Tuesday, September 15, 2015

#92: What reason can there be?

January 29th, 1979, San Diego California: Sixteen-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer walked onto the playground of Grover Cleveland Elementary School with a gun and opened fire. She killed two adults and injured eight schoolchildren and a police officer.

When the media report came jittering out of the telex machine at WRAS, the campus radio station of Georgia State University, it was read by the Irish musician who’d been sitting next to the machine, preparing for a radio interview.

When journalists demanded of the killer: “Tell me why,” she would only respond: “I don’t like Mondays. It livened up the day.”

How could there be a reason for something so senseless? the musician thought. His imagination supplied the answer: Because a silicon chip inside her head got switched to overload.  

#92
By Bob Geldof (The Boomtown Rats)
1979, Ireland

I always sensed something haunting behind these strange lyrics and never understood their origin until today.

Peak: #1, UK

Geldof reflects on the song and its consequences:

2 comments:

IntrepidReader said...

I remember when that happened. It was awful. And then that song came out and it was about that whole thing. So senseless.

Fantasy Writer Guy said...

I had just turned 10 when that happened and never heard about it that I remember. I never heard about it until the other day when I googled the song.