The nice thing about being tremendously popular is that it gives you the chance to take risks that, for non-celebrities, would not be "risky" but "career-aborting". REVOLVER and SGT PEPPER had to be recorded by the most successful group the world had yet seen, because they could afford to lose some fans by the wayside and still outsell almost everyone else.

They did lose fans (the Beatles' most adventurous singles were the ones that broke their streak of #1 singles), and they did change the world. The Beach Boys ended up making a lot of money off PET SOUNDS, but at first it and the abandoned weirdness of SMILEY SMILE were money-losing disasters, and only because they were the Beach Boys could they relegate that to "at first". Jethro Tull became kings of FM radio, and used the opportunity to author two of progressive rock's weirdest concept albums; they never fully recovered their mass audience. U2 stayed successful in following THE JOSHUA TREE with the Eurosynth and processor oddities of ACHTUNG BABY, but only after they admitted the failure of "Zoo Station" and "the Fly" as commercial singles and instead made videos for the easily hummable "One" and "Mysterious Ways". ZOOROPA and POP, even weirder and with fewer obvious tunes, dropped U2's sales by 90%. R.E.M.'s steadily denser sound over MONSTER, NEW ADVENTURES, and UP has lost more like 80% of their audience - but then, U2 and R.E.M. still outsell most bands. That they take the risks of changing their sound in difficult ways is admirable; that some of their audience stays with them is a sign that the effort is worthwhile, and I hope none of the artists regret their decisions. But their record companies, well, probably regret bigtime.

Rarely has career suicide been so pure as on the Boomtown Rats' fourth album, MONDO BONGO. They were the world's bestselling band, as long as the United States (half the world market at that time) didn't count, and "I Don't Like Mondays" was evidence of their potential to break America. But world success meant world touring, and world touring, where Bob Geldof was concerned, mean the chance to see and hear far more provocative things than the hotel bars. He came back broadened. Uh-oh.

Simon Crowe's drumming is the first sign of something different, using Hispanic percussion to drive the opening track, "Mood Mambo". The song itself shows up as affected by a different sort of broadening, as the Rats decided to ditch producer Mutt Lange, a control freak, for David Bowie's frequent producer Tony Visconti, and discovered themselves able to drink, play video games, and sunbathe while their bandmates worked on parts. "Mood…", the most blatant result of this new attitude, was recorded when Geldof rapped improvisational lyrics with drummer and bassist told to "play whatever you feel like"; ten minutes were edited to three and a half, a chorus was dropped in, and the result is giddy horns and percussion over chatter about snakes "crawling down thick, black, Latin American stairs". I think it's pretty compelling, actually, Geldof's hamminess selling the whispered riduculous "secret of this place", Fingers's sound effects punctuating a dazed formal cited address of an "International Dance Band Competition", and the "mambo crazy!"'s catchiness topped when a throwaway backup cry of "yes we do!" is countered on the sport with "no we don't". It also sounds absolutely nothing like Foreigner, or new wave, or anything the charts had time for. It was chosen as MONDO's first single.

Second single "Banana Republic" was a #5 hit in Britian and #1 in Germany, a last shot at glory; it's a skeletal reggae attack on Ireland as a nation of brilliant writers and tavern philosophisers who never do anything, unlike the violent religious thugs: "so the purple and the pinstriped mutely shake their heads/ a silence shrieking volumes, violence worse than they condemn/…/ heroes going cheap these days/ price: a bullet in the head". "The Elephant's Graveyard", the third single, put a catchy tune and more commentary behind explosive percussion, inventing a new cliché in "justice isn't blind/ it just looks the other way". "Up All Night" ponders, half-awake, the similarities between Africa and ghetto NYC, and got danceclub American play with its understated bass/snare beat and nuersery-school synth squiggles.
However, there probably just wasn't a market for "This Is My Room", the most grandiose song here, thunderously announcing a three-year-old's satisfaction at a major life step. "Another Piece Of Red" followed the piano-song thread "Mondays" established, but too quietly perhaps, and its reflections of the loss of Rhodesia and the British Empire weren't built for permanence (sure, I agree with "I was reading in New Zealand about Ian Smith/ I was thinking they were lucky to be rid of that shit", but I'll understand if you've forgotten your opinion). "Go Man Go" is catchy and I like Geldof's cartoon-Japanese accent, but Tokyo environmentalism, again, rates behind love songs and isolation songs on the pop lineup. "Under Their Thumb"'s reverbed rewrite of a Rolling Stones hit; "Please Don't Go"'s typewriter percussion and scatted vocal break ("a blee bop bleeda gidda didda da duu"); "Don't Talk To Me"'s Buddy Holly impression; and "Hurt Hurts"'s humungous layering of sound are other odd detours. There's even a folky unlisted 13th song which itself pauses to let the listener speak up.

MONDO BONGO was fun to record. MONDO BONGO is even more fun, say I, to practice drums to. The tunes take second stage sometimes, but not always, so parts are fun to sing to. Rarely if ever has a record combined heavy, originally expressed thoughts and musical experimentation with such an obvious good-time atmosphere. So it stiffed… well, nothing this enjoyable, this worth looking back at with pride, is ever really a failure. Artists choose their goals, and choose the criteria by which they decide if they've succeeded. The audience gets only a straw poll.