57 – Do Ya – ELO – 1976

Do Ya - ELO

       This song takes me right back to Tom W’s room at Blackburn College in 1976. We played the living crap out of ELO’s “A New World Record” and it was always played at 11. The only other song I remember playing this loud was the Beatles’ “Back in the USSR” (especially that jet plane sound effect at the open).

       Tom had one of the better Amp/Speaker/Turntable set-ups in our dorm (very few cassette players in 1975, though I had my TEAC deck). Tom also had a master key, passed down to him from a graduating senior the year before that gave him access to every building on campus. This led to two of my favorite pranks at BU during my 2 years there (being a transfer student from Elgin Community College).

       1. One weekend, Tom got us into Hudson Hall, the three story classroom building where most classes were held. Tom, his roommate Wes W, Mike H, some visiting friends, and I carried every desk and chair from the third floor onto the roof. (I know, but it seemed funny at the time). There were 4 classrooms on the 3^rd floor as I recall, the most important being Dr. John V.G. Forbes’ (see #33 – Six Months ina Leaky Boat) tiered room used at 8:00AM Monday for US History.

       As was later reported back to us, Dr. Forbes walked in, saw not a single stick of furniture in the room (we moved teacher’s desks as well), turned on his heel and walked out to place a call to campus security.

       I was in a classroom on the second floor at the time and recall hearing a huge amount of banging and scraping at 8:30 or so as the desks and chairs were returned to the classrooms above. Someone asked, “What’s that noise all about?” I looked around like Ralph in “A Christmas Story” when the teacher asked, “Has anyone seen Flick?”, and Ralph, knowing his best friend Flick was outside with his tongue stuck to the flagpole due to Ralph’s triple dog dare, internally asks, “Flick? Who’s Flick?” glancing around with total innocence.

       2. I don’t know if it was as a result of story 1, but campus security began to lock a student into each building at night. It was actually one of the jobs of the Work Program. You’d be locked in for 3-5 hours and you could read or study for that time. My senior year at BU my roommate, Kevin K, worked security and one night he was scheduled to be locked into the Olin science building. Tom W. decided we would get in there before him and wait about an hour for him to get settled in before we would try to scare him by making noises, etc.

       We hid in the lecture hall where Biology and Chemistry were taught, ducking down behind the teacher’s desk in front of the chalkboards and waited for Security to bring Kevin in and lock him in. He came into the lecture hall and sat down and began reading as we tried not to laugh as we prepared to make noises and throw things around the room. I had a roll of toilet paper I wanted to lob around. However, trying not to laugh or make a sound became a losing proposition. Trying not to laugh only made me want to laugh more and I was about to wet myself when we finally started moaning and tossing things around the podium.

       Instead of scaring him, Kevin got pissed at us, and after having a good laugh we went back to our rooms and went to bed (it was about 2 AM by then) while Kevin stayed behind to do his job, make the building safe for the next day’ classes.

       Funny how I can recall the goofy stuff we did in our downtime so much better than classroom stuff. As I sit here I can think of about 10 things that were done to my first roommate, Big Al (#5- God’s Song), and I can remember almost nothing of 2 years of French classes.

56 – I Don’t Like Mondays – The Boomtown Rats – 1979

I Don't Like Mondays - The Boomtown Rats 

       This song takes me to 1979 and the Steve Dahl Rude Awakening on WLUP-FM. The Stever played this song a lot and he and Garry Meier talked about its back-story. A 16 year old girl in San Diego, California, Brenda Ann Spencer, shot at a school, killing two adults and wounding 8 children. When she was apprehended, she showed no remorse, her response to the question of why she shot at the school was, “I don’t like Mondays. It livens up the day.” The shooting occurred in January 1979 and the song was written soon afterward, it was released in July 1979.

       It reminds me of the writer of the song Bob Geldof, lead singer of the Boomtown Rats, soon to be St. Bob and then Sir Bob, after 1984’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and the whole Band Aid movement (which basically built on work Harry Chapin had been doing for several years, before his untimely death in 1982).

       I will discuss Harry in an upcoming song (actually number 105, so it may be awhile at my current rate).

       In between “I Don’t Like..” and “Do They Know…”, Bob Geldof starred as “Pink” in the movie version of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”, another album Steve played a lot (and based his infamous parody song, “Another Kid in the Crawl” on, his take on “Another Brick in the Wall”, but Stever’s was about John Wayne Gacy).

       I was at Southern Illinois Law School when I saw “The Wall” (see #33-Six Months in a Leaky Boat) and I was not that much of a Floyd fan. I liked some of their music, but had never bought an album. After seeing the film I bought “The Wall.” (Then “The Final Cut” and “The Division Bell” when they came out; then went back to “Dark Side of the Moon”). All are albums I have yet to digitize so I have no Floyd on the Zune.

       Several years before I had attended a midnight movie presentation of “Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii” with my friend from Accu, Viktor S. and it was dull…stultifyingly dull…so dull I fell asleep, something I’d done only once before (nor since), at a showing of the film “Lucky Luciano” a 1973 snooze-a-thon starring Rod Steiger.

        I was quietly napping in the Woodfield Theater (They had comfortable, high-backed, rocking seats. Sadly, the theater no longer exists. I first saw “Close Encounters” there, the only movie I have ever sat through twice) during “PF@Pompeii” when someone lobbed a firecracker and it went off in the air about 10 feet from where we sat. It didn’t make the movie any better, but it did wake me up.

       I always thought it was interesting that Pete Townshend’s “Tommy” and Roger Waters’ “The Wall” had so much in common…

       Both main (English) characters lose their father in WWII; both are kids who are abused (Tommy by his Uncle Ernie and Cousin Kevin and the Acid Queen, “Pink” by his mother and teachers in “The Wall”); both become shut off from the world (Tommy goes deaf, dumb, and blind on seeing his father killed by his step-father, “Pink” builds an emotional wall around himself); both become the leaders of cults (Tommy’s based on his uncanny ability to play pin ball using only his sense of touch, “Pink” becomes a Neo-Nazi, or some sort of authoritarian figure ): both cults have violent, hammer-like imagery (“Tommy’s” have metal “T”s with a pin ball soldered to the top, “The Wall” has the “walking hammers” of Ronald Searle’s surreal animation); both are redeemed in the end, after a catharsis (Tommy’s acolytes run amuck and kill his mom and step dad (with the “T” hammers), “The Wall” comes down after “Pink” is put on trial* and the judge and jury find him guilty).

       Great minds think alike? (Townshend and Waters, sounds like an accounting firm)

*from thewallanalysis.com: Pink puts himself on trial - conducted by the exaggerated and personified bricks - and ultimately orders his wall be torn down when he judges himself both responsible for the making of the wall as well as capable of reconnecting with the outside world.