Tonic for the troops

manatthetop · In the Long Grass

Tonic for the troops

ArrGee · Back To Boomtown

manatthetop wrote:
How great is this album. Has to be in anyone's top 5 of album's to hear B4 you die. Every song great. What more can i say

It is the greatest! All four versions of it. Just wish they had played more of it live.

Mark L · Loudmouth

Surfacing is as good, if not better, but there's little between them in all honesty.

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

Absolutely superb album. An all time great, which deserves more accolades than it ever received.

ArrGee · Back To Boomtown

Mark L wrote:
Surfacing is as good, if not better, but there's little between them in all honesty.

My opinion is that Surfacing isn't a patch on the debut LP, never mind A Tonic for the Troops. Surfacing has too many average songs and is over produced. How many cod reggae drum breaks can you cram onto an album?

Just putting the tracklistings side by side and rating the songs out of ten (and I think I am being generous to the Surfacing songs and less generous to the Tonic ones)....

Like Clockwork                         9 - 9 Someone's Looking at You
Blind Date                             9 - 7 Diamond Smiles
(I Never Loved) Eva Braun              9 - 8 Wind Chill Factor (Minus Zero)
Living in an Island                    9 - 6 Having My Picture Taken
Don't Believe What You Read            9 - 7 Sleep (Fingers' Lullaby)

She's So Modern                        9 - 8 I Don't Like Mondays
Me and Howard Hughes                   9 - 8 Nothing Happened Today
Can't Stop                             7 - 8 Keep It Up
(Watch Out For) The Normal People      8 - 7 Nice N Neat
Rat Trap                              10 - 7 When the Night Comes

Swap in Joey (9) and Mary (9) for Can't Stop and Normal People in the US version and there is absolutely no contest. Also the remastered buggered around with the run offs rendering them senseless.

But regardless of all that Tonic is far more coherent. It has a sound, it has a vibe, it is near enough the perfect LP. If it is not the greatest it is definitely in the top one. smile

PS Mondays is docked a point for the reprise of the first verse that is on the LP version. Otherwise it would have 9. Nice n Neat also docked a point for the bop shoo wops.

PPS I should rate the trite Having my Picture Taken lower as they only played it as an encore when I turned up ahead of the far superior Never Bite The Hand That Feeds

Melv · Diamond Smiles

An absolutely cracking album and certainly in my top 5 albums ever. In my opinion the best The Rats ever produced. As I said on another thread I bought this when it came out in the summer of 1978 when I was just 16.

Suss and I were discussing it in the pub (naturally) in Doncaster last week. We agreed that it was an iconic album for the time (in the same way that Parallel Lines and Dare were but obviously very different) but Tonic sounds just as fresh today. Suss said it was one of the first albums he bought (I think he said in Harrods of all places as a present?) at an age even more tender that myself at the time! I didn't have much money in those days as I only had my paper round income. I had to buy TFAOS on a Portuguese import with a plastic bag as an inner sleeve and on very flimsy vinyl!

suss · In the Long Grass

Can't deny it. The generous auntie of a schoolfriend took us up town and invited us to choose a present from her. Having nearly worn out my C90 copy in the previous month or two it was a no brainer for me to choose something.

No exaggeration to say it was the album that changed my life, and has influenced me for over 35 years .

Silverbantam · Mary of the 4th Form

I think Fine Art is slightly better, especially side 2.

Mark L · Loudmouth

Yep, side 2 is particularly good. The whole album shows a fantastic confidence and moved the game on from the pop of Tonic to high-tech pop. It does surprise me slightly that, containing a bigger number one than Rat Trap in Mondays, and with more or equally successful singles (Diamond Smiles #13 compared to Modern #12, Someone's Looking #4 compared to Clockwork #6), it only spent 26 weeks on the album chart compared to Tonic's run of 40+ weeks.

manatthetop · In the Long Grass

That's because Tonic was a much better album. Don't get me wrong Fine art does have it's moment's. But track for track Tonic come's up every time. For me any way

Melv · Diamond Smiles

manatthetop wrote:
That's because Tonic was a much better album. Don't get me wrong Fine art does have it's moment's. But track for track Tonic come's up every time. For me any way

Agreed! smile

Mark L · Loudmouth

Yes, clearly we all have a view on which is the better album and that view will vary, as is the very nature of subjectivity and opinion. Geldof himself has on a number of occasions taken the view that V Deep was their best work and he will have his reasons for this and he is entitled to them. My point was that the attendant singles from Surfacing were at least as successful as the singles from Tonic, if not more so overall, yet the parent album did not perform as strongly, if weeks on the chart are anything to go by. If I use the 'track by track' argument, I find Mondays spending twice as long at number one than Rat Trap, hitting the top spot in 32 countries, I find Someone's Looking (#4) superior (not by much) than Clockwork (#6), I find She's so Modern more trite (Geldof admits this is his least favourite single) than Diamond Smiles and I don't care much for Can't Stop whereas Wind Chill Factor is superlative. In purely my view, I find all the other tracks level pegging.

So bearing in mind all of the above, some of which I accept is subjective, and that probably by 1979 the Rats were even better known and touring and filling even bigger venues and spreading their tentacles even further afield, how does Surfacing spend almost 50% less time on the charts than Tonic? OK, it reached a notch higher and by total volume of sales there may not be too much in it (anyone know the figures?), but even on polls here, there is clear blue water between the popularity of the 2 albums which I don't understand as much as I do when comparing Tonic to, say, Mondo Bongo or the first album.

ArrGee · Back To Boomtown

Mark L wrote:
Yes, clearly we all have a view on which is the better album and that view will vary, as is the very nature of subjectivity and opinion. Geldof himself has on a number of occasions taken the view that V Deep was their best work and he will have his reasons for this and he is entitled to them. My point was that the attendant singles from Surfacing were at least as successful as the singles from Tonic, if not more so overall, yet the parent album did not perform as strongly, if weeks on the chart are anything to go by. If I use the 'track by track' argument, I find Mondays spending twice as long at number one than Rat Trap, hitting the top spot in 32 countries, I find Someone's Looking (#4) superior (not by much) than Clockwork (#6), I find She's so Modern more trite (Geldof admits this is his least favourite single) than Diamond Smiles and I don't care much for Can't Stop whereas Wind Chill Factor is superlative. In purely my view, I find all the other tracks level pegging.
So bearing in mind all of the above, some of which I accept is subjective, and that probably by 1979 the Rats were even better known and touring and filling even bigger venues and spreading their tentacles even further afield, how does Surfacing spend almost 50% less time on the charts than Tonic? OK, it reached a notch higher and by total volume of sales there may not be too much in it (anyone know the figures?), but even on polls here, there is clear blue water between the popularity of the 2 albums which I don't understand as much as I do when comparing Tonic to, say, Mondo Bongo or the first album.

There is an illusion regarding chart positions versus sales. In the UK, Clockwork sold far more than someone's looking and even banana republic, and likewise she's so modern vs diamond smiles. Although Mondays outsold rat trap, it wasn't by that many and rat trap was released at a far more competitive point against all the grease songs hence only two weeks at the top. Tonic sales were also far bigger than surfacing.

In terms of uk sales tonic and its singles outgunned surfacing. The picture elsewhere differs as surfacing was the first album for some, and its not really possible to compare with an import. Likely Japan, Australia and USA saw bigger sales of surfacing.

manatthetop · In the Long Grass

But the point being of singles is to push the LP into he albums chart And I know that, that means what ever song they see fit to do that. Lots of groups did this. But that's not to say that the single's that came off an album might be the better songs on it?

ArrGee · Back To Boomtown

manatthetop wrote:
But the point being of singles is to push the LP into the albums chart And I know that, that means what ever song they see fit to do that. Lots of groups did this. But that's not to say that the single's that came off an album might be the better songs on it?

That's an interesting one. The Jam tended not to put singles on albums, same as The Beatles and The Sweet (Sweet FA released at their height of their fame as no singles and is more of a heavy rock LP). The Clash and Elvis Costello (Watching The Detectives was not on an album) did likewise from time to time. Back in the 1970s in the UK, bands tended to be known as singles bands and made the majority of their sales on 7". Slade's album sales were modest compared to their singles and likewise T.Rex. It wasn't until the 1980s that albums were mined for singles, Thriller being an extreme example with seven UK singles.