Blast from the Past: The Boomtown Rats' 'The Fine Art of Surfacing'

Two weeks ago I found myself in Ireland celebrating the marriage of my girlfriend's cousin along with the rest of her family. It was my first time in the country and I didn't get very much time to see the sights and search around the country with all the family events going on. It was still an absolute blast to get over to the land of my ancestors and I would love to visit again very, very soon.

One of the few things that really struck me about the country was how similarly crappy their radio stations are to ours, spending a lot of time driving from county to county will afford you the time to listen to their Top 40 stations, to scan past the ridiculous amounts of talk radio, and on Sunday to hear just about every football, Gaelic, or rugby game going on in the entire United Kingdom. Luckily there was a brief period where we managed to get some classic rock tunes on one of the stations. Most of it were the standards we've all come to know thanks to our parents, our uncles, or someone older that guided us through our musical upbringings. Bruce Springsteen, The Who, Led Zeppelin, all the regulars, but whoever was DJing that day does a weekly spotlight on one artist and then plays three or four songs from the band. That day it happened to be Ireland's own The Boomtown Rats. Now I had heard of The Boomtown Rats, everyone should know who Bob Geldof is if only for is Band Aid and Live Aid efforts, but I had never heard anything beyond "I Don't Like Mondays" from the band. It seemed odd to me that a band with such a good hit and with such amazing success across the Atlantic never managed to get a foothold here in the United States.

Upon returning from my trip I started listening to the band's 1979 release The Fine Art of Surfacing, which had most of the songs played on the radio that day ("I Don't Like Mondays" and "Diamond Smiles" are the two I remember clearly). Now I realize why it didn't quite work out in the States. The music on The Fine Art of Surfacing spans so many quirky genres that it would be tough to fit in a world where you were either a disco fan, an AM rock fan, or a punk fan. The music on the album has a bit of everything, New Wave, stadium rock, pop, you name it and there really is a bit of it thrown in there and for most of the album it works in the band's favor. Songs like the two mentioned above are stellar examples of Brit-pop at its best. Other tunes don't hold quite the same standard and I think that weakness in the album made it tough for the album to find the same kind of audience in the U.S. while the U.K. was already exporting bands like The Clash and The Sex Pistols to our shores.

The Boomtown Rats never found much success following the release of The Fine Art of Surfacing but obviously the band still holds a place in the hearts of the folks that live on that side of the pond. And why wouldn't it? The band had chart topping success there, their tunes were probably heard every half hour at the peak of their popularity, like Tom Petty or Bruce Springsteen were here. I'm glad I was exposed to the music of The Boomtown Rats even if it came 30-years after their heyday, the music is quirky and fun and definitely something that had a hand in the uprising of New Wave in the early-80's.
The Boomtown Rats - "Diamond Smiles"
The Boomtown Rats - "Having My Picture Taken"
The Boomtown Rats - "I Don't Like Mondays"
The Boomtown Rats - "When the Night Comes"