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
#48: Ruby Murray and Gilbert O’Sullivan.
The candelabra and pyjamas make me think this had more in common with See My Baby Jive (custard pies and gorilla suits, long, prominent sax, Spectorisms) than punk. But I’ll attest there was a long running, fierce argument in Smash Hits about whether this was the first punk no.1 or whether God Save The Queen was the moral winner. Punk and new wave may seem poles apart now but they were definitely seen as spiritual partners fighting the same war in 1978. At least in my school.
As for the lack of a Boomtown Rats re-evaluation, I think it has everything to do with their singer’s later career. DJP’s succinct summary of Geldof’s inflated opinion of himself is spot on. I find his antics offensive (the Live 8 press conference, ignoring the suicide bombs in London that day, was very poor), as do many charities in Africa who don’t find it so easy to get on the news (this was well documented around the time of Live 8). It’s hard to listen to Rat Trap without prejudice.
Besides, I had a feeling Mojo HAD covered the Boomtown Rats. Peter Paphides wrote it, I think.
Re 40, 44: Alvin’s glove was a tamer Gene Vincent look, I guess – the echoed vocals on My Coo Ca Choo and Jealous Mind are Sweet Gene knock-offs after all. Designed to make him look intimidating and mysterious, it worked on 8-year old me. He pinched all his slow-motion snaky moves from Dave Berry (as my parents tutted at the time), who was considerably creepier.
Just playing it in my head. Melodically, it doesn’t repeat itself at all, does it, save for perhaps some of that sax break? Every bit happens only the once as far as I can recall, which is kind of extraordinary for a song that was deemed catchy enough to reach number one. One factor here may be how strongly the song ends. Ending their singles with a catchy refrain seemed to be a trick that The Boomtown Rats liked to rely upon: Someone’s Looking At You; Never In A Million Years; the na-na-nas on Diamond Smiles*.
Re: the band name. At the age of nine, I thought The Boomtown Rats was a brilliant band name. It’s just the sort of thing you would probably want to call your own band if you were a rufty-tufty nine year-old boy. So while my brother (four years older) was scornful of what he perceived as the Rats’ version of punk, Geldof struck me as thoroughly credible.
Good as I thought Rat Trap was, I do sometimes get the impression that Geldof thinks these songs were more important than they really were. Seizing the chance to do it at Live Aid was understandable and fine, but doing it again at Live 8, twenty years later, to thousands of people who had no clear idea that he used to be a pop star, seemed inappropriate.
*featuring the demon lines, “The girl in the cake/Jumped out too soon by mistake”
DJP # 47 – I am happy to take that as a compliment. Eh? Eh?
Of course had I finished instead with “Hmmm? Hmmm?”, this would have put older posters in mind of William Hartnell, the inaugural Doctor Who.
Now drink.
I don’t know this song at all. I do know that when I first heard the Rats’ version of “I Don’t Like Mondays,” I was surprised by how much the arrangement made it sound like a Broadway show tune – to the point where I couldn’t help but picture a kickline of dancers at one point. It was a *good* Broadway show tune, but not the fierce, punk (or at least punk-like) record I had been expecting.
Is there another version of ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’?
I should have added above that, not being greaser from New Jersey, I found this easier to relate to than Springsteen’s overly romantic tale – and anyway The Magic Rat sounded like a character from Wind In The Willows to me. I can’t imagine Bruce ever finding much magic in a humble 50p piece either.
“Deep down in her pocket, Rosalita finds 50p
“Hey what is that doing there, who gave that to me?”"
the jive-talking conversational style of this reminds me of thin lizzy (okay, the one thin lizzy song i know) as much as bruce. it’s alright though i think, melodramatic and ludicrous but still quite affecting.
anyway, someone’s clearly reappraised the boomtown rats, razorlight are virtually a tribute band (though i have a suspicion this isn’t quite what they’re aiming for).
Wichita, you are right about Mojo covering the Rats. There was a fairly substantial feature about them about a year ago, coinciding with the reissuing of their back catalogue I would imagine.
On the topic of whether this was the first “punk” number, if it wasn’t I’ll be interested to see what (if any) future number ones might take that title (although obviously not wanting to inspire any bunny baiting comments now)
first punk number one
OK, OK. I played both TOTP appearances back-to-back last night, and am now prepared to concede that “Rat Trap” is better than I remembered it. By the standards of chart pop, it is clever, sparky, adept and original, and sneering at its would-be Springsteen-isms and its Not Being (Post-)Punk Enough is hardly fair, considering the easy ride that I was prepared to give to the stylistic bastardisations/dilutions of glam-rock (which were in turn sneered at by the hipsters of the day, just as my 16-year-old self rolled my eyes at the Rats). If I’d been eleven years old, then I might well have thought this was the Best Thing Ever.
No, you were right the first time. “Rat Trap” is a ploddy, life-denying, elephantine, rancid, self-applauding Trex chip fat grease remnant for me to slip and break my neck on because the idle bastards couldn’t be bothered to come out and clear it up wait until I report them to the bloody Council cock rock record.
Also, life isn’t fair.
61, As an 11 year old at an all-boys school, I can attest that this was very briefly the best thing ever (for the uncool first years anyway). JT and ONJ were sissy. Everyone cheered when Geldof ripped up the poster. It’s ‘pop moments’ like that, the fact the record was a hit in term-time, the contrast with the endless months of the Two Johns at Number 1 every bloody week and Geldof’s unruly, spiky appearance that helped made it happen.
None of us had even heard of Springsteen at that point.
Well, that’s all-boys schools for you.
#63 is how it seemed then (and does now, to be honest).
As I say, it was more “hooray, SummerNights at number one finally over!” than “Hello, we’re the Boomtown Rats and Grease is now beaten and gone”
It was also an indication of optimism, that, musically, things are going to get better.
Which they did.
As a 16-year-old, I organised a poll among our year in which “Rat Trap” pipped “Mr Blue Sky” as single of the year, with “Wuthering Heights” not too far behind. Wish I could remember the rest of the placings. I remember thinking they’d make an interesting school disco, although what our neighbouring girls’ school would make of some of the rockist selections I’m not sure.
Re Springsteen – yes we knew “Born To Run”, although “Darkness on the Edge of Town” didn’t make that big an impact. Two years later when I went to London no student party was complete without a copy of “The River”. Capital Radio played the “River” singles on heavy rotation, which Piccadilly in Manchester certainly didn’t. Was Springsteen more a London thing in those days?
#66: Wrong. It was only a cause of optimism in terms of things can only get better, since they couldn’t get much worse than “Rat Trap.”
Also I distrust the latent misogyny behind “hurrah no more Summer Nights at number one.”
#37
Of course, The Beatles is also a pretty stupid band name…
We’re going through a purple patch of them now…The Script, The View, The Kooks, The Zutons, The Fratellis, The Enemy…all worthy heirs of the Boomtown Rats’ aesthetic legacy.
But in truth civilisation as measured in terms of band names can’t really sink any lower than Biffy Clyro.
Latent misogyny? Nah, 16 weeks of anybody at Number One is hard to bear when you’re trapped in a monoculture. People were just bored.
Well OK, not just bored. To a lot of pop kids (Gawd bless ‘em!), the Grease phenomenon was an imposition by a distant “them”, whereas the Rats represented some sort of victory for a here-and-now “us”. It’s an identification with the artist thing, innit? Which I suppose makes the Rats a teensy-weensy little bit “punk” after all.
I disagree – from my contemporary viewpoint at the time it was very much a case of “yay, that girlie rubbish is off the top and here’s some proper boys’ music.”
#68
Whoa! I like Summer nights, but that clip had been played every week, and was getting boring. In fact, the original ‘performance’ of Rat Trap was also getting boring, and one week at number one was deserved, but no more or less what it was due.
#70
I didn’t say it was getting better for all time, just that the stuff I’d consider from ‘our’ contamporaries could actually make inroads into the charts. Which it did for a fair while.
#71, well quite. ta.
#72 well, you weren’t standing next to me at the time, so you can’t know how *my* reaction was. Bob’s, I cannot say, as I wasn’t standing next to him either.
re; bad band names……
http://www.avclub.com/content/feature/the_worst_band_names_of_07
Capital Radio managed to turn me off Springsteen with their incessant plugging of ‘The River’
Being at an all-boys school too I don’t remember any glee at “girlie rubbish” being knocked off the top, we just wanted a new #1 and I don’t think we classified ‘Grease’ in that way anyway (Slik and The Bay City Rollers certainly). Travolta had been in ‘Saturday Night Fever’ which we liked and Olivia did look good in those leather strides.