THE BOOMTOWN RATS – "I Don't Like Mondays"

The effect, after “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?,” is like switching from a William Gibson dystopia to a Surbiton Christmas pantomime, complete with that still embarrassing look-how-topical-i.e.-clever-I-am opening couplet of “The silicon chip inside her head/Gets switched to overload.” Possibly the most apt adjective to apply to Geldof’s songwriting and performing is “earnest”; there’s never a moment when you doubt that he means what he writes and sings, but there is also a pedantic, blackboard schoolmaster approach to his work which tends to flatten out any genuine dynamics in his music, and while this is more than helpful in the context of relieving the Ethiopian famine, it is less convincing when applied to workaday AoR pop masquerading as something new.

Even before we get to that silicon chip we are dissuaded by the absurdly florid opening of the record, from its piano cascade (pilfered from Carla Bley’s introduction to “Desireless” on Don Cherry’s Relativity Suite album) to the utterly depressing staccato strings and tympani-like drums – instantly one knows that we are about to be ushered into the presence of An Epic Song Dripping With Huge Cultural Meaning, with capitals accentuated because it’s easier to make a Grand Gesture than to come to terms with the horrible but undeniable fact that hitherto harmless people are sometimes inclined to walk into schools or classrooms and fire bullets into other people – even if, as with events in Finland this morning, that “hitherto harmless” comes into eye-averting question.

I share Mr Ewing’s suspicion of pop songs as grand gestures, except at least “Hey Jude” or “Bridge Over Troubled Water” indicate a way out, some element of redemption, and to its credit “Bohemian Rhapsody” makes no attempt to conceal its pretty vacancy; whereas the pomp and bombast of “I Don’t Like Mondays” were evidently intended to persuade us to gasp with horror at this modern world running out of control. It is virtually needless to say that Geldof’s observations on same, when compared to things like Springsteen’s “Independence Day” or Reed’s “Street Hassle,” are superficial and facile (“Sweet sixteen ain’t that peachy keen” – God give me strength indeed), and there is a tiresome theatricality to the whole proceedings which culminates in the quietly tinkling piano of the last verse interrupted by abrupt bursts of orchestra and Geldof sputum. It speaks sad volumes that Geldof succeeded in getting cheap applause at Live Aid by stopping the song for about a minute after the line “and the lesson today is how to die” – for an event whose avowed purpose was to offer a lesson in how not to die – and in the consequent wake of innumerable vacuous fundraising records and empty gestures for what have you and we’ll come in time to what little they had, “I Don’t Like Mondays” is uncannily prescient, since to the million-and-a-half people who bought the single within its first month of release it had been emphatically demonstrated that you could string together abstract voicings of cliché and make it seem like the Sermon on the Mount. Much more marketable than writing a song entitled “Amend The First Amendment.”

seems a rather harsh mark! but then again in this year of years… i don’t really like this song but might give those who do a bit more benefit of the doubt. edit: i admit to having alanpartridge-esque* ignorance as to this song’s inspiration and context tho. 4 then.

*specifically his feelings on ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’

At the time, I liked it a lot. Enough to buy the album. But having just heard it for the first time in many years on youtube, I have to agree it doesn’t really hold up, although I think it’s worth more than a 2. To the 44-year-old me, the lyrics do sound awfully sledgehammer, but at the time, I’m not sure I even knew the story behind them. Too much is made of lyrics I think. Phrases here and there add something to the mood of the song, but generally in these “story” songs, I paid no real attention to the story. Musically, the song is a bit of a mish-mash. The Boomtown Rats were a “new wave” band and Geldoff’s vocal stylings (such as they were) were “new wave”, but the arrangement of the song with strings and piano flourishes doesn’t sound particularly new wave. As Tom points out, it’s more straying into early seventies Elton John territory, sort of like Song For Guy or something…

I bought this so I must have liked it at the time. I guess “it’s got a good tune” is no defense any more as it’s one of those records that just falls apart the more you think about it. It does sound pretty though which covers a multitude of sins in my book.

I seem to remember the girl’s family weren’t happy at all about the record.

This seemingly got played nearly every Monday morning on Capital FM in 1993 (possibly by Alan Partridge, yes). It was alright, but I preferred the Joe Cocker cover of ‘Summer In The City’ – it was quite warm in West London IIRC.

The only other song about a school shooting that springs to mind is Pearl Jam’s ‘Jeremy’, which I always thought was godawful tripe and I LIKED grunge.

Marcello @ 9: I suspect that you, me and the bunny are going to have to agree to differ on the subject of Mr Sumner (OBSMBH) and his combo. But I’m sure we can do that, can’t we.

It may well be that Can’t Stand Losing You is the superior musical examination of a psychotic personality. But the voice of CSLY is not so much psychotic as rather pathetically, even comically, inadequate in his petulence. It’s hard not to laugh at lines like “Since you sent my letters back/And my LP records and they’re all scratched”, but somehow, perhaps because I’ve been rather closer to such a situation than I have to a crazed teenager with a gun, the guilt-trip-by-suicide punter is far creepier to me.

Mind you, I think 2 is very harsh despite Master Geldof’s Pomposity.

I think there’s been a wee bit of retro-fitting in some of the comments I’ve read about this one. To be fair to Geldof – the “silicon chip” and “telex machine” references didn’t seem out of place at the time – silicon chips were new-fangled and robotty-sounding, and telex machines were still widely used at that time as a means of diseminating information quickly.

It is undoubtedly an overblown piece of music, but IIRC, it was quite enthusiastically received by most at the time. Yes the knowing music mags may have been hip enough to look down their noses at it, but at the time I believe it was viewed as something of an achievement!

Possibly that was because it appealed to a wider audience than the Rats’ earlier material; possibly because it was seen as “intelligent”; I just know it didn’t receive such derision at the time.

It wasn’t one of my favourites; I had enjoyed “Rat Trap”, and the long wait for a follow-up possibly had me expecting something better. It was still a decent enough piece of pop, and I can’t help but feel that there had to be a Brenda Spencer song, and it might as well be this – it’s not nearly as bad, or as mawkish as it could have been. I’d have it as a strong 6, maybe a 7 on a good day.

Whereas ‘Are friends electric’ has grown in stature for me – this now just sounds rancid, lazy and overblown.

i am going to flatly contradict Tom — these are not bad lyrics. And the mood of the words, the music and the video all match up well – producing an extreme effect. An overacted, hammy and deliberate but (as DJP got in first) earnest effect. I think that the earnestness expands to the point of clumsy aimless beating fists can make people gag. (Roger Waters springs to mind — though there is even less subtlety here.) I’m not now a fan of SRS music trying to make SRS point — but i was young enough at the time to overlook it as the music was overwhelming.

But we need to mention the video too. The ‘lip-smacking each syllable’ was emphasised more in the delivery on the video, and is kind of aggravating because of Geldof now being Sir Bob, but was then just him being in your face ‘listen to what i say, it is important and an unusual subject for an pop song’. Again annoying – because it’s not important, and well done you for being so edgy. But this era of videos, going into the 80s, were going through an awkward and clumsy time. The song’s apparent sophistication at the time, matched its widely admired and discussed video — and both have faded with time.

the silicon chip and telex machine references I’ve always taken to be building a mood of emotional sterility and an impersonal mechanical world, as a mooted cause of the persons breakdown. (I knew/know about the story, but not the specifics).

it was terrific fun and it was probably the biggest song of the year 10/10 (yes yes a big year for great songs). i could live without hearing it again, but i would enjoy listening to it again too. probably giving it a 7.

I always thought that the “silicon chip” business was an oblique reference to Silicon Valley, California (I’m an American), but after checking I see that the crime took place in San Diego, which is on the other side of the state of California.

After nearly twenty-four hours of this song squatting in my head, and the irony of its appearing in Popular on such a day, I feel I do have to put my hand up with Alan and Pete and say that IDLM isn’t all that bad. Yes, it’s theatrical but there have been great – much greater than this one – theatrical number ones before.

One problem we have is that the world has moved on a good deal since 1979. School shootings still shock, but there have been so many of them in the last thirty years that our response – mine anyway – is a chilled ‘here we go again’. We’ve had Bowling For Columbine and We Need To Talk About Kevin, and as a phenomnenon such events have seeped into the fabric of our culture. In 1979 it was still genuinely alarming. As a teacher I could try to imagine such things happening in my school (a number of my pupils possessed airguns, perfectly legally) and only push the thoughts away in horrified disbelief.

Besides, Bob’s swivel-eyed earnest bombast caught something of the Zeitgeist – you could see much the same thing at the Labour Party conference as the party self-immolated. Live Aid was still a few years away and he hadn’t found a focus for his zeal yet. And there’s something about the call-and-response chorus that I find appealing – a new twist on a pop cliché; something lending a twist of gothic horror to a staple of gospel; B B King with his face painted out.

I think it merits at least a 6.

ah yes, but the Rats then stuck around @ #2 for a bit IIRC

re #23 on not liking Mondays, I myself was introduced to this concept as a child not by Sar Boab but by Garfield.

The “gets switched to overload” line vaguely irritates me but I guess “gets overloaded” doesn’t scan.

If nothing else it gave us Harry Hill’s booby-trapped piano sketch.

I well remember the collective (and nearly universal) awestruck intake of breath which greeted this release. So advanced! So important! So contemporary! Such a breakthrough! That opening “silicon chip” reference was an ultra-topical one, (predating even Basement 5’s lofty meditation upon the subject!), and it accordingly set expectations – as did the state-of-the-art video.

Sure, we’d had promo clips before – but the “IDLM” video was a proper video, with picture quality to match. And since talk was building of a new Video Age (home VCRs were just beginning to take off, with the Betamax/VHS wars in full flow), this was taken as another signifier of Great Cultural Import.

As far as I was concerned, and I suspect this applied to an awful lot of people, this was the first big hit since “Bohemian Rhapsody” (unless you count the straight-from-the-movie clips from Grease) where the video was inextricably linked to the song, to the extent where you can’t hear the song without automatically recalling key elements of the visuals. And in that respect if in no other, “IDLM” stands as yet another signpost to the future, in a year where everything seemed to be fundamentally changing.

Yes, it has dated badly – not helped by some ghastly later performances by Geldof, such as an embarrassingly self-important and painfully off-key rendition at one of the early Secret Policeman’s Balls – and the Live Aid version eventually squeezed the song so dry of meaning that it has never quite been able to recover. But looking at the 1979 video, Bob doesn’t do such a bad job (at least when he can keep his hands away from his hairdo) of conveying the impenetrable blank nihilism of the song’s protagonist. It’s as if the song wants to progress from reportage to analysis, but is repeatedly thwarted from doing so. And that’s not such a bad trick. I’ll give it six: for boldness, deftness and period charm.

Erithain #31 – I actually enjoyed some of the Rats’ later singles. “Diamond Smiles”, I hoped, signified a return to form of sorts. While still a “big” song, Geldof kept the hysterics in check rather better, and the long fade-out gave a rather contemplative feel to the track.

I could do without “Someone’s Looking At You” and the Costello-ish “Elephant’s Graveyard (Guilty)” despite their chart sucess.

I enjoyed “Never in a Million Years”, and its follow-up “House on Fire” greatly as I hoped for an Indian summer to their career. Both were good songs. “Never” possibly leant too much on their earlier “big” songs, but “Fire” was genuinely different.

The final few singles after that in the year leading up to Live Aid are probably best forgotten, as indeed I suspect they have been.

My memory of “Diamond Smiles” was feverish anticipation (“Oh My God, what can these impossibly advanced artistes pull out of the bag NEXT?”) followed by the dull thud of anti-climax (“Er, it doesn’t really GO anywhere, does it?”). At the same time, Blondie were experiencing a similar wobble with “Union City Blue”.

Unfortunately your theory would have made a lot more sense and impact if inserted here.

I’m quite surprisd at Tom’s mark for this song, more so than any Popular entry since Vincent. I can see a few similarities between the two songs and Tom’s reaction to them – both try to empathise with a real-life protagonist and in both cases there’s an earnestness/smugness about the lyric that Tom reacts against.

In both cases I actually like the songs quite a lot (up to a 7 at least). In Vincent’s case the prettiness of the melody overcomes any weakness of the lyric. In IDLM’s case there’s an element of childhood nostalgia (I was four at the time, and at least some of the factors Billy Smart mentions apply). However, my childhood memory of the song is quite dim – it was at university I rediscovered it and the orchestral flourishes Marcello so dislikes are one of the musical elements that appealed – and still appeal – to me. In fact the transition between the bombastic orchestra and the more lithe piano section makes it one of my favourite intros ever. I never thought of it as a grand statement – as a piece of music it’s great fun – a second cousin to Bo Rhap perhaps. That can be seen as an indictment of it, of course, given the subject matter – perhaps bad taste is what makes this song authentically punk.

Also, I don’t think Bob’s subsequent (mis)use of the song at Live Aid should detract from it as a single.

Well, when I was seven and avidly excited by watching Top Of The Pops every week (along with Doctor Who, The Goodies and Sykes my favourite media things) I do remember thinking that Sham 69 were like watching a revolution, so dangerous did they seem! As an adult, though… there’s so little pop craft going on (and so slight a sense of playfulness) that I can’t really be attracted to them.

Alan Sorrenti, THANK YOU! That was another tune that drove me mad that summer but I could never quite remember the song or the artist. Emphatic yes also for “Bjorn (sic) To Be Alive” too, which I’ve always loved – hi there backing singer/dancer M Ciccone – and of course the original “Gloria” (a minor UK hit for Jonathan King that year and a considerably bigger hit for the divine and much missed Laura Branigan in early ’83). All good memories of wading very far out into the Mediterranean in Scauri; pizza and red wine on the beach at seven in the morning mmmm….