Tag Archives: Boomtown Rats

Monday, Monday – using the Mamas & the Papas to drum up interest

On the envelope of today’s piece I hinted at two pieces of music – the Mamas & the Papas “Monday, Monday” and The Boomtown Rats – “I Don’t Like Mondays”.  I suppose I just let my brain churn up some old memories and I sort of assumed the songs were very different. Then during the day I came to realise the songs were not very different. The Mamas & the Papas can’t cope with Monday’s because of an association with events that happened on a Monday, whereas Bob and the boys seemed from recollection to have a dystopian view of the whole week and Monday was just an example day singled out for destruction as an example to the rest of the days!

Now that I have had a chance to refresh my memory and view the YouTube clips i see that I was both right and wrong. There is something deeply menacing in the Mamas & the Papas. There’s a touch of Star Trek and it’s so clean it looks unreal (in my memory they were all flower power and druggy!) I suspect that in their choreography they trace out a message to the alien death ships in geostationary orbit above us. The only reason we were not destroyed was they had better things to do that watch pop TV. They don’t seem upset that this unnamed woman (we presume) upped and left. It’s actually Monday afternoon specifically they find untrustworthy – there was no warning in the morning of what was to be!

For the Rats it’s a very different story: it’s not just Monday afternoon that’s the problem, they feel the whole day deserves shooting down! And is there menace in their dystopian song about death? No, they are all such cheeky, friendly softies. It is quite clear that there is nothing to fear from this bunch – though had the alien battle cruisers above been watching and had travelled back in time they may have put us all out of our misery of having to watch years and years of Bob Geldorf being famous for being Bob Geldorf and blown the planet to pieces way back then!

And how are they the same? They are both so clean! Their meanings are apparently the opposite to their presentation. Worst of all, once in your head it takes an incredibly long and annoying time to shift them from your brain!!!

Of course you won’t have that problem with #Letter365 No 228 as the whole enterprise is thoroughly forgettable:

#Letter365 No228 gets posted
No228 gets consigned to the oblivion of the box