I’ve always loved this song, ever since I first heard it at John Knechtel’s place in Edmonton lo those many years ago.

It was newly released back then, I suspect, although I had no sense of music or the music industry at that time.

I was seven and living in Edmonton. I knew hockey and hockey and crappy Saturday morning cartoons (we didn’t have cable) and hockey. I didn’t know music beyond the Boney M cassette tapes that dad brought home as gifts from one of his business trips.

So although I had no idea of the significance of “I Don’t Like Mondays,” I loved the song, even then, and I remember wanting to hear more music like it. There is a sadness, an anxiety, an earnestness to “I Don’t Like Mondays,” and the juxtaposition of the depressing lyric, the upbeat rhythm, and the minor-key melody is a musical quality that appeals to me even now.

Back then, though, I was completely incapable of finding anything else like it. It would be years before I’d discover The Birthday Party, the Pixies, and the Afghan Whigs, and that didn’t happen until later on in life, when I learned music – really learned it – and figured out how to source it (made easier, of course, thanks to the interweb). That’s also when I became somewhat fascinated by this Bob Geldof character who, with his band the Boomtown Rats, had created this song I was so fond of, but who never really seemed to get recognized for it.

But I had never really listened to the opening of the song until Hugh Laurie, as Dr Gregory House, played it on the FOX show last night, in the “Half-Wit” episode.

The opening of the song is a thunderous cascade of notes, from the higher octave to the lower, and is accomplished by literally running the hands down the keys. So the song starts with this cacophony, which shifts into a few chords that are played with force (I forget my piano lessons; what’s the term for this? allegrio?).

Suddenly, the song breaks away from the complexity and becomes simple, and almost quiet, clear, single notes one after another, leading in to the opening line of the lyric:

The silicon chip inside her head
gets switched to overload.
And nobody’s going to go to school today
she’s going to make them stay at home.

I think the device, a ranging piano as part of a rock ‘n’ roll pop song, was quite common in the seventies. It was certainly used by Queen and Kiss, and probably Led Zeppelin. But it was the early punk/new wave sound from the Rats that has stuck with me, and I was quite pleased that “I Don’t Like Mondays” was the song that the writers decided the House character should play in last night’s episode.

The opening ovation echoed through my dreams all night, and accompanied the alarm early this morning, and is with me still.