Friday, April 15, 2016

ABCs of My Vinyl Collection (Letter B, Part 18)

"She's So Modern" was my first foray into the Boomtown Rats, and it came via the 'That Summer!' soundtrack. Yes, I'm going on about that album again. Now, I don't want to give the impression I bought 'That Summer!' when it came out in 1979. I would have been 9 years old. I picked it up at the impressionable age of 13, and like all good compilations, I took to most of the bands and began spending all of my paper-route money buying up their albums. At one time in my life I had several pieces of plastic from the Rats, but through the years, I have sold off almost all of them. Today, I'm left with the 1978 album 'A Tonic For the Troops' and the followup 'The Fine Art of Surfacing.' I have no regrets with the sell off. "She's So Modern" was the first single I heard, and I never liked another one as much. There aren't many better ways to spend the next three minutes. Go on... give it a go. Ooooh, yeah!

"She's So Modern"

4 comments:

kevinpat said...

This song was part of a cassette I made around 1979 that I couldn't live without, sandwiched between Elvis Costello's "This Year's Girl" and David Johanssen's "Girls" so I just hear it in that context. I'm experienced enough to appreciate the cassette, which was the only way you could make playlists. They also weren't very favorable to some bands/artists. I pulled a song or two off many an album, never to really return to the album as a whole. Like the Boomtown Rats. I have 2 or three albums by them but I couldn't tell you another track off any of them. The cassette just played over and over until it finally got caught in the VW player. But because I knew it so well I could recreate another in only the time it took to gather the albums/singles. I do know "I Don't Like Mondays" because of all the radio play it got before radio programmers realized what it was describing. It was good for a listen or two but unlike "She's So Modern" which had that chant-along chorus that was slightly on the irresistible side. Anyhow I gotta go and see if I can find the last cassette I made of this playlist. I think I even burned it to disk at one point. Cassettes were fun.

Brian said...

Sounds like another epic mix, Kevinpat. I miss the days of making tapes. This old post may interest you.

http://lineartrackinglives.blogspot.com/2012/11/when-was-your-last-mixtape.html

So, I take the time every once in a while. It's the one plus of driving a 13-year-old car.

The Swede said...

Geldof's credibility as a musical figure of importance diminished in direct contrast to his increasing world fame in the wake of Band Aid/Live Aid. I never bought an album by The Rats, but had all those early singles. Only the 12" of the fantastic 'Looking After Number One' remains in the collection these days though.

JC said...

The Swede nails it.

The Boomtown Rats made some decent stuff....I still have four of their LPs and some old singles since picked up second hand in recent years; I also saw them back in 1979 at the Glasgow Apollo and thoroughly enjoyed them.

I did write about them once:-

https://thenewvinylvillain.wordpress.com/2014/06/13/a-ban-that-tony-wilson-never-rated/