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.
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