“I Don’t Like Mondays” (The Boomtown Rats)

We’re starting off a themed week of songs named after days of the week. This being Monday, your song named after a day of the week song of the day is “I Don’t Like Mondays” by the Boomtown Rats. This one was released in 1979 (July in the UK and October in the U.S.) and, while it only rose to #73 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, it hit #1 on the UK Singles chart. It’s a powerful song.

In case you haven’t heard it, the song is about a mass shooting at the Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego. On January 20, 1979, a 16-year-old problem student named Brenda Spencer, who lived across the street from the school, used a Ruger semi-automatic rifle to fire out her window at the school across the street. She killed the school’s custodian and its principal and wounded eight children and a police officer. The toll would have been higher but astute police officers moved a garbage truck into the street between Spencer’s house and the school, obstructing her line of fire. When asked by a reporter via phone during the rampage why she did it, Spencer answered, “I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.”

Young Miss Spencer was apprehended, tried, and sentenced to life in prison (with possible parole after 25 years, although that hasn’t happened yet). The dead were subsequently buried.

Bob Geldof, leader of the British band the Boomtown Rats, was giving an interview at the campus radio station at Georgia State University when reports of the shooting came across the newsroom’s telex machine. Geldof saw Miss Spencer’s quote and a song was born. (Although Geldof later was forced to share writing credit with fellow Ratster Johnnie Fingers, who was also in on the interview that day.)

Geldof didn’t intend “I Don’t Like Mondays” to be a single, thinking it might be a good B-side, but was convinced otherwise by the strong reception the song got when the band played it live. So the group released the song as the lead single from their 1979 album, The Fine Art of Surfacing, and the rest you know.

Since that school shooting almost 45 years ago there have been 607 additional incidents in the United States:

• 2 more in 1979
• 62 in the 1980s
• 97 in the 1990s (including the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado that killed 15 people)
• 78 in the 2000s (including the 2005 shooting at Red Lake High School in Minnesota that killed 10 and the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech that killed 33)
• 251 in the 2010s (including the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut that killed 27, the 2015 shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon that killed 10, the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida that killed 17, and the later 2018 shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas that killed 10)
• 117 so far in the 2020s (including the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas that killed 22)

Despite all this pointless carnage directed at young people, our politicians steadfastly refuse to enact any gun control laws whatsoever. If anything, right-wing politicians, gun lovers, gun manufacturers, and stooges of the NRA have continued to argue for looser gun regulation, with some seemingly wanting to arm every single citizen in the country. To people outside the United States, our country resembles the Wild West of 150 years ago where everybody carried a gun and all disputes were settled with bullets. That’s not an unfair observation.

“I Don’t Like Mondays” should have been a powerful diatribe against gun violence but, hey, it’s America. Others have joined the fight, using this song as an anthem. My favorite cover of “I Don’t Like Mondays” comes from Tori Amos, who released a haunting version on her 2001 album, Strange Little Girls. If you haven’t heard it, you should give it a listen.

Until this country comes to its collective senses, if it ever does, we are forced to tolerate a culture that apparently accepts gun violence in our schools as a way of life. Our children and grandchildren have to endure active shooter drills in school and worry if the next incident will involve them, and for what reason? It shouldn’t be that way. I don’t like Mondays either, but I shouldn’t be able to get a semi-automatic or assault weapon and take out my frustration on a much of kids. It’s just not right.