The Boomtown Rats Finally Reissued on CD

The Boomtown Rats weren't hip. Well, compared to the Journey and Styx sides that were played on album rock radio in America during the Rats' heyday, they were abundantly hip, but that didn't translate to U.S. sales. Here, they were edgy – new wave, and, in some circles, maybe even called punk. However, in Britain, this Irish sextet was looked at more skeptically.

They didn't have the requisite authenticity of the aging pub rockers and university students who made up a good portion of the 1977-era punk movement. Yet they certainly weren't treading the same ground as the stodgy rock that was ossifying in the mid-‘70s. While I certainly wouldn't call the Rats a punk band, if part of punk was about challenging the status quo, then the Rats had more in common with the punks than the punks would have wanted admit.

Led by the flippant Bob Geldof, The Boomtown Rats were brash and brassy, their songs showing off a gift for the gab, whether telling the story of a tarty school girl on "Mary of the Fourth Form", or something more substantial, like the epic "Joey's on the Street Again". Moreover, they rocked.

They did commit one sin – they wanted to sell records. And for a few years, they sold about as many as anyone in the U.K., culminating in one of the best selling singles ever, the classic "I Don't Like Mondays". But when their popularity declined, they suddenly sank like a stone. Their final album, In The Long Grass, was held in limbo, and was really only released because Geldof was back in the spotlight thanks to Band Aid and Live Aid.

Still, it's hard to figure out why it took so long for their back catalog to come out in full. Finally, in 2005, all six Boomtown Rats albums are on CD, getting the top flight reissue treatment they deserve. I happily snapped up the six pack as soon as I could. Listening to these albums, remastered to sound very hot by Jon Astley (remember "Janie's Getting Serious"?), I have come to the conclusion that the Rats were a great band. Who never made a great album.

Every disc comes with bonus cuts and a liner note essay. It's appropriate that each essay is personal and sheds a different light on the band, since this was a band that made each album distinct, changing and evolving every step of the way. On the eponymous debut, there are some demos from 1975. They show that these Irish kids were steeped in the Stones, Van Morrison and Graham Parker, with even more piss-and-vinegar. Check out the banging blues rock of "My Blues Away", a snotty rocker that is more lively than 99 percent of all the rock and roll released that year. By 1978, the band had harnessed that energy just enough to be commercial, but they still weren't tamed. Songs such as "Lookin' After Number One" and "Kicks" had great riffs and were smarter than the average basher. A swell debut.

On Tonic For The Troops, the Rats discovered pop. As one of the liner note essays notes, they kind of came off like a cross between Sparks and Thin Lizzy. Clever was the order of the day on tracks like "Me and Howard Hughes" and "(I Never Loved) Eva Braun", along with the cod-ska "Living on An Island". They hit their rock peak with the saucy and explosive "She's So Modern", and, by their estimation, out-Bruced Springsteen on the megahit "Rat Trap".

They went even further into pop territory on The Fine Art Of Surfacing. Working with Robert Mutt Lange for the third and final time, the band added Latin accents to the final installment in their epic story song trilogy, "When the Night Comes", explored psychedelia on "Sleep", and showed how you could make a hooky pop song that fit in no particular slot on "Someone's Looking At You".

I've waxed poetically about Mondo Bongo before on this page, so I'll be brief – they added a lot of third world sounds to the mix and got even wackier. Tony Visconti was the perfect conductor for this fun house train ride – this album is to The Boomtown Rats what the Visconti-helmed Indiscreet was for Sparks. A chance to try anything and everything.

Visconti remained on board for the moody V Deep. The band explored reggae and other rhythms, like on the loopy raga "House on Fire" and the percussive "Skin on Skin". Then there was the neo-Spectorian "Never in a Million Years" and the robotic "Talking in Code". This is a dark album, yet it's not depressing.

However, the finale almost is. Just look at the cover of Long Grass, the band looking sooty, sweaty...but not defeated. And that's how the album sounds, a testament to resiliency in the face of indifference and alleged irrelevance. This is sparkling pop by men who grew up from boys and weathered the storm. There's an obvious anthem in the charging "Drag Me Down" (even though it's really just a love song), the now standard reggae spiced number, "Tonight", and the melodrama of "Over Again" and "Dave". But the number that resonates the most is "A Hold of Me", a defiant statement, with Geldof seeming to sing to every critic and catcall, and saying that the band was stronger than any petty sniping. Indeed, they were undeterred: "I'm for flesh/and I'm for mind/I'm for people/I'm for life." A fitting way to go out.

These thumbnails can't fully explain what made them so great. These guys played so well. The rhythm section of Pete Briquette (bass) and Simon Crowe (drums) deserves to be lauded. Crowe's playing is so crisp and precise, you might not notice it at first. But he was a first class rock and roll drummer. And as the band moved into other types of rhythms, Crowe was always spot on. Likewise, Briquette was so adaptable. Without these two, the band probably could not have achieved so much.

Then there were the two guitarists, Gerry Cott and Garry Roberts. On the early records, the guitar playing is razor sharp. The rhythm guitar parts are thick and shimmery and the leads playful and inventive. Listen "She's So Modern" or "Nice and Neat", for just a couple of examples of their mastery.
The two players who stand out the most are Geldof and Johnny Fingers. The pajama clad Fingers seemed to have an endless supply of piano fills and keyboard lines. He could be pretty in a quasi-classical mode, or garage rock dirty. The liners reveal that after Geldof quickly penned "I Don't Like Mondays" and was looking for an arrangement, Fingers came up, on-the-spot, with distinctive piano part that set the tone for the whole song.

As for Geldof, there really is no other singer like him. He clearly does not have a great voice. But he is thoroughly distinctive and bursting with personality. He could be silly or deadly serious. He could ride the melody, or sing counter to it. He was one of the great frontmen of his era.

Currently (and probably always) the six reissues are only available in the U.K. I'm not sure where I'd rank the Boomtown Rats among their contemporaries. It would probably be sacrilege to rank them ahead of The Jam or The Clash. But they wouldn't be that far behind. I should point out that there is a nice compilation on the market, and it's as good a place as any to start. I frankly don't expect the reissues to lead to reassessment of the Rats, and that's a shame, because their music holds up so well today.

OTHER NOTES:

I've finally seen some live music in 2005. First up was psychedelic blues artist Michael Yonkers. He recorded an album in 1968 that got shelved and was not issued until Sub Pop put it out in 2003. The music is like an earthier take on the repetitive sounds of The Monks and The Fall. I only stuck around for part of his live performance. He started the night by himself, with a tricked up guitar that gave him the ability to use numerous effects. However, without a rhythm section, the set was stagnant, though Yonkers is still quite the guitar player. A local band was going to back him later in the set, but I just couldn't stick around.

Next, I saw a double bill of Shivaree and Antony and the Johnsons. Shivaree was quite good. Singer Ambrosia Parsley has a charming stage manner, and her jazz quality voice is perfect for the jazz-blues-standards-rock stew that Shivaree brews up. As a bonus, they recruited bass legend Graham Maby (best known for his stellar work with Joe Jackson). The highly touted Antony and the Johnsons were a disappointment. Antony's melodramatic tales of sexual identity crisis have all the earmarks of someone shooting for the NME's Newcomer of the Year award...for 1972. Early Bowie and Elton John sounded like influences, but the songwriting just isn't as developed. And Antony has a nice voice, but usually lapses into extreme vibrato – imagine Tiny Tim singing while operating a jackhammer, and you get the idea. This band is better in concept than execution.

Finally, I saw The Futureheads headline at a sold out Double Door in Chicago (500 capacity). These guys are just amazing. They play tight, they have winning personalities, and part of the fun of the show was watching hundreds of people bouncing up and down and joining in the backing vocals. This was particularly cool on the band's ace cover of Kate Bush's "Hounds Of Love". It's so thrilling to hear bands inspired by the music that I loved when I was around their age, living up to that inspiration and finally turning on people to such great music.

BASEBALL:

Every year, I anxiously await the release of the newest Baseball Prospectus, which comprehensively evaluates hundreds upon hundreds of players. The BP writing team can be fairly witty, and often throws in some music references. Here are three that I really dug:

1. Commenting on the New York Yankees signing Jaret Wright to a big contract, which the writer thinks is a mistake: "If you went to high school with the Yankees, they'd have been the ones touting Hothouse Flowers as the next U2."

2. Discussing the players the St. Louis Cardinals sent to the Colorado Rockies in exchange for star Larry Walker: "they'll probably wind up being to prospects what Good Charlotte is to ass-beating rock music."

3. Paying tribute to the now retired left-handed platoon specialist John Vander Wal, to the tune of Oasis' "Wonderwall":

Today is gonna be the day/that he'll slap a pinch-hit single for you/by now you should've somehow/wondered how at 34 he slugged .562/I don't believe that anybody/thought he'd last 14 years except his mom/...because maybe/we tip our caps to his playing/and after all/he was our Vander Wal."

Brilliant.

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