Murder Ballad Monday--I Don't Like Mondays (The Boomtown Rats)

Hello and welcome to Murder Ballad Monday. Last week we took a small detour into the land of disco, but this week we look at a more serious murder ballad that is based on a true story. 

These days, sadly, there are many incidents of school shootings. This was one of the first to really make headlines due to the senseless nature of the shooting--a crime with no real reasons.  

On January 29, 1979 in San Diego, California, 16-year-old  Brenda Spencer fired thirty rounds of ammunition into the schoolyard of Grover Cleveland Elementary School from her house across the street, killing the principal and a custodian as well as wounding eight children and a police officer. She then barricaded herself in her house.

A reporter reached Spencer by phone while she was still in the house after the shooting, and asked her why she did it. She answered: "I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day."

Prior to the shooting, Spencer had been a pupil at a facility for problem students due to issues with truancy as well as burglary and shooting BB guns to kill birds in her neighbourhood. A psychiatric evaluation arranged by her probation officer recognised Spencer as suicidal and recommended she be admitted to a mental hospital for depression, but her father refused to give permission For Christmas 1978, her father gave her a Ruger 10/22 semi-automatic .22 caliber rifle with a telescopic sight and 500 rounds of ammunition. Spencer later said, "I asked for a radio and he bought me a gun." She speculated that her father had wanted her to kill herself. 

She was clearly very disturbed and in need of help. Spencer was tried as an adult and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison and as of June 2017, remains incarcerated. 

On the day of the shooting in 1979, Irish rocker Bob Geldof, lead singer of The Boomtown Rats (later to star as Pink in Pink Floyd’s film The Wall and to be the co-founder of Band Aid and Live Aid) was being interviewed at a WRAS (Georgia State University's campus radio station) when he heard the news come over the telex machine.

                             

Telex machine: It was a bit like sending a fax as it was connected to the phone. It was like a print version of sending a Morse code telegraph communication.

According to Wikipedia, Geldof explained how he wrote the song:

I was doing a radio interview in Atlanta with [Johnnie] Fingers and there was a telex machine beside me. I read it as it came out. Not liking Mondays as a reason for doing somebody in is a bit strange. I was thinking about it on the way back to the hotel and I just said 'Silicon chip inside her head had switched to overload'. I wrote that down. And the journalists interviewing her said, 'Tell me why?' It was such a senseless act. It was the perfect senseless act and this was the perfect senseless reason for doing it. So perhaps I wrote the perfect senseless song to illustrate it. It wasn't an attempt to exploit tragedy.

Spiderman and I first heard this song in 1990 when we were exchange students on our home-stay experience. We bought a double cassette from Woolworth’s in Pinner entitled Milestones and this was the second track on side one.

                               

Just like Bob Geldof, we were struck with the senselessness of it all. There was no reason behind it. These days, with every tragedy that unfolds due to gun violence, I find myself thinking of this song. 

I have included the lyrics below if you’d like to follow along.

The silicon chip inside her head
Gets switched to overload
And nobody's gonna go to school today
She's going to make them stay at home
And daddy doesn't understand it
He always said she was as good as gold
And he can see no reason
'Cause there are no reasons
What reason do you need to be sure

Oh, oh, oh tell me why
I don't like Mondays

Tell me why
I don't like Mondays

Tell me why
I don't like Mondays
I want to shoot
The whole day down

The Telex machine is kept so clean
As it types to a waiting world
And mother feels so shocked
Father's world is rocked
And their thoughts turn to their own little girl
Sweet sixteen ain't that peachy keen
Now, it ain't so neat to admit defeat
They can see no reasons
'Cause there are no reasons
What reason do you need oh, woah 

Tell me why
I don't like Mondays

Tell me why
I don't like Mondays

Tell me why
I don't like Mondays
I want to shoot
The whole day down
Down, down
Shoot it all down 

All the playing's stopped in the playground now
She wants to play with her toys a while
And school's out early and soon we'll be learning
And the lesson today is how to die
And then the bullhorn crackles
And the captain tackles
With the problems and the how's and why's
And he can see no reasons
'Cause there are no reasons
What reason do you need to die, die

Oh, oh, oh and the silicon chip inside her head
Gets switched to overload
And nobody's gonna go to school today
She's going to make them stay at home
And daddy doesn't understand it
He always said she was as good as gold
And he can see no reason
'Cause there are no reasons
What reason do you need to be sure

Tell me why
I don't like Mondays
Tell me why

I don't like Mondays
Tell me why

I don't like, I don't like, I don't like Mondays
Tell me why
I don't like, I don't like, (tell me why) I don't like Mondays
Tell me why
I don't like Mondays
I want to shoot, the whole day down

That’s all for this week. Stay tuned next week for a very different sort of school shooting.