The silicon chip inside her head gets switched to overload

Continuing my trip back through the 1979 album charts.

04/11/79 : The Fine Art Of Surfacing - The Boomtown Rats

The Rats are an interesting bunch - they're famous for their lead singer and "I Don't Like Mondays", but for most people that's about as far as it goes (I can also name "Rat Trap" but that's it from me). I'm not sure I know the titles of any of their albums, so this might have a load of tracks on it I recognise and like - but I very much doubt it. And what on earth does that title mean?

Ah, this is the album with "I Don't Like Mondays" on, which is a fine track and probably means this is their most successful album. I also recognised "Someone's Looking At You" but think I thought it was by The Cars - it has that US college radio rock sound to it. And I'd say that's the general basis of the sound across the album - a lot of it sounds quite Talking Heads-ish. However, there's also a pleasant degree of Irish quirk in there - although the closing track "Chapter #3" is possibly a little too peculiar. All in all, this was a much more pleasant experience than I was expecting - yes, it does sound a bit dated but we are talking about 46 years ago here! I'm not entirely convinced by the album cover, but I guess it does give you a clue what the title is talking about.

We're at #9 in the charts this week on their second week of a surprisingly lengthy 26 week run, with it peaking at #7 in its debut week. The top five this week were Fleetwood Mac, The Police, Rock'n'Roller Disco, Lena Martell (twee Scottish nonsense) and a 10cc best-of - the only best-of in the top five this week! To make up for that, we have two best-of new entries for ABBA (#7) and Rod Stewart (#8) and one further new entry in the top ten for Stevie Wonder (#10). 

Wikipedia tells us it's their third album and not actually their most successful, with Mondo Bongo getting to #6 in '81. It tells us that "I Don't Like Mondays" refers to Brenda Ann Summers's killing spree earlier this year which is credited as being the first US school shooting - that's a very sad entry to read. The album was produced by Mutt Lange, who went on achieve somewhat more exposure with his work with his wife at the time, Shania Twain (particularly on Come On Over)  but I wasn't aware he also did a load of AC/DC albums, including Back In Black. Critical reviews for the Rats were nice enough (except for Smash Hits who only gave it 3/10) with Rolling Stone making the strange comment "much of the Boomtown Rats' smarmy charm comes from an elusiveness that defies categorization because it draws from dozens of sources but embraces none" - which I think is a compliment.

If you want a copy, discogs.com will get you a decent enough version for a couple of quid - what a bargain! The absolute most you can spend is £40, which appears to be a complete try-on because it doesn't sound like is has anything different from the copies available for £2. I can't say I'll be rushing back to this, but I enjoyed it way more than I was expecting to - it's nicely of its time.

28/10/79 - No Hotel California
11/11/79 - A most peculiar album

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