I regularly get songs stuck in my head and they stay there for weeks. I came across this song when I heard the Tori Amos cover on last.fm . I constantly keep music going while I am programming and I heard this several times before I really HEARD it.
This song has a very interesting story. It is about a girl named Brenda Ann Spencer who went on a shooting spree in an elementary school playground across the street from her home in California. Brenda was 16 in 1979 when the shootings occurred.
She killed the principal and custodian of the school and wounded 8 children and a police officer. When asked to explain her actions she replied, “I don’t like Monday’s. This livens up the day.” She is currently serving a 25 year to life sentence and is eligible for parole in 2009.
The song was written by Bob Geldof and recorded by the Boomtown Rats.
Having the attention span of a caffeinated humming bird leads me to ask the important questions at the most unimportant times. So while taking a break from my highly rewarding day job, I wondered why does stuff “sell like gangbusters”?
Gang Busters was an immensely popular radio series based on the cases of the FBI. The show aired between 1936 and 1957 and also inspired a serial from Universal Pictures and later a TV show. The radio show’s opening contained loud police whistles, gun fire, and sirens.
From that vigorous intro the term “coming on like Gang Busters” was termed. It is not until the 1970’s that the term gangbusters starts to be used as a term of success, like in the phrase “go gangbusters”. So, we finally end up with the term being used today to describe an item with vigorous sales. (Don’t worry I am only going to use the word vigor one more time.)
So remember anything that is done in Gang Busters’ style has to be done with vigor (No, I really have no idea where my thesaurus is.) and zeal. Knowing is half the battle.