Nice N Neat

Somewhere past the piano anthem that made the Boomtown Rats famous on both sides of the Atlantic, side two of The Fine Art of Surfacing still had a little dirt under its fingernails. “Nice N Neat” is the cut that proves it. Two minutes and fifty seconds, written by Bob Geldof, produced by Robert John “Mutt” Lange, and tucked in as the fourth song on side B of the band’s third album, it never went out as a single and never needed to. It is the closest thing on that 1979 record to the Rats’ original punk snarl, only the snarl has been given a haircut, a press, and a drummer who refuses to sit still. Classic rock radio has always had room for the deep cut that sounds like the room was still smoking when the red light came on. This is that cut.

The Fine Art of Surfacing arrived in October 1979, on Mulligan in Ireland, Ensign in Britain, and Columbia in the States, after sessions at Phonogram Studios in Hilversum, Holland, running from late 1978 into early 1979. Phil Wainman shared the production credit on the album; Lange, already the man who could make a hook sound like it was carved out of chrome, took “Nice N Neat.” The lineup that walked into that Dutch room was the original six: Geldof on lead vocals and the occasional saxophone, Garry Roberts and Gerry Cott on guitars, Johnnie Fingers on keyboards, Pete Briquette on bass, and Simon Crowe on drums. The album climbed to number seven on the UK chart. “I Don’t Like Mondays,” co-written with Fingers, had already gone to number one. “Diamond Smiles” and “Someone’s Looking at You” followed it onto the singles chart. “Nice N Neat” stayed on the album, which is exactly where a song this sharp belongs.

Listen to what Crowe does with it. Fans who have lived with the record for decades still single out the drumming: a brief solo section, a push that never turns into a show-off, and a pocket tight enough that the two guitars can trade jabs without stepping on each other. Cott and Roberts blend rhythm and lead the way they did when the Rats were still a Dun Laoghaire pub-rock outfit learning how loud they could get. Lange keeps the vocal up front and the edges clean, but he does not sand the song down into the pop of “Keep It Up,” the track that sits just before it. If “I Don’t Like Mondays” is the widescreen sermon, “Nice N Neat” is the argument in the hallway afterward.

The lyric is Geldof in full caustic mode, aimed at religion and the men who sell it. A figure rants through tunnel vision about life beyond the grave and his slice of the eternal cake. The answer comes back like a shrug with a knife in it: God’s in His heaven and He’s on the take. The chorus is pure Rats wordplay, call-and-response and a little mean: that’s nice, that’s neat, it’s bittersweet, is it trick and treat, you’re talking fast but you’re preaching feast. Then the collar comes out. A clerical collar chokes at old convictions. Heaven’s army, and you’re so professional. Somewhere in the bridge he turns to a name, Ray, and asks if it seems holy, if it seems hard, if it was ever that easy. The verses remember hot and holy conversations from a long time back, problems of the drunken world solved over drinks, a belief you could still shake a fist at. By the end the singer has spoken to God, or thinks he has, and the answer is everybody does what they want to, provided that it’s true. The problem, of course, is not being sure what’s true. uDiscoverMusic later called the wordplay on this religion-related track some of Geldof’s sharpest on the album. Classic Rock Review heard the punk roots under the polish. Both readings hold.

That bite makes more sense once you know where the band came from. The Boomtown Rats formed in 1975 in Dún Laoghaire, County Dublin, five locals plus Briquette, Fingers’s cousin on bass. They took the name from a gang in Woody Guthrie’s Bound for Glory, which tells you Geldof was already reading past the singles chart. A deal with Ensign followed in 1977, then a self-titled debut, then A Tonic for the Troops in 1978. “Rat Trap” became the first UK number one by an Irish band, knocking Summer off the top and announcing that new wave could carry a story as well as a sneer. By the time they reached Hilversum they had toured the United States hard, soaking up American radio, American manners, and the strange business of breaking a foreign band into that market. The Fine Art of Surfacing is the notebook from that trip: serious on the schoolyard tragedy that inspired “I Don’t Like Mondays,” mocking on “Nothing Happened Today” and “Having My Picture Taken,” and, on “Nice N Neat,” fed up with anyone packaging certainty for a living.

The original vinyl had its own little theater. Side one ran out on a hidden groove with a line about not laughing. Side two closed, after “When the Night Comes,” with a warped voice announcing that episode three was over and they would return. “Nice N Neat” sits just before that closer, the short sharp shock before the widescreen fade. A 2005 reissue, remastered by Geldof and Briquette, put the hidden bits on the disc as proper tracks and added B-sides. The song itself stayed two-fifty and change, credited to Geldof, produced by Lange, still not a single, still the one that makes a room lean in.

The Rats split in 1986. Geldof’s name went around the world for Band Aid and Live Aid, work that eventually overshadowed the band in the public memory, which is a shame if you care about the records. They reformed in 2013 without Fingers or Cott. Garry Roberts died in 2022. Citizens of Boomtown, their first album of new songs in more than thirty years, arrived in 2020. A fiftieth-anniversary run in 2025 put them back on British stages, Geldof, Briquette, and Crowe still out front. The catalog never went away. “Nice N Neat” never became the song the casual listener quotes, and that is part of its charm. It is the track the people who bought the album on purpose still flip to when they want the Rats with their guard down and their guitars up.

Put it on after “Keep It Up” and before “When the Night Comes,” the way the 1979 sleeve intended, and you hear a band that had already scored a worldwide hit and still felt like arguing. The drums crack. The guitars answer. Geldof sells the joke and the jab in the same breath. That’s nice. That’s neat. It is neither, which is the whole point. For more of the deep cuts, the Dublin stories, and the album-rock long game, stay with THE ZOO. The band’s own door is at theboomtownratsofficial.com, with the official pages on Facebook, Instagram, and X. The long-running fan board lives at boomtownrats.activeboard.com. Spin the record. Flip to side two. Let the collar choke.