This year for the 2023 A-Z Blog Challenge, I’m going to begin by listing a song or musical subject, and then see how fast and how far I can completely blow up my own “stream of consciousness,” and head “off the reservation,” by linking every real, and “Zulu Delta-imagined” fact, piece of music trivia, or not so apparent connection to what is racing around my head to that song in an “unstructured, graffiti-like” format. Complete and utter nonsense! Turn it up and turn it on, but as Van “The Man” Morrison said…….”It’s already turned on!”

The Boomtown Rats got their name when Bob Geldof took it from Woody Guthrie‘s autobiography Bound for Glory.

I had no idea of this piece of information until I stumbled across it while fact-checking something for this blog…..as if facts even matter anymore?

I, by no means, was trying to connect Wood Guthrie or my blog for the Letter A……it just showed up as “literary intervention!”

Geldof wrote the song ” I Don’t Like Mondays” in 1979.

Geldof wrote the song after reading a telex report at Georgia State University‘s campus radio station, WRAS. It was about the shooting spree of 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer, who fired at children in a school playground at Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, California, on 29 January 1979. She killed two adults and injured eight children and one police officer. Spencer showed no remorse for her crime; her explanation for her actions was “I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day”(With help from Wiki).

In 1979 as a high school student, safe and far away, the song was a catchy music tune with clever words; “The silicon chip inside her head gets switched to overload; nobody is going to school today, she’s going make them all stay at home…….”

The song was written 20 years before the gun massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, and 33 years before the executions at Sandy Hook Elementary School……and every school gun massacre since and in-between; only waiting for the next one in America.

Irishman Bob Geldof would go on to become “Sir” Bob Geldof for his efforts and dedication to form the super group “Band Aid,” and concert “Live Aid” to help with famine relief in Africa. 

The song was played on the cool WBRU (Brown University) 95.5 FM radio station. The station was started in 1936, it was one of the oldest independent radio stations in the country.

1979 was before they sold out, and only played music from “cooperate generated playlists.” 

Back when the D.J’s played any music they wanted. 

Back when they broadcast the “Far Out-Hippie Like “No Man’s Land.” Public service announcements like “Hey man….like Henry is trying to score a ride to Seattle for Christmas….Anyone who could help him out, would be like really, really cool!” 

Back when Peter “Peter Pan” Panagiotis would give the Surf Report every Saturday morning and we loved it; despite the fact that I didn’t surf, or had no idea where Narragansett Beach was, even even though it was only 31.1 miles away from my house.

Before they really, literally sold out; by selling their “over the air” broadcast rights to a Christian broadcast station. 

I first heard about the song from Vinny Murphy who said he heard it at 1AM on “BRU.” For young guys to find cool new music that wasn’t the pop crap played on the “big stations” was like finding King Tutt’s tomb……if we knew who Tutt was in High School. 

John, if you don’t mind me quoting the Velvet Underground from many, many years earlier…….

Jenny said when she was just five years old
There was nothing happening at all
Every time she puts on a radio
There was a nothin’ goin’ down at all, not at all
Then one fine mornin’ she puts on a New York station
You know, she couldn’t believe what she heard at all
She started shakin’ to that fine fine music
You know her life was saved by rock ‘n’ roll

When ” I don’t like Mondays” is taken on the actual facts and background, this song is horrific and cruel. Maybe it was supposed to be.

Maybe it was supposed to be a wake-up call. I said wake-up…. Not “WOKE.” Spare me that conservative crap!

Either way…..it doesn’t matter……

When it comes to gun violence, America hasn’t woken up yet.