THE BOOMTOWN RATS // YORK BARBICAN

THE BOOMTOWN RATS - “A LOT OF ROCKING GOING ON THAT NIGHT…”

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5)

The Boomtown Rats @ York Barbican

Photocredit: John Hayhurst

The Boomtown Rats begin their 50th-anniversary show with the swagger of a band who know exactly how much history they’re carrying — and how little interest they have in treating it gently. After a brisk, cheeky “fillum” sets the scene, ‘Rat Trap’ bursts out like it’s been sharpened overnight, and York Barbican is instantly on its feet.

Bob Geldof, all wiry limbs and scruffy charisma, is immediately everywhere at once: shaking a tambourine like it’s misbehaved, blasting harmonica solos with ragged gusto, falling to his knees mid-verse, and barely taking a breath between songs. It’s a workout masquerading as a gig, and he charges through it like he’s been dared to stop.

And he’s not doing it alone. The remaining original Rats — Simon Crowe still battering the drums with fierce precision, and Pete Briquette laying down basslines with unfazed veteran cool — make the whole thing feel like a proper gang reunion, not a commemorative showcase. Together with Alan Dunn (Keys), Darren Beale (Guitar, Keys) and Paul Cuddeford (Guitar) their chemistry is loud, tight, and defiantly alive.

The set is structured like a guided tour through the Rats’ evolution, though delivered with none of the reverence that phrase usually implies. Geldof shifts gears constantly — the twitchy post-punk preacher one moment, a loose-hipped Jagger-like showman the next, then drifting into cosmic, Floyd-tinged theatre as if the stage has started floating. It’s instinctual rather than choreographed, and it keeps the crowd guessing in the best way.

Early doors, the band throws a bone to the lifers: razor-edged early-album cuts ‘Neon Heart’ and the ferociously bluesy ‘(She’s Gonna) Do You In’. You can practically hear the tartan trousers rustling as the old punks emerge from the shadows, the songs sounding as bratty and urgent as they did in pubs and bedrooms half a century ago. It’s a reminder that before the headlines and cultural baggage, the Rats were a band built for speed and noise.

New stuff like ‘Monster Monkeys’ from ‘Citizens of Boomtown’ sit alongside ‘Someone’s Looking at You’ and ‘Like Clockwork’.

Then comes the moment that threads old-era Rats with the world outside the Barbican. As ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ approaches, Geldof doesn’t introduce it; instead he prowls in slow, deliberate circles on stage, stretching out the anticipation. When the band finally kicks in and he reaches that line “and the message today is how to die..”, he lifts his arm high, echoing that unmistakable Live Aid silhouette. York erupts in cheers, a flash of recognition rather than reverence. Only after the moment rolls through the room does he speak, explaining how the lyric has warped over the years, how little has shifted when people are still dying in Ukraine, Gaza and elsewhere. It’s the only time all night he lets politics into the frame — a quick incision, not a pivot. This show is a celebration, not a manifesto.

The band then goes full tilt on audience participation with a chorus of “It’s You and Me Against The Whole FXXking World” followed by a proper punk rendition of ‘She’s So Modern’.

Gliding into a reggae reworking of ‘Banana Republic’, loose and sly, Geldof remaining in perpetual motion — tambourine flailing, harmonica howling, dropping to his knees again and again as if the stage keeps pulling him down and his ego keeps dragging him back up.

The hit closer was ‘Diamond Smiles’, all macabre shimmer and theatrical bite. Any other band would vanish for the ritual encore tease, but Geldof has no patience for that, instead the band tears into ‘The Boomtown Rats’ from Citizens of Boomtown. It’s loud, sharp, cheeky as hell — the perfect final punch.

Fifty years in, The Boomtown Rats aren’t polishing their legacy — they’re rattling it until the screws fall out. The Rats remain, gloriously, a band that refuses to behave, and as Geldof snarled at the very start of the evening, and as the Barbican proved true, “There was a lot of rocking going on that night...”

Words and Photos - John Hayhurst