Boomtown Rats' Bob Geldof, Tom Osborne and Me - The Fine Art of Surfacing

by corn blight on May 15, 2008 7:39 AM CDT in CN News Comment 6 comments

"I’ll give it an 85 because you can dance to it and I like the beat". Such was the line oft-repeated on Dick Clark's American Bandstand during the disco phase of the 70s. Disco was always the same, same beat, same pre-arranged crap, complete with polyester and wide collars. Wretched, wretched times for music.

"The Fine Art of Surfacing" was the third album released by the Boomtown Rats. Like everyone else coming out of England in the late 70s/early 80s, they were labelled punk mostly because radio stations and the music powers that be didn’t know what else to do with them. Punk evolved into "New Wave" to separate the hard-edged punk, plus the New Wave bands used synthesizers. Punk bands would have smashed them.

"Fine Art" was more poppy than the Rats’ original release, "A Tonic For the Troops" which was an excellent LP. "Tonic" contained the song "Rat Trap" which reminded me of how much I wanted to get out of the small town I’d grown up in.….

Billy don't like it living here in this town
He says "Traps have been sprung long before we was born"
He says "Hope bites the dust behind all the closed doors
And puss and grime ooze from it's scab-crusted sores."

Ahh.… at least it was different than thump thump thump that was disco and that’s all that mattered to me at the time.

"Fine Art" was still good stuff, not as good as "Tonic" but it contained "Always Looking At You", a hit in the UK about paranoia, my favorite song on the album "Diamond Smiles" about a debutante that commits suicide and the only thing people remember is her clothes and her smile, which is not entirely her fault:

Nobody saw her go,
They said they should have noticed
'cos her dress was cut so low.
Well it only goes to show
Ha, ha, how many real men any of us know.

"Surfacing" also includes the Rats' most famous song, "I Don’t Like Mondays", a song about a 16-year old British schoolgirl that shot a bunch of kids at school. She killed two adults, injured eight children and one police officer. When asked why she did it, she just said "I don’t like Mondays". The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Listening to music takes you back to where you first heard it. If it’s old enough you typically recall it with a certain amount of fondness, otherwise you wouldn’t chose to listen.

"Tonic" was released in 1977, "Fine Art" in 1979.

In 1977, Tom Osborne’s Cornhusker team lost two Big Eight teams, Iowa State 24-21 in Lincoln, and later to Oklahoma 38-7. It was Osborne’s fifth-straight loss to the Sooners and had people wondering if he was the right coach for the job. Osborne would entertain thoughts of taking the head job at Colorado. The Huskers finished the season beating Memphis 21-17 in the Liberty Bowl. They ended the season ranked 10th in the UPI, 12th in the Associated Press (AP) poll.

After beating Oklahoma in the regular season in 1978, then losing to them in a rematch (screw job) in the Orange Bowl, the Huskers would lose to the Sooners again in 1979, 17-14 in Norman. They went on to lose to Houston in the Cotton Bowl, 17-14, and finish the season ranked seventh in the UPI, ninth in the AP.

The Boomtown Rats would release one more album after "Fine Art" called "Mondo Bongo". I remember little about it other than I didn’t like it. The Rats’ lead man, Bob Geldof, would become famous (despite his apparent hatred of attention) as the founder of Live Aid. Tom Osborne would go on to win five national titles and become a coaching legend. Neither possibility, Geldof’s fame nor Osborne’s legend, seemed remotely possible at the time.

I’ve nearly dug out from being buried the past couple of weeks, so hopefully I’ll pick up on some things that have happened lately in the world of college football that have been bugging me, despite the fact that the headlines have passed. Some issues never die for collegiate sports. I haven't complained (or defended) Title IX in quite a while. Maybe it's due!

We have big changes coming to CN in the next week. Stay Tuned.

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memory lane and (misplaced) Celtic solidarity

I'm pretty sure that "Tonic for the Troops" was the first album I owned on cassette, as it were - a Christmas gift; I remember listening to it while freezing my ass off (supposedly sleeping) in a caravan behind my grandparents' house (which was too small for the whole family).

One thought: I don't know that an Irish band would thank you for saying that they came out of England, even if that's where they had to go to succeed.

I wouldn't have known a Husker or a Trojan from a hole in the wall in 1978; if you'd told me then that I'd be listening to Rat Trap on an iPod while going to work in Washington DC I'd have laughed at you. As you say, it's not always obvious where things are going.

by DC Trojan on May 15, 2008 9:42 AM CDT reply actions 0 recs

solidarity w/ a trojan?!

I had planned on noting that the Irish are not English but my trojan friend beat me to the punch. A strange day indeed.

Go Irish,
Paddy

by padraigtim on May 15, 2008 10:22 AM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

here's the thing

My family might not come from the most pro-Irish spot in the world, but I know how irritating it is when people can't tell the difference between a Scot and an Englishman (hint: both gloomy, but the Scot is marginally more likely to pay for a round). I'm pretty sure that it is that much more irritating for the Irish.

by DC Trojan on May 15, 2008 2:21 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

Ah!

but in the context of the times, the Rats weren't presented as an Irish band. That distinction is made now because of U2's fame, and because with the Internet the world is more aware of each other.

England, the UK, don't seem so far away.

At the time, it was like England, the UK, Ireland, everything was one place that was somewhere else.

At some point, I've got to get the remasters. I'm still listening to cassette tapes I made 20 years ago.

Go Big Red!

by corn blight on May 15, 2008 1:22 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

I can believe it

One thing that surprised me when my family moved to the States in '82 was that the radio was 6 months or more behind what had been in the charts before we left. And we're not talking anything out of the ordinary here; I seem to remember MTV having an update on the UK Top 20 of a weekend and X months later the songs finally arrived from way-out acts like Wham. There wasn't a huge degree of distinction in where the bands came from, but I don't think that most of my peers on the Oxnard plain would have been attuned to the distinctions anyway.

by DC Trojan on May 15, 2008 2:19 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

well.

for growing up in the sticks of Western Nebraska, my mom (believe it or not) followed all kinds of music. We played dances... wedding dances, homecoming dances, proms, in bars, you name it, some old 55-year widow and her 15-year old son driving around with a helluva system.

We had a record service that allowed us to get lists before the records were released and buy them at a substantial discount, so I'd normally just go through and pick out the interesting names. That's why I bought U2's first album before anyone had heard of them.

And the Rats we bought because Mom had heard of a publicity stunt they'd done where they sent dead rats to a bunch of radio stations.

So... for growing up in Western Nebraska, I had my share of music.

I think I'll do this on a weekly basis for the rest of the off-season. There's a lot of good music out there most people haven't ever heard of. :)

Go Big Red!

by corn blight on May 15, 2008 6:29 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs