Boomtown Rats - Mondo Bongo
#38
By Robbie Rist
January 1981
Mondo Bongo
Allen’s Rating: 2.5 out of 5
Robbie’s Rating: 4 out of 5
Genre: Power Pop With One Eye Open To The World
Change was in the air.
Simple, 60s influenced pop wasn’t holding the line.
Just singing about girls wasn’t enough anymore.
White pop music was looking for something new.
And the Boomtown Rats had been around the world.
Both lyrically and musically, you can hear its influence all over Mondo Bongo.
‘World Music’ was yet to reduce the listening experience to one long, patchouli scented, corn rowed, endless drum circle.
The Rats were among the first to usher it in.
Mood Mambo sets the tone with spoken word verses, congas and....well....bongos (mondo bongos, apparently) while musing about snakes on Latin American stairs and the ‘come dancing competition from the Midlands International Dance Band Orchestra’
What does it mean?
Who knows?
Sure is vibey as hell though.
Next two songs (Straight Up and This Is My Room) are somewhat more mature versions of what the Rats do best, idiosyncratic pop with crazy arrangements and fun words.
Hey! Next we get a fun song about the death of English Imperialism! Ian Smith! Cricket!
Go Man Go appears to be about fighting depression. And through it all, I haven’t yet missed a song where a guy doesn’t get the girl.
Their odd rewrite of The Stones is either a nifty experiment or a misstep. You’re mileage may vary. I myself sit in the ‘nifty experiment’ seats.
There’s a Bowie/disco/afrobeat song.
The Elephants Graveyard has among my fave Geldof lyrics:
‘You see the judge and then you check the jury
She does her hair and calls her lawyer cutie
It’s Disneyland under Marshall law’
Songs about old rich assholes never go out style.
Banana Republic is one of the signature songs of this new sound of theirs. Yeah. It’s a reggae groove but its not straight up reggae. It’s a rock tune that never fully rocks. If this was about a girl it would make the perfec soundtrack for a night on a warm beach.
As it is its a song for a night on a warm beach during a coup.
Don’t Talk To Me feels like a bit of filler. It’s good.
I can see why its on side 2.
Got some more of that idiosyncratic pop with Hurt Hurts. (Geldof can make ‘Instant Solzhenitsyn’ just trip off the tongue like its nothing. Quite a skill).
Up All Night was a minor MTV hit and I guess the closest thing to a ‘single’ they had.
Which to me made ZERO sense. I woulda done Elephants Graveyard but what to do I know?
And it all concludes with my favorite song on the record.
45 seconds of awesomeness.
It’s called Cheerio.
Now, I’m a fan so I have an attachment to this record that most don’t I’m sure.
It does so much so quickly.
I love it.
I wish they broke up after this record.
They didn’t.
It was one more last gasp of a record and a break up.
Cheerio would have been such a great send off.
Anyway.
On to the cons.
Tony Visconti’s production is muddy. He leaned in this reverby direction in the 80s and liked very little, if any, of it.
Yup.
That’s the cons.
The Rats embody much of what I tend to like in my rock artists. Great melodies, hooks galore and a great group of players.
Johnny fingers was the last great keyboard player. He was an actual PIANO player who did little, if any, programming.
It kind of leaves me gobsmacked that Simon Crowe and Pete Briquette are not mentioned feverishly in the same sentences as guys like Foxton and Buckler. Both are so gloriously.....themselves. Sigh.....I miss lead bass players.....
Even Cott and Roberts, who are largely relegated to rhythm guitars and ‘atmosphere’, constantly pop out of the mix with just right wrong note and the perfect time.
I highly recommend this album. It doesn’t reveal all of its charms on a first listen but there is much to see.
