The First 50 Years: Songs Of Boomtown Glory

The Boomtown Rats were one of the most successful bands of the 1970s in the UK, as central to the decade’s dying embers as Chic, Abba, The Clash, The Specials and The Jam. Their grown-up new wave and real time stories captured the imagination of a mass audience in a way that many of their peers did not. Before Band Aid Bob, Live Aid Bob and Global Treasure Bob, there was, and always will be, Bobby Boomtown. As the leader of The Rats, Bob Geldof led his band of Dublin post-punkers right to the very top of the UK charts. THE FIRST 50 YEARS: SONGS OF BOOMTOWN GLORY is a 24 track 2LP, and 27-track 2CD that celebrates the highlights of the group’s storied career.

2025 marks their fiftieth anniversary – Geldof, Pete Briquette and Simon Crowe, and for a long while with Garry Roberts, Johnnie Fingers and Gerry Cott – were one of the most inventive, snarling rock’n’roll bands to emerge during punk. Known for about five minutes as The Nightlife Thugs, they took their name from Woody Guthrie's novel Bound for Glory and played their first concert on 31October 1975 at Bolton Street Campus in Dublin.

Signing to Ensign Records, their brand of high-octane power pop chimed with the punk movement, and in Geldof, they had the ultimate frontman – all mouth AND trousers, backed up with a fierce intellect. By November 1978, the group became the first ‘new wave’ group to reach the UK No 1 spot, with their fifth single, Rat Trap. As Geldof stood on Top Of The Pops and tore up a picture of John Travolta (who’d just topped the UK charts for seven weeks with Olivia Newton John), it felt like an act of pure rock’n’roll defiance, thus announcing the “Death of Disco”. They followed this No 1 with another: the icy grandeur of the chilling, anthemic, I Don’t Like Mondays. In all, the group enjoyed 12 UK Top 40 singles (including these two No 1s) and eight Top 50 albums.

Post Live Aid, the band laid low in 1986 regrouping as a four-piece when the time seemed right for a revivified Rat attack with a series of bravura festival appearances. The group heralded this with a track called The Boomtown Rats!, an extraordinary slice of growing old disgracefully that Geldof called EDP (Electronic Dance Punk). In 2020, the group released Citizens Of Boomtown, their first album of new material since 1984. Critically lauded, it was accompanied by a documentary of the same name which laid their legend bare. This legend? Perhaps it is Geldof’s angular aggression and innate showmanship; or the other Rats all playing as if their lives depended on it, rising and falling behind him like a seething mass of sewer dwellers suggested by the band’s title. All that is true, and indeed irresistible, but all that would have still meant nothing without their incredible melodies and well-chosen words.

In its gatefold sleeve, THE FIRST 50 YEARS: SONGS OF BOOMTOWN GLORY is a one-stop shop of these words and melodies. It is the very best of the Boomtown Rats – all tracks are selected by the band themselves – from their first single Lookin’ After No 1 to their most recent, 2023’s There’s No Tomorrow Like Today. Released to coincide with their 50th anniversary tour, THE FIRST 50 YEARS: SONGS OF BOOMTOWN GLORY is a fabulous celebration of one of the most singular, unmistakeable groups ever, who, as Geldof announces on a regular basis are “the greatest rock’nroll band in the world… from Dún Laoghaire!”

Tracklist:

Side One

1. Lookin’ After No. 1
2. K.I.S.S.
3. Me And Howard Hughes
4. Here’s A Postcard
5. Dave
6. Drag Me Down 

Side Two

1. Rat Trap
2. Someone’s Looking At You
3. Banana Republic
4. Diamond Smiles
5. When The Night Comes
6. Mary Of The Fourth Form 

Side Three

1. There’s No Tomorrow Like Today
2 The Elephant’s Graveyard
3. She’s So Modern
4. (I Never Loved) Eva Braun
5. Trash Glam Baby
6. The Boomtown Rats 

Side Four

1. Like Clockwork
2. Neon Heart
3. Up All Night
4. Monster Monkeys
5. I Don’t Like Mondays
6. Joey’s On The Street Again