This week in 1979
1 I Don’t Like Mondays The Boomtown Rats
2 Can’t Stand Losing You The Police
3 Wanted The Dooleys
4 Girls Talk Dave Edmunds
5 Angeleyes/Voulez Vous Abba
6 Silly Games Janet Kay
7 Are ‘Friends’ Electric? Tubeway Army
8 My Sharona The Knack
9 Breakfast In America Supertramp
10 Beat The Clock Sparks
Long before the internet, news arrived on rolling printouts from teleprinters. Bob Geldof wrote one of the Boomtown Rats’ bestknown songs after reading a breaking news report emerging from one such machine while waiting to do a radio interview at Georgia State University’s campus station, WRAS. The subject matter – a shooting spree by 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer, killing two adults and injuring eight children in a school playground in San Diego – was the inspiration for ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ which provided the Boomtown Rats with their second UK number one (after ‘Rat Trap’). The single, which also reached number one in Ireland and Australia, did not do well in the US where it peaked at number 73, possibly because radio stations were reluctant to play the song after the Spencer family tried (unsuccessfully) to prevent its release. ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ won the Best Pop Song and Outstanding British Lyric categories at the Ivor Novello Awards.