The band of which we speak is The Boomtown Rats.
The Irish sextet formed in 1975 as The Nightlife Thugs. They quickly moved to London, changed their name to The Boomtown Rats, and assumed their rightful place on the burgeoning UK punk scene. Catching the attention of label head Nigel Grainge (who had previously signed Thin Lizzy and 10cc to Phonogram), the band signed a deal with the upstart Ensign Records and quickly got to work on their first single, "Looking After #1", which became the first of nine straight Top 40m singles in the UK. They quickly recorded their debut album with Robert John "Mutt" Lange, who would become best known for producing AC/DC's "Highway To Hell" and "Back In Black", but, at the time, was making a name for himself by producing a number of up-and-coming punk and pub rock acts in England.
Songs such as "Looking After #1" and "Mary Of The 4th Form" are longtime live favorites that maintain their ferocity in recorded form, practically leaping off of the vinyl. Despite their obvious ties to the UK punk scene, the Rats' debut album reveals a band influenced just as much by Thin Lizzy and the E Street Band. The most obvious nod to Springsteen comes via the caffeinated rocker "Joey's On The Streets Again", highlighted by Geldof's masterful sax licks. The album shows just how quickly the band is maturing, as heartfelt mid-tempo stunners such as "Neon Heart" and "I Can Make It If You Can" show Geldof to be every bit the everyman poet as Springsteen. Of course, songs such as "(She's Gonna) Do You In" and "Neon Heart" are sneering, visceral rockers that both embrace and document the seediness of London's West End and the characters who inhabit it.
The album, along with the rest of the band's catalog, was remastered and re-issued in 2005 with bonus tracks that include the demos that landed the band their first recording contract and a single version of "Mary Of The 4th Form".
Released less than a year after their debut, A Tonic For The Troops shows a band that has all but completely outgrown their punk roots and is now leading the charge of groundbreaking UK bands without sacrificing an iota of their original urgency and high-octane performances.
Listening to this record today and hearing the buoyant, albeit adrenalized jubilation of tracks such as "Like Clockwork", "Don't Believe What You Read", and "She's So Modern", it's impossible to believe that these tunes were recorded 32 years ago. To say that the band was ahead of their time is a massive understatement, especially in light of the fact that, if released in America today, music such as this would still fall on deaf ears, proving once and for all that the masses are asses.
Next time you're feeling a little down, or drowsy behind the wheel, pop in this record and see if you aren't also bouncing off the walls in no time.
Continuing to tour and release new music at a feverish pace, the band cuts their third record with Lange and, in the process, sheds their previous skin like a dirty shirt. Surfacing is a jittery, schizophrenic effort that sees the band painting their most colorful portraits of life, inventing their own colors in the process and recording what is arguably the best album of their career.
Is it punk? No. Post-punk? Not quite. In truth, The Fine Art Of Surfacing is an album that defies categorization, much like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band did for the Beatles. While it might sound like hyperbole to the unconverted, such a comparison is not as crazy as it might seem. After all, the album features the band's best-known track, the controversial "I Don't Like Mondays", which is nothing if not the band's own "A Day In The Life".
Where the Fab Four mellowed and began writing children songs, the Rats embrace their own paranoid angst and still manage to keep the joint jumping with the stone cold rockers "Nothing Happened Today" and "Keep It Up". Fans of Joe Jackson and Elvis Costello who don't already own this record are urged to rectify this immediately. [Check out "Diamond Smiles"].
Mondo Bongo is most notable as an indicator of big changes in the Boomtown Rats' camp. For starters, it came after a nearly two-year break from recording wherein the band chose to work with a new producer (Tony Visconti). Most noticeably, though, the album is the first since the departure of guitarist Gary Cott. Those who might have discounted his past contributions and importance to the Rats' trademark sound need only listen to this record to fully appreciate the weight of his absence.
"Mood Mambo" is a rhythmic rumble that opens the album in a manner that makes the listener wonder if they haven't accidentally put on the new Kid Creole and The Coconuts record.
Thankfully, the Rats quickly right the ship with "Straight Up", a song that sounds as if it could have been an outtake from the A Tonic For The Troops sessions. One feels the momentum building, only to be derailed by the pleasant but pointless "In My Room" and the meandering travelogue "Another Piece Of Red". Four songs in and things are starting to look a little shaky. "Go Man Go" fails to live up to its name, but it isn't until "Under Their Thumb" rears its head that the wheels fully fall off the Ratmobile.
While the band's reinvention of the Stones' "Under My Thumb" gets bonus points for effort, the end results are far from essential. Sadly, the same can be said for the Rats' fourth long-player.
While taking a severe critical bashing, Mondo Bongo had been the band's highest-charting album in the UK (peaking at #6). Thus, it is shocking that V-Deep, which came out a short year later, was such a dramatic commercial failure that completely missed the Top 40.
Again produced by Visconti, the band sounds as if they're being forced to perform in a pit of thick molasses, preventing potentially great songs like "Never In A Million Years" and "Talking In Code" from ever taking flight. The latter tune suffers under Visconti's highly-stylized production flourishes when a simple, straightforward live-in-the-studio performance would have worked wonders. It is evident the band doesn't wish to repeat themselves and one must commend them for that, but this album is more a time capsule chock-full of best-left-forgotten early 80's production techniques than anything else.
Released in the wake of Geldof's involvement with the Live Aid and Band Aid efforts had made him a star in his own right, In The Long Grass should have been the album that put the Rats back on top in the UK and brought them the attention they deserved in America and elsewhere.
While nowhere near the return-to-form longtime fans were hoping for, it is a marked improvement over V-Deep and features a trio of noteworthy tunes in "Dave",
On the downside, it also features songs like "Hard Times", which makes an embarrassingly blatant stab at sounding like David Bowie's "Let's Dance". The attempt, like the rest of the album, is half-hearted and one has the distinct feeling that this is a band whose days are numbered.
