In the Long Grass - the final bow

Mark L · Loudmouth

In the Long Grass - the final bow

Mike menzies · V Deep

Like I always said about this brilliant album it somehow got overlooked but I know pure genius when I hear it. And this lp is just that if it had been 3 years earlier would have been huge

diffbrook · House on Fire

I remember popping into a second hand record shop in mid 1984 and I heard what I guessed was the Rats. The shop owner was playing a tape of In The Long Grass well before it was released. He said he was no Rats fan, but he said it was some of the best songs he had heard that year. Obviously I bought it.

It just goes to show that, that when the game is up not even a fantastic set of songs can save a career.

Mark L · Loudmouth

I had a friend at school who was very much into the Rats from 78 to 81 but lost interest from Million Years onwards. He would refer to it as that record where he shouts. He came round one day in 85 and I we were chilling out and I put ITLG on. He could not believe the quality of the songs and asked for Drag me Down and Hard Times to be played again. He had heard and seen (and liked) DMD before, but such was the way the school crowd moved on in 81, no amount of publicity for the songs or Geldof could stop the wheel of fashion and cool moving on.

Mike menzies · V Deep

Likewise mark I had a friend who would not listen to v deep onwards as not cool. He then asked me about Dave single as he heard it in late 84. And he was surprised it was the rats and when it flopped never bothered again (unlike me anorak that Iam )

Derek The Dane · V Deep

I remember cleaning at Brent Cross every saturday when I was a kid and working with a mad Rats fan.This girl was a mad mad Rats fan and thats was all we ever talked about.I remember meeting her a couple of years later with a copy of V Deep and all she said was "I`m a Madness fan now".I was gob smacked at a "die hard" fan could suddenly turn.I could never understand(as a kid) that the Rats could go from being massive to nothing in such a short time.
As for ITLG I love it.I play it more than FAOS and my mrs digs Drag Me Down.Never understood why it flopped as it did.

Mark L · Loudmouth

I thought the decline ought to have been gentler whereas in reality it was pretty much a crash landing. Friends at school went from near universal worship to almost total hatred in about 12 to 18 months. The complete absence of anything in 1983, not even a greatest hits to keep the plates spinning, meant many thought the group had given up and gone home and cemented the disinterest that had built up from mid-81 onwards.

Mike menzies · V Deep

I was lucky enough to buy the1983 ratrospective lp which kept me going. For a bit ( from Adrian's lp store who used to do a lot of imports also got about 5 jap singles (mondays diamond etc) so although not new stuff it still kept my interest in the band (oh and also got rat trap us 12inch single ) great times

Harry Hooper · Mary of the 4th Form

Mark L wrote:
I thought the decline ought to have been gentler whereas in reality it was pretty much a crash landing. Friends at school went from near universal worship to almost total hatred in about 12 to 18 months. The complete absence of anything in 1983, not even a greatest hits to keep the plates spinning, meant many thought the group had given up and gone home and cemented the disinterest that had built up from mid-81 onwards.

Brutal assessment but true nonetheless. I know a few people who just couldn't get their heads around Mondo Bongo at the time it was released and thought the band had changed its sound and style too much, it was a pretty dramatic change in direction musically to be fair. BG was already a 'marmite' type of character by then and his rift with the music press was well documented, the print media back then was absolutely ruthless and finished many a career. I knew lots of people in the early 80s who would read Sounds, Melody Maker, NME etc and even Smash Hits first to see which bands and types of music they 'should' be following i.e. who was trendy and who wasn't. Its hard to believe in this day and age where, thanks to social media, everyone can air their opinion and see it in public, back then lots of kids did as they were told. The tabloids even decided who won elections in those days, the pen was indeed mightier than the sword!