The Fine Art of Surfacing
Written by Bob Geldolf in 1979 after doing a radio show interview and seeing the news story come across the teletext machine at the station, “I Don’t Like Mondays” comes from the answer given by 16 year old Brenda Ann Spencer when asked by a reporter on way she murdered 2 adults, injured eight young elementary students and one police officer at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, CA on January 29, 1979. Her answer was “I guess I just don’t like Mondays.”
The Fine Art of Surfacing was the second album by the punk / rock band The Boomtown Rats. Released October 9, 1979 on Columbia Records USA the album was a premise for the change that music was going to take in the 1980’s. Bob Geldolf is best known for his role as the main character Pink in Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” movie and for putting together one of the largest fund raising concerts of all time back in 1985. Live Aid was held to help raise funds for the ongoing Ethiopian famine crisis.
It is pretty amazing how he wrote the lyrics to blend in so well with the story and how he got in the line about the teletext machine. We here at Forgotten Rock Classics think that everybody that works or goes to school should play this song every Monday morning to express how much we all hate Mondays and not for the tragic story they were written about.
The star instrument in the song is the piano playing of Johnny Fingers. The way he starts the record sets the tone for what is to come and his use of the keys keeps the song going throughout. For those of you that are tired of hearing the guitar being so strongly used in our last few posts, you will get relieve from this UK number 1 hit. So for all of us that hate Mondays it’s time for that “silicon chip inside her head, to get switched to overload”.
Video courtesy of sueuk.
Forgotten Rock Classics 
I’ve always loved the Rats. Great song, sad story. Here’s my video about the inspiration behind the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfKr6QBQYe4
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Dave
A very informative video. Great job and thanks for the link.
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Very sad story and there was a lot more about the dad. Brenda said that he had been sexual assaulting her since around the age of 9 (they only had one bed and both of them slept in it) and I believe he ended up marrying a girl right around Brenda’s age right after she was convicted of the killings. That’s why I always try to look at the song as how much I hate going to work on Monday’s after the weekend.
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Wow, intense story. It made me want to look up the story. It says that she was found to have had an injury to her temporal lobe during a bike accident. It also said that it was recommended she be admitted to a hospital for depression but her father refused. If he hadn’t refused, two people would be alive.
I liked the song but the story behind it is tragic. cs5711
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