DU Album of the Day: "Tonic for the Troops" The Boomtown Rats
"Tonight - of all nights - there's gonna be a fight." Before he got involved in Band Aid in the mid-1980s, Bob Geldof was the front man for a group named after a gang in Woody Guthrie's biography, The Boomtown Rats. Were they punk? Glam? Just what? They were a band that was hard to pigeonhole, and being from from Ireland lost them considerable points from snooty British critics. But the kids really liked the sound.
On this album, the band bookends an eclectic mix of songs with "Rat Trap" and "Joey's on the Street Again," two songs firmly in the late 1970s tradition of Bruce Springsteen and Graham Parker with urban grittiness and power sax. In between are songs about 20th Century personalities, suicide, popular culture, and just about anything else you might want. The lyrics, mostly by Geldof, exhibit the Irish playfulness with language, and the musicianship is pretty darn good, holding up well even into the new millennium. The You Tube video is sadly a lip-synch session: I advise you listen, but don't watch.
1."Rat Trap"
2."Me and Howard Hughes"
3."
I Never Loved) Eva Braun"
4."Living in an Island"
5."Like Clockwork"
6."Blind Date"
7."Mary of the Fourth Form"
8."Don't Believe What You Read"
9."She's So Modern"
10."Joey's on the Street Again"
