetite for cutting social commentary and the pressures/malaise of everyday life and it refuses to date. They could sometimes be too clever for their own good with some of their arrangements but, at least, were willing to experiment, although arguably too much with the next 2 albums. There's nowt souless or facile about this album but we're into opinions again....!

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There is a lot I like on Surfacing which you have summarised above, but as time has gone on, I find I dislike certain aspects of it more and more.  

Had Having My Picture Taken and When The Night Comes not been on it and Late Last Night been I think I would see the album in a even better light.  I also think that Nice 'n' Neat was a great song made lesser by the incessant reggae drum breaks and the bop sho wop ending.

For me, The Fine Art of Surfacing does not quite have the magic of the first two albums. It's well-produced album; there are no bad tracks, but not enough great tracks.  I don't really listen to it much these days whereas the first two albums and the last get frequent spins.  

But then again I did buy it for the fifth time a couple of weeks ago... 

noelindublin wrote:

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.... one can wonder if the lines about 'screaming and crying in the high rise blocks'  is as heartfelt as some like to think it is or was it just a 'punk try on', trying to seem relevant. Socially Blackrock and Dun Laoghaire are literally and economically miles away from the world Geldof writes about in Rat Trap. But Geldof did get around and worked with the homeless so he would have seen at first hand the downside of poverty in seventies Dublin. The Rats punk credentials were questioned in Ireland because the all came from fairly safe middle class backgrounds, unlike some of the other punk bands who were very working class.

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 I don't know if it is particularly heartfelt, but it captures an emotion that many feel, and in the context of the song feels right.

As for punk credentials (or rock credentials),  few bands have truly working class roots.   Geldof did squat and work in places like the meat factory, and it is cloear he is more of an observer than a participant.

I have a 6 cd changer in the car and there have been times when all 6 Rats albums have occupied the slots. What happens with me, is that without thinking about it too much, albums 2,3 and 6 are virtually permanently there and the others make an appearace less frequently. Really, as far as Tonic and Surfacing are concerned, we're talking cigarette papers, hairs breadth, etc between the two, with Surfacing just by a whisker winning. I think Noel has summed up When the Night Comes superbly - I was blown away with the lyrical content of this one from day one, with the song taking on newer meaning on getting an office job some 4 years later, with possibly the finest guitar solo ever thrown in for good measure. I'm with Fingers on this one - and seemingly Bob Geldof too, seeing as how it makes a regular live appearance even to this day.

Suss - you mentioned you'd vote 2,1,6,3,4,5 on the albums - I'm struggling to see how '6' for Surfacing is a slim margin away from '1' for Tonic? I probably am - so apologies in advance - but am I missing something here?!

Mark,

Just realised you took my numbers as scores: I meant albums in order of preference by release sequence.

Re Five Lamp Boys Suss , the gang was called after a gas lit set of five lamps which is a landmark of sorts in that part of Dublin. It is most likely Victorian in origin. For some more pictures just go to Google Images and search for 5 lamps  Dublin, where there are some more pictures both old and contemporary.

Think there is, or was, a pub called the Five Lamps.

Gotta get me some of this...

suss wrote:

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Was a Johnny Come Lately with band, took me until She's So Modern...

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Sooner than me.  Never heard of them until Like Clockwork.  

I may have heard She's So Modern, but as far as I was concerned at the time, it could have been from any of a dozen bands.  Only punk/new wave bands I knew pre-Clockwork were the Pistols and the Stranglers.    I suppose I was at least 18 months late to the party...

noelindublin wrote:

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Some of us may have been a bit late, but we were there 'til the end, and still here now, so that's saying a lot.

I had seen the Rats on tv at Middlesex Poly...

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 The end?  Is it nigh?      I was a bit late for Punk/New Wave in general, but then I was only 12/13 when it all started and didn't even watch TOTP as it was Scouts night.   Only reason I heard The Pistols and The Stranglers was friends who had the albums on tape.  Oddly they also had Out of the Blue by ELO...

That was probably the moment I discovered The Rats.   Prior to that I think I'd only heard Clockwork.  But after that I went out and bought the album, and then the singles and then the first album, the poster etc.