THE BOOMTOWN RATS – “Rat Trap”
“Rat Trap” is billed – in the Guinness Book Of British Hit Singles, no less – as the first punk No.1. I couldn’t recall it – my memories of the Rats themselves were vague; Geldof I knew for later good works. So I approached “Rat Trap” cold but with a frisson of definite expectation. Geldof tore up a picture of John’n'Liv on Top Of The Pops, didn’t he? So “Rat Trap” – great title, Sir B – was surely something tight and angry, a sliver of nimble menace in the shadows of 1978′s poptopian monsterhits.
Five minutes later my expectation had turned to shock and laughter. Whatever I’d anticipated it wasn’t this: five woeful minutes of scraggy street-rock pastiche, Born To Run with the melted-down Crystals records replaced by stolen chip fat. Far from the first punk No.1, this risible track sounded like an early warning of one of indie’s less palatable side-effects: a deadly combination of overreach and the feeling of virtuous entitlement that being (relatively) outside the mainstream would lend to mediocre bands.
But once I’d lived with “Rat Trap” a bit, my initial scorn softened – starting with that scouring horn riff, the truest bit of E Street channeling here. After all, I really like “Born To Run” and prime Boss, so why should I care about someone biting it? And honestly, there’s more going on than I thought: Springsteen’s possibilities of escape closed off – the rat trap doesn’t open up again, even when Billy meets Judy. And come to think of it Judy’s dreams aren’t of getting out of town, they revolve around independence via work in the local factory. Yes, “Rat Trap” is laying it on thick, when even the crossing signals are holding The Kids down, but ridicule is a reasonable trade-off for one of the song’s most exciting peaks, the “BILLY TAKE A WALK!” chant.
I still think “Rat Trap” is a mess, overlong and a victim of its own ambition, Geldof trying to cram in every pop trick he’s ever heard of. 4 in 5 times when it comes on I get frustrated with it before I’ve hit halfway: the fifth it catches me in the right mood, and I love its preposterous kitchen sink epic feel – “Hand in her pocket! SHE FINDS FIFTY PEE!!”. It’s still a mile away from my idea of punk, but it’s hard not to feel charitable towards such an eager record.
6
Tom in FT /Popular • featured content/Pop • 4,190 views
No hypocrisy at work there. It’s a question of innate ability as a writer as well as understanding of the milieu in which one chooses to write and unfortunately Reynolds has spent so much time and effort on his “crusades” and “jump on a nascent scene so I can name it and establish myself as a branding agent” clothes horses that he seems to have overlooked the necessity to engage, move, touch or even simply inform his readers.
I absolutely agree with you about S.Reynolds, however could we kill off this judging a writer by their degree, please?
Morley got an HND at UMIST. Can’t remember what in though.
I did Town Planning at PCL for a year before I dropped out to try and earn a living as a writer. Just thought I’d put my cards on the table.
I don’t agree with a lot of what Simon Reynolds has to say. I was at Melody Maker at the same time as him and gradually, through realising that my outlook** was (and is) pretty much the opposite to his*, I found my own way. But that didn’t stop me enjoying the way he wrote and also feeling grateful for the level of discourse his writing promoted. He risks ridicule (see his inadvertently hilarious My Bloody Valentine piece in The Sex Revolts [riff = phallus; noise = vagina, apparently]) but I envy the lengths he goes to in order to inhabit areas of music that I may never get to crack.
If you don’t mind, can I also add that, in my opinion, the best way to get into The Teardrop Explodes is through their ceaselessly brilliant b-sides. I can’t think of a band at that time whose b-sides so consistently outperformed their a-sides. Christ VS Warhol, Strange House In The Snow, East Of The Equator, Use Me, the list goes on. Fans of foreboding, experimental, atmospheric pop can’t fail here. Even Reynolds (who was, incidentally, one of the nicest and humble characters on the paper at that time) would have surely found something of value there?!
While we’re confessing, I scraped a 2:2 in philosophy at Lampeter, making me possibly the thickest employee of the paper where I now work.
*his, as I understood it: decide on your aesthetic and work out what music fits into it
**mine (I think): decide what music you like and then try and discern a aesthetic that unites it all.
Such was the effect of Melody Maker on me as a 16-year old, that I’m now desperately trying to work out who thevisitor is. (I’m guessing Dave Simpson, but I could certainly name quite a few thicker Guardian journalists)
I always found it odd how David Stubbs never seemed to attract either the acclaim or dismissal that Reynolds did, as they very much shared the same aesthetic. Perhaps it was because Stubbs often wrote about Arsenal and TV comedy as well, that he struck readers as less effete than Reynolds. A collection of his interviews, etc, from that time would be as rich and valid a book as ‘Bring The Noise’, though.
Even as late as 1988, the solo Julian Cope was still putting his best songs on B-sides – see ‘Crazy Farm Animal’
Hm – I only got a 2:2 in Drama, but now I’m doing a PhD. I really don’t know to what extent – if at all – this qualifies (or disqualifies) me to comment on music intelligently!
re: Teardrop Explodes B-sides, ‘Ouch Monkeys’ is another cracker.
Ah yes, David Stubbs, the guy who wrote in MM in 1987 that there should be a five-year ban on black music. I don’t think there’s any pressing need to revisit his particular brand of “wisdom.”
#156: I rather felt that David Stubbs’ passion for discovering new music seemed to subside in the early nineties, as he carved out a niche for himself doing the funny pages. Also I remember him and Reynolds being very different personalities. Reynolds bucked MM protocol by being friendly and interested in what the bottom-feeder freelancers were up to. By contrast, David was more wary of new faces, and didn’t exactly go out of his way to set people at ease. I got to know him as time went on, but in that respect he had more in common with Andrew Mueller and Steve Sutherland – writers who made you feel you somehow had to earn their attention (hope Andrew doesn’t mind me saying that as I’m pretty friendly with him now). Anyway, I digress. I think the point I’m making is that there’s a correlation between Simon’s open-ended approach to people and the way he approaches new music. That’s just what he’s like – and it was (and is) to his benefit as a person as well as a writer.
That said, I felt that Reynolds’ philosophy accidentally set a negative, counterintuitive climate at Melody Maker, which had many at the paper (I’d left by this point) seriously claiming that Trans-Global Underground were worthier Britpop emissaries than Blur. I can’t tell you the suspicion with which the latter were greeted when they put out Modern Life Is Rubbish. By comparison, you put on a Trans-Global Underground album on and it felt like homework. Same, I felt, with the likes of Young Gods and Skinny Puppy. That said, even though I was more populist in my outlook, I was never discouraged by anyone there. Everett True and Jim Arundel (now Irvin), in particular (both of whom also kept to their own agendas) couldn’t have been more encouraging.
As a punter, the either/or thing never really bothered me; I thought Modern Life Is Rubbish and Dream Of 100 Nations were (and still are!) equally great and both records still have considerable personal resonance for me. Same with the Young Gods and Skinny Puppy; all great soundtracks to coming over the Westway (if you’ll pardon the expression) of a sunny weekday morning.
As a writer fifteen years later I very much regret that the either/or crutch is still handicapping music writing in general, both online and off; I’ve always tried to see the whole picture, even if it’s a picture I’ve had to paint myself (so your music -> aesthetic process works here). If I think something’s rubbish, of course, I say so and say it strong but give my reasons for doing so. But that’s different from the corners into which both Dissensus and Poptimists (for example) have painted themselves in which there is One Absolute Declaration of Principles which will not be strayed from ever for fear of excommunication. If nothing else, you miss all the exciting stuff that’s going on everywhere else.
I’m being knowingly disingenuous of course about that five years piece because (a) it was co-written by SR and DS (it’s collected in Blissed Out) and (b) I know why they wrote it, i.e. as a reaction against Beige Proper Soul We Are Not Worthy Masquerading As Pop which as we all know has recently made an unwelcome comeback. But the way it was worded was perhaps less than helpful at the time.
Poptimists and Dissensus are places rather than individuals, DJP, and it seems quite likely that people go to those places to talk about one sort of thing with a specialist crowd, and get their other kicks elsewhere. I’m not sure either holds any of its participants to any absolute declaration of values, not that I look at either much, if ever.
Totally OTM about the Teardrops’ B-sides; my personal favourite is “Window Shopping For A New Crown Of Thorns,” the demented flip to 1981′s #54 flop “Colours Fly Away.”
(supplementary question: why isn’t “Christ Vs Warhol” a bonus track on the CD of Wilder when every other B-side from the period is? Did someone forget to add it or did JC put his foot down?)
DJP – you don’t seem to practice what you preach about music in relation to other people who like to talk about it. Your portray yourself as the only free thinker amongst blinkered conformists to popular taste or slavish followers of avant garde manifestos. But your word for the former (gliberal) comes directly from the latter (k-punk, one assumes).
#163: It ended up on a hits comp which appeared around the same time as the reissues, so perhaps JC thought it warranted special status?
#156: Oh yes, loads of ace JC solo b-sides: Hey High Class Butcher from the flipside of Sunshine Playroom; Desi from the back of China Doll; Disaster from the back of Trampolene; and Christmas Mourning from the back of Charlotte Ann. Phew!
If you take “gliberal” in accordance with its dictionary definition – “superficially, shallowly, or falsely liberal” – then I don’t see how you connect that to assumed “blinkered conformists to popular taste” since I have certainly never used the word in that sense.
CvsW is on the Jap version of “Everybody wants to Shag”
“It was a little unusual, but we all loved it”
Right, I’m back from holiday. I see you’ve all been keeping yourselves occupied.
Cope B-Sides – when I worked at MVE a colleague once solemnly informed me that Mik Mak Mok was the only good song Julian Cope had ever written.
DJP if you’d like to point me to Poptimists’ One Absolute Declaration of Principles I’d be fascinated to read it!
Ah, no, here we go – “This is a community for people who believe that pop music is a good thing. The definition of ‘pop music’ is left up to you, but it probably includes at least some stuff that gets in the charts.”
Hardline stuff I think you’ll agree. My position as the Mullah Omar of pop is secure.
Byebyepride – I am not sure the word gliberal comes from K-P at all! I looked it up when DJP first started using it and it seems to have been coined by the vigorous US right (and picked up by the likes of our neighbour-from-hell Melanie Phillips) to lambast liberals in general – glib and liberal here are conjoined by definition. It’s a rough equivalent to something like “do-gooders”.
Like Nas, I’m claiming the word back.
Wonder what Mad Mel thought of God On Trial on BBC2 last night. One of the best dramas I’ve seen on TV for years, if not decades.
Like Bono and “Helter Skelter” you mean :)
Twenty years ago, I first travelled to London for a near-month-long stay. The only person I knew was a music journalist; he worked in radio, and did a weekly live broadcast on my favorite station. At one point I expressed to him my admiration for both the NME and MM and how I wanted to work for one of them, as a writer. His response was quick and soul-crushing: those papers, he said, were largely (if not entirely) populated by Oxbridge grads and there would be no way I could fit in. I wasn’t male, British or a university graduate, and that was that. Better I write about something else. It was like a door slamming on me. He named no names, so I had no idea who he was talking about, nor did I ask. It seemed pointless. (It seems needless to say, but this man was not an Oxbridge grad; his statement wasn’t one of hatred or envy of them, just a plain understood fact. I had no opinion of them myself, as I figured you went there if you wanted to, just as I went to Ryerson because I could. That was probably a wrong assumption, Ryerson being a polytechnical institute at the time.)
One of the reasons this was such bad news for me was I had been reading MM and the NME and Creem and Star Hits (the US version of Smash Hits) and I loved aspects of them all, from super-serious pieces (the derogatory term for them being ‘muso’ which I still don’t understand – I guess it means the author ‘muses’ on things) to the silly, funny, weird, passionate, hyperbolic, etc. I wanted in on the action, but nope, no way. (I would have happily labored in the listings section, or been a proofreader, anything!) Only later did it occur to me that maybe the all-male/token-female environment would not have been that comfortable, nor would they have been too welcoming to an American girl who didn’t understand the hip-hop wars…
At my school we once had an open evening where ex-pupils came back and told us about the wonderful world ahead of us. Each was sat at a table with his chosen career displayed before him. I headed straight for the architect who smilingly told me that there was no way I could follow his path without A-level maths. I was very upset as I’d be lucky to scrape O-level (I did, just). Twenty years later I found out this was BS but how was I to know?
Lena, I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Melody Maker in the late 80s/early 90s featured not one but two American female writers: Caren Myers (who hated British indie) and Caroline Sullivan who loved Bananarama, so hardly fitted into the MM boys club either, and has made a pretty good fist of a career in music journalism since.
As for NME, Helen Mead and James Brown, the reviews and live editors 20 years ago, definitely weren’t Oxbridge grads. Both were very welcoming to young ‘outsiders’ (see Stuart Maconie’s Cider With Roadies).
I hope you’ve found health, wealth and happiness outside the UK music press. As with any profession, there might have been leering, sniping and back-stabbing, but it certainly wasn’t a closed shop. I’m intrigued to know who gave you this duff information.
Well, Burchill, Parsons, Penman, Morley, Baker etc. etc. never went to Oxbridge (and apart from Morley none of them went on to further education, full stop). Set against that the Monitor intake on MM were all Oxford and Chris Roberts went to Cambridge, same college and same year as N*ck H*rnby. So it wasn’t an iron rule though in some cases public school backgrounds probably helped. Absolutely asinine advice, though, and I wish I’d known Lena at the time and given her some infinitely better advice.
Has Lena found health, wealth and happiness outside the UK music press? Well, she married me last November and I’m doing my best to give her all three! :-)
Sweet!!
I honestly don’t think education had anything to do with the weeklies’ recruitment policy 20 years ago. Fanzines were the way to prove your worth, a stint at Eton or Balliol less so. The broadsheets, then as now, were probably another matter.
A major reason I never tried to write for the NME (aside from laziness etc.) is that I assumed my public school and Oxbridge background disqualified me!
Mine was the mid-ground that there was already someone in my Oxbridge college who was writing for them and I believed that even the NME would think this would flag up a real lack of diversity. Though John Harris had left by the time Tom got there so his reason still holds.
No swearing on FT please.
No I can’t go along with it really being the first ‘punk’ no1 but Bob can still proudly claim to be the first ‘punk’ single bought my me (‘Looking after No1′). I enjoyed most of their earlier singles and saw them live in 1978. They were suprisingly good and Bob was a great frontman. Pity then that Rat Trap was a considerable disappointment. It’s not as if punk’s flame was entirely extinguished in 1979 – if we were going to have a late punk no1 then why not The Ruts mighty ‘Babylon’s Burning’? RT instead opts for Springsteenisms and a story based lyric. Ughh! Yes Bob you did rip John & Olivia from the top spot but only by sujagating your punk credentials. It’s a Rat Trap indeed.
#174: I’ve been debating myself as to how much I should say, so I will stick to the basics. The show was called “Live From London” and it was on CFNY, hosted by Lee Carter. While I was in London he got word that the station had new management and would be changing gradually to include more ‘commercial’ music (this meant George Michael, for example) and would play less obscure stuff. He kept doing his show for another year or so, but I think his advice to me (to read John Pilger & not the music papers) was more his own projecting of his own impatience to do ‘harder’ journalism. But I was too distraught at the time to realize that…once in a while I hear him on the CBC here, so he is still in radio, doing more production work than on air stuff, I think.
Well, I’m glad it wasn’t a bosom buddy. That adds up. Everyone goes through that John Pilger moment at some point, your timing was just unfortunate.
if lena’s “20 years” is exact — ie taking us back to 1988 — then nme’s satanic rule of posh kids (such as it ever was)* was entirely over; dep ed was danny kelly; asst ed was james brown… both proudly working class and state school
*by my count: barney h and mat snow were senior staff, x.moore and me were lowly freelancers — and we had all left by 88: very likely there were other freelancers keeping their backgrounds quiet, but this really is quite a strange claim re the nme: by contrast, mm did have a klatch of oxbridgers, but plenty of non…
HOWEVER: you totally dodged a bullet working there at that time, lena, during the hiphop wars of dire memory, cz it wz grim and stressful :(
i was v.lucky cz i wz spotted by r.d.cook (also not posh) and went on to wire
Furthermore, all the Oxford Monitor lot, i.e. Simon, David and Paul Oldfield, tried the NME first and were knocked back before being signed up to MM so an Oxbridge pedigree certainly didn’t guarantee you a job, though in places like Q Magazine it might have been a different story.
i think it is largely the case that between the mid-80s and the mid-90s, there was a creeping professionalisation of what had been a VERY ad hoc, off-the-map career choice: one of the less high-profile struggles under ian pye was to get the various wayward addicts, wastrels and night owls to deliver copy on time, to length, in an acceptable form (stylewise but also just nicely typed etc)
years ago i remember neil spencer saying of julie burchill that one of the hidden clues to her success — with editors increasingly distant from her politics — was that her copy was no burden at all: it was beautifully delivered, to length and on time, and in that sense she always was a pleasure to work with
Yes, it was the summer of ’88 – early August to be exact – when I was told this rather old and inaccurate news, and obv. not knowing any better I believed it. I am very sorry to hear the NME at the time was grim and stressful, esp. since I subscribed to it for six months in ’89 (mainly because they were Wedding Present-crazy and so was I). I read John Pilger (Heroes) and admired him but knew that there was no way I could emulate that, the actual foreign correspondent work, as far as I can tell they are born, not made.
At Ryerson we were trained to be on time (date-stamping our stories) and accurate (you failed outright if you spelled someone’s name wrong!) – working hard to please editors, at least in those ways, was there from our first assignment…
By the by, does anyone know how Neil Tennant got to edit Smash Hits? Did anyone at MM or NME ever work there? Is there a rock/pop divide in journalists as well?
Well, interestingly Neil seems to have come up the old-fashioned journalistic way and bypassed the whole fanzine thing altogether; here’s what it says in Wikipedia:
In 1975, having completed a degree in history at North London Polytechnic (now London Metropolitan University), Neil Tennant worked for two years as London Editor for Marvel UK, the UK branch of Marvel Comics. He was responsible for anglicising the dialogue of Marvel’s catalogue to suit British readers, and for indicating where women needed to be redrawn more decently for the British editions. He also wrote occasional features for the comics, including interviews with pop stars Marc Bolan and Alex Harvey. In 1977, he moved to Macdonald Educational Publishing where he edited “The Dairy Book Of Home Management” and various illustrated books about cookery, playing the guitar and other home interests. Then he moved to ITV Books where he edited TV tie-in books. After having commissioned Steve Bush, then the designer of Smash Hits and The Face, to design a book about the group Madness, he was offered a job at Smash Hits as news editor of the British teen pop magazine in 1982. The following year he became Assistant Editor. He also edited the 1982, 1983 and 1984 editions of The Smash Hits Yearbook.
Somewhere in a box in the attic, I’ve still got a copy of the Dairy Book of Home Management (ed: N.Tennant), having accidentally inherited it from the previous occupant of a flat I once rented. I think it came free with the milk, if you saved up vouchers or something. Anyway, it’s, er, of its time. I particularly remember a chapter on the correct wording for letters of condolence…
until the early 70s, nme had been a pop trade paper really — staffed by old-school entertainment journalists — and had suffered salewise as a result, given how much rock had energised and transformed pop, in chart fact and (harder to pin down) in cultural potential
around 1974, the then-editor (i think called andy gray?) had made the decision to bring on-board writers from the underground press: charles shaar murray from oz, nick kent from frenz, mick farren from IT… i forget now who else
by its nature, the underground press had fostered the self-taught, the self-indulgent (in a good and a bad way), and an entire bestiary of square wheels, neer-do-wells and otherwise unemployables… this strategy revitalised the paper and set the tone for its market dominance, but at a complex cost, as the essence of the move was bolshy counterculture maverickness, which is (not surprisingly) very hard to routinise on a weekly basis
i had no journalistic or editorial training that wasn’t on the job — i think this degree of improvisational chancing was becoming less and less usual as the 80s advanced, simply because the sector was increasingly crowded, and under assault at both ends (ie the smash hits end, and — after about 1984? — the tabloid end also: the broadsheet arrival as a player in pop/rock culture was belated and remains more reactive than not…)
of course a genuinely dedicated collector would still have the MILK IT CAME WITH, mike
Re 189: IIRC, the pioneering NME editor was called Alan Smith.
can’t find on itunes
Both this and Bon Jovi’s ‘Living On a Prayer’ have been shown to have influences of Bruce Springsteen. This would make Springsteen a rather unlikely punk/metal crossover artist to rank alongside the likes of Motorhead! Of course, the truth is that this is not punk, and Bon Jovi are not metal, both are ‘merely’ pop, and here it’s a rather ordinary kind of pop at that with plenty thrown into the mix but nothing that you couldn’t hear done better somewhere else. Again I’m in agreement with Tom, 6 seems right.