HIT or SHIT NO 79

["BING E BONG"]

Their early new wave songs are much, much worse. It's difficult to make it through something like this - it comes across as a NTNOCN parody or something. Barely tolerable, with the quirky dialled up to the max:



I did actually read Geldof's autobiography many years ago and he reckoned the Rats were one of a small number of original '77 punk bands that set the scene for everything else that followed. I mean, he grouped them in with The Clash and the Pistols.

I have to say that potentially he was a good frontman - he was handsome and sharp in interviews, but he's absolutely fucking clueless as a performer and his band are little more than a novelty act.

I suppose 'Mondays' is some kind of advance from that. He must have been terribly proud of it.

[Stacy Heydon]

Nov 20, 2024 12:28:43 GMT fange said:

Nov 20, 2024 11:19:53 GMT "BING E BONG" said:

It's a piano-based, and probably piano-written piece that has elements of Bowie, Elton and Queen, for better or worse. It's ambitious and I think Geldof actually keeps a lid on it throughout. Can't say I hate it.

Same. I was never a big fan, but i don't hate it either. I don't think I can name a single other tune they did, which i guess sums them up for me.

You must know 'Rat Trap', that's the dime store Springsteen one.

[fange]

Nov 20, 2024 12:31:56 GMT Stacy Heydon said:

Nov 20, 2024 12:28:43 GMT fange said:

Same. I was never a big fan, but i don't hate it either. I don't think I can name a single other tune they did, which i guess sums them up for me.

You must know 'Rat Trap', that's the dime store Springsteen one.

No, sitting here right now i can't say it rings any bells at all.

[fange]

Nov 20, 2024 12:30:27 GMT "BING E BONG" said:

Their early new wave songs are much, much worse. It's difficult to make it through something like this - it comes across as a NTNOCN parody or something. Barely tolerable, with the quirky dialled up to the max:



I did actually read Geldof's autobiography many years ago and he reckoned the Rats were one of a small number of original '77 punk bands that set the scene for everything else that followed. I mean, he grouped them in with The Clash and the Pistols.

I have to say that potentially he was a good frontman - he was handsome and sharp in interviews, but he's absolutely fucking clueless as a performer and his band are little more than a novelty act.

I suppose 'Mondays' is some kind of advance from that. He must have been terribly proud of it.

Yeah, that is pretty average, though the OTT band miming video does it no favours. An ill-fitting mix of punk, new wave and 70s rock.

[Stacy Heydon]

Nov 20, 2024 12:30:27 GMT "BING E BONG" said:

Their early new wave songs are much, much worse. It's difficult to make it through something like this - it comes across as a NTNOCN parody or something. Barely tolerable, with the quirky dialled up to the max:



I did actually read Geldof's autobiography many years ago and he reckoned the Rats were one of a small number of original '77 punk bands that set the scene for everything else that followed. I mean, he grouped them in with The Clash and the Pistols.

I have to say that potentially he was a good frontman - he was handsome and sharp in interviews, but he's absolutely fucking clueless as a performer and his band are little more than a novelty act.

I suppose 'Mondays' is some kind of advance from that. He must have been terribly proud of it.

He's an example of how a supreme self-belief is so much more important than talent in getting ahead. 

I'd forgotten how terrible those backing vocals  in SSM are. I'd sort of remembered it as a pub rock version of The Ramones, but actually that description is giving it too much credit..

["BING E BONG"]

It probably wouldn't be fair to single Geldof out as having an oversized ego - that comes with the territory. But to have such an apparently astronomical amount of self-belief when promoting this kind of clown-level rubbish suggests a rare degree of delusion.

[loveless]

Honestly, I'm just kind of here to shit on him (and them), which...I mean, I guess its my right, but...I think his humanitarian work is pretty essential (and I actually really found his performance in The Wall fairly compelling), but...yes, probably better he be known for those things than for his actual musical works.

There's something about this song that...you just want to draw a moustache on it, you know?

[rayge]

I always had a soft spot for Geldof, who, like Morrissey, first came to my attention as a stringer for the NME before he was a member of any band. He always struck me as an intelligent and educated man (not that he wore it particularly lightly) and a wordsmith. Although I never bought any Rats' records (apart from this one under discussion, which I got from a bargain bin, I think) I quite liked their singles, from Looking After Number One onwards when they appeared on TOTP. I enjoyed the prominent use of piano, unlike most (all probably) of their UK contemporaries, and was even prepared to accept Fingers' odd choice of stage wear. While its overwhelming success and ubiquity got a little wearing, I thought IDLM was a pretty decent pop record on the subject of teenage angst and nihilism (not THAT far from punk, really) and certainly an oasis in a year in which such egregious horrors as Cliff Richard, Gary Numan, The Police, Lena Martell, the Bee Gees' Tragedy, Art Garfunkel's emetic Bright Eyes and the fucking Think Void's Wall were top for 29 of the 52 weeks.

[Stacy Heydon]

Nov 20, 2024 13:55:45 GMT rayge said:

 certainly an oasis in a year in which such egregious horrors as Cliff Richard, Gary Numan, The Police, Lena Martell, the Bee Gees' Tragedy, Art Garfunkel's emetic Bright Eyes and the fucking Think Void's Wall were top for 29 of the 52 weeks.

Ray's pop radar misfires yet again.
Honestly the likes of The Bee Gees, Numan and even The Police shit upon The Rats from a great height.

["BING E BONG"]

They do. But I like his style

["BING E BONG"]

Someone (ex BCB, I think) was singing the praises of 'Bright Eyes' recently on Facebook, I think. I daren't go near the thing today, but I remember it being incredibly moving to me as a kid.

[riggers]

I voted 'OK'.
It's more to do with my age, I was 11/12 when this and 'Rat Trap' were hits, so it's pure nostalgia. I have them both in a playlist along with the other big hits of the era.
JC is spot on with his comments though. They were embarrassing with their cartoon punk and I always found Geldof insufferable.

[DarknessFish]

I quite like the song, it's quite a stand-out pop-song of the era, even if the lyric kind of crumbles under the weight of its own smugness until the third verse plops out as a steaming turd. Not to mention how it trivialises a really tragic, miserable real-world story in a away that makes U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday" seem almost acceptable.

But anyway, that track aside, I've never heard a Rats song that isn't the absolute barrel-scraping pits of half-arsed new wave. Absolutely wretched dogshit.

[Half Machine Lipschitz]

My big sister had the IDLMs single and I remember thinking that gliss piano intro was magical at the time and I also remember trying to play it and the following chords on the family piano and getting it rhythmically correct, yet not exactly hitting the right notes, so I must've felt pretty enthusiastically about it at the time. It still pushes some buttons, mostly nostalgia-based, but I can't imagine getting too excited about it nowadays. As far as I know, like Fange, it's the only song of theirs I've heard (just had a listen to Rat Trap, and didn't recognize it).

[Charlie O.]

I didn't like "I Don't Like Mondays", but I enjoyed their appearance on SCTV enough that I bought their first couple of (US) albums cheap. Listened to them exactly once.