I don’t like Mondays anymore than the Boomtown Rats do.
A modern listener may find some of the lyrics in this song disturbing, more so in context with the beady-eyed school children in the video, serving to further tighten collective nerves around school violence. To wit:
The silicon chip inside her head
Gets switched to overload
And nobody’s gonna go to school today
She’s gonna make them stay at home
And daddy doesn’t understand it
He always said she was good as gold
And he can see no reasons
‘Cos there are no reasons
And further into the song:
And all the playing’s stopped in the playground now
She wants to play with the toys a while
And school’s out early and soon we’ll be learning
And the lesson today is how to die
And then the bullhorn crackles
And the captain tackles
(With the problems of the how’s and why’s)
And he can see no reasons
‘Cos there are no reasons
What reason do you need to die, die?
Oh Oh Oh
And yet the song was first released in 1979 — in an age of relative innocence, at least on school playgrounds — by a UK band. I was an impressionable nineteen year old then, fresh out of high school, clueless of my future path, and I remember driving aimlessly through the suburbs of Milwaukee in a thoroughly used car listening to that song blare over two speakers connected to an AM/FM cassette player that together likely cost me more than the car did. Regular gas was south of a buck a gallon. Were some kids victims of bullying at school? Absolutely. Did any fear getting beat up? If you crossed the wrong person(s), yes. Being murdered? Never.
Today, I half expect that song would earn the album it appears on a Parental Advisory sticker, warning of explicit content, not for sex or profanity but rather over the concern the song could ignite the wickedness in an irrational listener, and stir them to commit an unspeakable act of school violence. I am dubious of any role suggestive music or violent video games have in causing modern spasms of murder, and even more dubious that a sticker on the label would do anything to curb said violence, but I never underestimate the need some people feel — “nanny staters” being the worst among them — to do something about it.
Anyhoo, turning to more frivolous matters of dubious interest — we have a house guest for the remainder of this month. Mel cared for Lucy while we were on Maui and she’s decided to accept our invitation to stay with us until her current term at work ends. Unlike the infamous house guests from the lower 48 that invade our state each summer, sporting jejune questions like “Where’s mount McKinley?” or, “How do you sleep when it’s always light out?” or, “Do you have salmon in your bathtub?”, Mel by contrast is a seasoned Alaskan, a real Sourdough, and I must say a pleasure to share dinner, wine, and conversation with at the end of a long workday.
Even Mondays.