Virgin Review
Best of The Boomtown Rats

The Boomtown Rats Compilation album The Best Of, was first released in October 2003 on Eagle Records with a re-release with new artwork on Universal Records in April 2004 and again in February 2005 with yet another new cover. The tracks were chosen by the visitors to this website, and Boomtownrats.co.uk and the Japanese site Banana Republic. Bob and Pete were keen that the fans had a say in the listing. The amount of votes cast was quite staggering, and it took many hours to compile the final list for Bob and Pete to chose from. Originally, Hold On Me from In The Long Grass was also included, but at the production and mixing stage, one track had to go. So if that was your favourite track, Apologies.

Released to coincide with the re-issue of all six of the Rats' albums - all remastered and with previously unavailable bonus tracks - this Best Of package is a timely reminder of what a great band this six piece from the wrong side of Dublin actually were.

Bursting onto a London music scene dominated by punk acts in the late 1970s, the Rats had the attitude and the look to fit in alright, but they differed from their safety pin-bedecked colleagues in one vital respect; they had great songs. Tunes such as Joey's On The Street Again and the band's first UK number one Rat Trap are plaintive, almost Springsteen-esque cries from the heart about the plight of working class youth, while I Don't Like Mondays, the Rats' second chart topping single inspired by the story of a US schoolgirl shooting dead several of her classmates simply to brighten up the first day of the week, showed frontman Bob Geldof's observational skills were not restricted to detailing life on the housing estates of north Dublin.

It's ironic too that the Rats' first hit, Looking After No. 1, naturally featured here, was to be the last song the band ever played live, in Dublin, 1986; a song about pure self-interest, sung by the man then - as now - admired around the world for launching the most famous charity project ever seen.