Aug 22, 2018

RhoDeo 1833 Aetix

Hello,

Today's Artists, are an Irish rock band that scored a series of British hits between 1977 and 1980, and were led by singer Bob Geldof, who organized the Ethiopian relief efforts Band Aid and Live Aid.  ..............N'Joy

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Most of the six members originate from DĂșn Laoghaire, Ireland with Pete Briquette originally from Ballyjamesduff, County Cavan, Ireland. Having been booked for their first gig under the name "The Nightlife Thugs" the group agreed on the name change, when Garry Roberts threatened to resign if they were called that, to the "Boomtown Rats" after a gang of children that Geldof had read about in Woody Guthrie's autobiography, Bound for Glory . They became a notable band, but one whose accomplishments were overshadowed by the charity work of frontman Bob Geldof, a former journalist with the New Musical Express.

In the summer of 1976, the group played their first U.K. gig in London followed by gigs in the Netherlands (Groningen and The Milky Way Club in Amsterdam) before moving to London where they signed with Ensign Records later that year. Their first single, "Lookin' After No. 1", came out in August 1977. It reached the Top 40 of the UK Singles Chart, the first of a long string of successes. The album The Boomtown Rats was released the next month. it included another single, "Mary of the 4th Form". Music journalist Martin C. Strong commented, "Geldof's moody charisma helped to give the band a distinct identity".

Their next album, A Tonic for the Troops (1978), featured three hit singles, "Like Clockwork", "She's So Modern" and "Rat Trap". The US version of the album (with a slightly different selection of tracks) came out the next year on Columbia Records. Mutt Lange produced "Rat Trap", which became the first rock song by an Irish band to reach No. 1 in the UK, and the first of any description by an Irish band to top the official chart used by the BBC. (The Bachelors had topped the Record Retailer chart in 1964 with "Diane", but only reached No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart). In addition, "Rat Trap" was also the first new wave song to claim the number one spot.

In 1979, "I Don't Like Mondays", was released. This was written in response to a school shooting in California carried out by Brenda Ann Spencer, and also reached No. 1 in the UK. It was a worldwide hit, with the exception being the United States. It was the band's only song to reach the US Billboard Hot 100 and was included in the band's third album, The Fine Art of Surfacing. The album also contained "Diamond Smiles" and their next Top 10 hit in the UK, "Someone's Looking at You". In 1980 "Banana Republic" was released, which was their last Top 10 hit, and in the following year the Boomtown Rats' next studio album Mondo Bongo was issued.

Cott departed from the band at this point. According to Bob Geldof's autobiography, Is That It?, Cott had grown disillusioned with what he saw as the band's growing laziness in the studio and their apparent relinquishing of their early R'n'B influences for "cod-reggae". Throughout his time with the band, Cott had maintained a distance between himself and the other members and he resigned the day before the end of their 1981 world tour, only hours after the rest of the band had decided to confront him for refusing to join them and the road crew for a drink to celebrate Simon Crowe's birthday.

Cott had a short-lived solo career, releasing two UK singles, "The Ballad of the Lone Ranger" and "Pioneers" and the 1984 Canadian single "Alphabet Town".

The band's fifth album, V Deep, was released in February 1982. The first single was "Never in a Million Years" which did not sell well, while the follow-up "House on Fire" made number 24 in the UK Singles Chart. In the US, the album was initially rejected by their American label, who instead issued a four-song EP called The Boomtown Rats featuring four selections from V Deep. The full album was eventually issued in the US in late 1982.

A follow-up album entitled In The Long Grass was recorded in 1983, but was initially rejected by the group's label. By 1984, the band was touring universities after becoming unable to fund the "guarantee" required to book mainstream concert halls. In The Long Grass was finally issued in the UK in May 1984, but failed to chart. Two singles, "Tonight" and "Drag Me Down", were pulled from the album and reached the lower rungs of the UK Singles Chart, but two further singles, "Dave" and "A Hold Of Me", failed to hit the UK top 75.

The Boomtown Rats' involvement with Band Aid (on which they all played) raised their profile again, and In January 1985, a revised version of In the Long Grass was finally released in the US. The album made the US charts at #188, but the associated singles failed to make an impact on the charts or on the radio. The band subsequently performed at Live Aid's charity performance.

After this, the band was mothballed while Geldof wound up his affairs with the Band Aid Trust, during which time he succeeded in getting them a one-album deal with Vertigo Records. However, both Crowe and Fingers refused to rejoin the Boomtown Rats full-time, preferring to pursue their own band, Gung Ho.

The band's final performance came at Self Aid, a 1986 concert featuring many Irish rock stars, to raise awareness of unemployment in Ireland. Their rendition of "Joey's on the Street Again" was 12 minutes long, with an extended bridge, during which time Geldof ran among the crowd. Following this performance, Geldof addressed the crowd, saying, "It's been a great ten years; rest in peace". The band then performed "Looking After No.1".


The Boomtown Rats reformed in 2013. Bob Geldof said, "Playing again with the Rats and doing those great songs again will be exciting afresh. We were an amazing band and I just feel it's the right time to re-Rat, to go back to Boomtown for a visit." In June 2013, it was announced that the band would be embarking on a UK and Ireland tour supported by a new compilation album, Back to Boomtown: Classic Rats Hits. The group performed at the Brentwood Festival in 2016, where Geldof attracted controversy for criticising the audience. In April 2017, the band returned to the studio to record new material for their first studio album since In the Long Grass in 1984. The album is yet to be released. It was originally planned for release in late 2017.



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Never comfortable unless something carries a label, music journalists tended to tag any young rock band emerging during this period with the punk marker, but it didn't take a genius to realise that the driving forces behind the Rats and the Pistols were never within spitting distance. Still, that certainly didn't stop the Rats from riding the bandwagon for all it was worth, and who can blame them? Of course, these were angry youngsters railing against perceived injustices and society's ills but theirs was a more conventional demonstration whilst others were wilfully seditious.

Anyone who heard the Boomtown Rats' debut single, "Lookin' After No. 1," with its rapid drum beat, slashing guitars, and aggressive singing about impatience with the dole queue, would think of the group as a particularly tight, standard punk rock band on the London scene in 1977. The Rats' debut album also featured the leering "Mary of the Fourth Form," their second single, but the rest of the album revealed more traditional rock influences. "Joey's on the Street Again" sounded like the sort of street opera Bruce Springsteen was aiming for on The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle. "I Can Make It If You Can" was the sort of ballad the Rolling Stones favored in the mid-'70s. Overall, there were enough power chords and snotty sentiments to justify the punk tag, but it was already clear that the Rats aspired to the mainstream.



The Boomtown Rats - The Boomtown Rats   (flac  405mb)

01 Lookin' After No. 1 3:06
02 Mary Of The 4th Form 3:29
03 Close As You'll Ever Be 3:22
04 Neon Heart 3:52
05 Joey's On The Streets Again 5:28
06 I Can Make It If You Can 5:47
07 Never Bite The Hand That Feeds 2:47
08 (She's Gonna) Do You In 3:52
09 Kicks 4:10
Bonus
10 Doin' It Right - 1975 Live Demo 2:41
11 My Blues Away - 1975 Live Demo 4:10
12 A Second Time - 1975 Live Demo 4:10
13 Fanzine Hero - 1975 Live Demo 3:11
14 Barefootin' - Live In Moran's Hotel Dublin 1975 3:19
15 Mary Of The 4th Form - Single Version 3:50

 The Boomtown Rats - The Boomtown Rats     (ogg 134mb)

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Bob Geldof had revealed a taste for the seamy side of things in his lyrics for The Boomtown Rats' first album. On their second record, he fantasized about being Hitler in the person of the Leader of the Pack ("I Never Loved Eva Braun"), romanticized tropical suicide ("Living In An Island"), and identified with a certain wealthy recluse ("Me And Howard Hughes"). The band retained a punk energy on the album's UK hit singles, "Like Clockwork," "She's So Modern," and "Rat Trap" (the last another of Bob Geldof's Springsteen homages), but musical identity was still a song-by-song affair. (Ensign Records released A Tonic For The Troops in the UK in June 1978. In the U.S., Columbia Records took over The Boomtown Rats from Mercury, replaced "Can't Stop" and "[Watch Out For] The Normal People" with "Mary Of The 4th Form" and "Joey's On The Street Again" from the first album, resequenced the tracks, and delayed the American release until February 1979.) Yes American idiots



The Boomtown Rats - A Tonic for the Troops  (flac  257mb)
 
01 Rat Trap 5:12
02 Me And Howard Hughes 3:12
03 (I Never Loved) Eva Braun 4:39
04 Living In An Island 4:11
05 Like Clockwork 3:44
06 Blind Date 3:22
07 Mary Of The 4th Form 3:34
08 Don't Believe What You Read 3:08
09 She's So Modern 3:00
10 Joey's On The Street Again 5:53

The Boomtown Rats - A Tonic for the Troops     (ogg  90mb)

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Chock-full of new wave charisma and tamed by Bob Geldof's upfront wit, The Fine Art of Surfacing is novel in both its lyrical flair and modern pounce. Made famous by the colorful history of "I Don't Like Mondays," a true story about a 16-year-old girl who shot 11 people without showing any remorse, The Fine Art of Surfacing switches gears from this song's well-crafted harshness to the hectic pace of tracks such as "Nice N' Neat" and "Sleep," among others. "Diamond Smiles" jaunts along on a hiccup-like rhythm, while "Keep It Up" is downright frantic. "Someone's Looking at You" basks in a certain type of smug paranoia, and songs like "Having My Picture Taken" and "Nothing Happened Today" are beautifully lit up by Geldof's wide-eyed dramatics and explicit vocal swings. Sharing the same sort of stylishness as A Tonic for the Troops, The Fine Art of Surfacing bursts with florid pop genius, which in turn kept the Boomtown Rats from sounding like other new wave bands that existed at the time.



 The Boomtown Rats - The Fine Art Of Surfacing   (flac  391mb)

01 Someone's Looking At You 4:24
02 Diamond Smiles 3:52
03 Wind Chill Factor (Minus Zero) 4:38
04 Having My Picture Taken 3:20
05 Sleep (Fingers' Lullaby) 4:16
06 I Don't Like Mondays 4:19
07 Nothing Happened Today 3:19
08 Keep It Up 3:39
09 Nice 'N' Neat 2:51
10 When The Night Comes 4:45
Bonus
11 Episode #3 1:10
12 Real Different 3:15
13 How Do You Do? 2:41
14 Late Last Night 2:43
15 Nothing Happened Today 3:44

 The Boomtown Rats - The Fine Art Of Surfacing  (ogg   130mb)

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Mondo Bongo is a perfect example of a band reaching for the sky and falling flat on their faces. In fact, if it wasn't for the distinctive sound of Geldof's voice, the majority of this album would be unrecognisable as The Boomtown Rats. Maybe that was the idea; a total re-invention of everything that had gone previously.

Here, the Boomtown Rats submitted to ambitiousness, with singer Bob Geldof attempting to assume the mantle of Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones, while the band tried to keep up with musical fashions in Britain. Both The Rats' native island and their commercial nemesis took it on the chin on "Mondo Bongo," with the "septic isle" of "Banana Republic" drawing the popular vote - the mix of reggae and Geldolf's angry lyrics was another huge melding of styles for the band and a number one single. As for America, the broadside of "it's Disneyland under martial law" in "Elephant's Graveyard" took a dour look at Florida's disintegration as a retirement paradise.

This is also where the eccentricities began to get into the way of the songs. The combination led to such oddities as a ska-beat rewrite of the Stones' "Under My Thumb" and a couple of side-opening mambos. The band was at its best when it returned to the pop music that was its core on such songs as the Buddy Holly-ish "Don't Talk to Me" and especially the danceable "Up All Night," but they were buried on the second side of an uneven collection that made the Rats' sense of direction seem uncertain.



The Boomtown Rats - Mondo Bongo (flac  291mb)

01 Mood Mambo 4:06
02 Straight Up 3:16
03 This Is My Room 3:40
04 Another Piece Of Red 2:38
05 Go Man Go 3:59
06 Under Their Thumb...Is Under My Thumb 2:48
07 Please Don't Go 3:35
08 The Elephant's Graveyard 3:44
09 Banana Republic 4:57
10 Don't Talk To Me 2:50
11 Hurt Hurts 3:05
12 Up All Night 3:37
13 Cheerio 0:44

The Boomtown Rats - Mondo Bongo     (ogg   110mb)

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