The Boomtown Rats - the fine art of Surfacing

So, what did Bob Geldof and The Boomtown Rats think about America in 1979? Not a lot of positive things, it turns out.

With 2 UK hit albums under their belt, they spent quite a bit of time over here trying to gain some international notoriety, and then they wrote an album about that experience. It's called The Fine Art of Surfacing, and damned if we just don't even bother. We're lunatics.

It's hot, it's freezing, we kill ourselves, and kill kids at school, gossip, play dress up to pretend we aren't miserable, and the only thing we know about all the drugs we take is what color the pills are before we swallow handfuls of them. None of it ever f-ing stops. Just being here is enough to drive you insane. Back to Ireland and some fresh air for us!

He's not wrong. Granted, i was literally a sperm while they were exploring our bounteous insane asylum, but it hasn't gotten any better now has it? Make no mistake, this is a concept album. The concept is America is insane, but it's not the grandiose vacation adventure of Supertramp. Boomtown Rats got the local treatment, for sure.

I've heard songs from this album before, but the full context makes a huge difference. It's much more new wave (as opposed to rock) than their first album, but it is much more confrontational in its own way. They were paying attention, and "When The Night Comes" is the most American sounding thing i've ever heard from any British musician ever. Like if Tom Petty and Bob Seger hijacked a Gin Blossoms concert to play a Springsteen song they found on a napkin in a Waffle House trash can.

I'm listening to the whole thing a second time as i write this, and it's a fantastic album. It could come across as condescending, but it's pretty authentic from my perspective. I mean it, this is top shelf of my collection stuff. You can hear everything in there, from The Cars to the B52s and Devo to the aforementioned heavyweights of rock, all from a cynically British David Bowie meets Thin Lizzy perspective. It's borderline clairvoyant.

If you've never heard this album, i think you'll be really surprised. I know i am.

Next

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The 4 Seasons - The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette

Image
This might be my longest  album review ever. But i swear a couple times, so it's worth the read ;) How could i possibly mention Jefferson Airplane, The 4 Seasons, and Frank Zappa in the same context? Zappa said "this is rediculous" and a few years later The 4 Seasons said "you know what, Frank is right. This IS ridiculous." To which Jefferson Airplane said, "Oh. Ok. Got it." The real question is: which one is the most transgressive? Zappa said stop fighting, you look like idiots. Jefferson Airplane said i guess if love and community is a bad thing, then sure we're criminals and we'd be happy to move out into the fields and live peaceful lives without your garbage, let us go already. The 4 Seasons said hold my champagne for a moment. In 1969, The 4 Seasons released the single most ironic, acidic, extravagant, and downright befuddling album ever created, The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette. Zappa was accused of writing "shitty doo-w
Read more

Welcome to my blog, and my record collection.

This is a blog about my love of listening to albums. It started off as a nightly perusal of my dad's record collection (which sadly became mine) on my personal facebook page. Over the last two months it has become quite an enjoyable process of simply ranting about what i think is a real art form, the album. It needs a more permanent home. Some of my reviews are positive, some negative. They might not be what you expect from album reviews, but i hope you at least find them entertaining. For the most part i do very little research, and they tend to be train of thought reactions rather than calculated essays. If nothing else, know that i'm really listening to them and whether they are amazing or abysmal i want you to go listen to them too.  I'll start migrating the 60+ i've written so far over here in the next few days, and hopefully get to the point where i just start writing them here. I'd probably even take suggestions if you're just dying to know my tho
Read more

Pat Benatar - Seven The Hard Way

Image
I don't know about you, but i love Pat Benatar. Yes, that's also her debut album with the single most underrated song in the universe (My Clone Sleeps Alone) in the background, but that's just a generic non-self-titled debut album. We're jumping ahead to her 6th album, Seven The Hard Way, because that, ladies and gentle germs, is how you kalaidescope a concept. Not one, not two, not three, but 4 protien-packed layers to this metaphor. You don't really need to know the overly complicated rules of Craps to know that A) it's gambling, B) "the hard way" refers to rolling doubles, so good luck rolling two 3.5s, and C) you're going to lose, one way or another. It's a joke, but more importantly, it's Pat Benatar and the roll out is Sex As A Weapon, so the innuendo is not intended to be subtle. Wait wait wait, that's only 3, Bottle, where's 4? You're right, last but not least, side B opens with Seven Rooms of Gloom, a Holland-Dozier-Hol
Read more