To Begin at the Beginning...

... which in this case means my first record.  The Boomtown Rats had a number of hits, of which two or three are still occasionally played, notably 'I Don't Like Mondays', but they are, to put it mildly, somewhat overshadowed by the later work of Bob Geldof and his instruction to the world to "Fook the music and give us the fookin mooney" during the summer of 1985.


Which is perhaps a bit of a shame, because they could play.

'Rat Trap', which was UK no.1 in late 1978, was the first single I ever had, which means I started buying records when I was six... and Mrs. Krusty complains about the accumulation ever since...  I was already avidly watching 'Top Of The Pops', and this must have just hit the spot.  I really wanted to listen to this tune.


I think what I liked about this record, and still enjoy when I dust it off and give it a spin, are the funkiness of the opening of the song, the mixture of the guitars and piano (this becomes a theme in my longest running music obsession) and the rocking outro.  It also has a shout of anger, and anguish, about it, something else I've always liked in pop music.


The Boomtown Rats are often described as punk.  I don't think so - they don't really sound like the Damned or Clash do they?