“Weekend” / “Cool” (Safari Records SAFE 31) October 1980

The Boys | “Weekend” | (Safari) 1980 | Kicking off my new feature ‘Transistor Pop’ on ‘The Monocled Alchemist’ are The Boys with their fabulous power pop gem from the back end of 1980.

“Weekend” is one of those anthemic coming-of-age teenarama’s when the whole of the weekend revolves around going out and having a good time with your mates.

I don’t know how or why The Boys never became as popular as other bands of their ilk back in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Not a lot of action in the music press at the time probably didn’t help matters to raise their profile.

The Boys | “Weekend” | (Safari) 1980

The often smug Mark Ellen at least mentioned them in his review column of Smash Hits.

The Boys revive some pretty mainstream pop cliches; girls, romance, telephone calls, money and things going wrong. They mine the same seam as Joe Jackson but sound about twenty years behind. (Smash Hits, October 1980)

Chart action: None