Sunday Music – Boom Like That

Posted on Sun 11/27/2016 by TonyfromOz

Today’s music video is Boom Like That, and it is being sung here by the writer of the song, Mark Knopfler.

This video was posted to You Tube by B0zz3

A series of things are behind this song I have selected for today, and it’s a curious thing how one thing triggers a series of other things.

I read during the week that a new movie is to be released in December called The Founder. The film is based around the real life story of Ray Kroc, and how he set up what is now The McDonald’s Corporation, makers of those ubiquitous hamburgers.

I already knew the story of Ray Kroc, and at the same time, I immediately thought of this song, Boom Like That, from Mark Knopfler, and the lyrics of that song are also based on the story of Ray Kroc.

I first became aware of Ray Kroc from a book I received for my birthday in the late 1970s. I was reading a lot in those days, and reading was one of my guilty pleasures. I was in the Royal Australian Air Force, and even though I was still in my early and mid twenties, I was actually reading quite a lot of novels. Like all young men, in my late teens, I started off with the occasional novel by Harold Robbins, as did most young men at that time in the late 60s. I suppose I would have read around six or seven of his novels, and they were basically structured the same way, so even though each novel was different, the basic plots were similar, so they had a sameness about them, even though they were each enjoyable to read. While most of my circle of friends would occasionally read a novel, huh, and usually one of those borrowed from me, I was the only one who would read novels on a regular basis. Early on the 1970s when I was just gone twenty, I decided to branch out and try novels from other authors. I moved on to John O’Hara, and so as to not get locked into one author at a time, I also read novels from Calder Willingham, and also from Irving Wallace. I would have read half a dozen or so from each of those first two authors, but the novels of Irving Wallace maintained my interest, and over the years I would have read ten or even more of his novels, and I liked nearly all of them.

I suppose really, that all three of those authors ‘may’ be classified as being similar in nature to Harold Robbins, but they always seemed a little better than the Robbins formula, especially those of Irving Wallace.

My mother noticed that whenever I was home on leave, I always seemed to be reading a new novel from Irving Wallace, and I suppose it just happened like that, that I was home on leave at around the time I actually was reading a new novel from that author.

Anyway, for a birthday present, my Mother got me this huge and heavy hard cover book, not actually a ‘novel’ but almost a mini encyclopedia. It had the name Irving Wallace on the cover, but the book was mainly written by his son, David Wallechinsky.

It wasn’t something you started to read in the manner of a novel, from front cover to back, as this book was titled The People’s Almanac, and it was basically just a book of lists, a series of facts, around 1,000 pages plus of them. I would read the book on the basis of mainly referring to the chapter heading or the index at the back of the book. It also had a lot of images as well. I liked that book for the one thing it did give me. In that book, they had a short summary of perhaps ten of the U.S. Presidents, and the featured President who had far and away the longest entry, perhaps a dozen or so pages was Theodore Roosevelt. I read that entry avidly, and was amazed about his life in the main, and then his time as President. From the reading of that, I then chased up more information on the man, and to this day, from the ‘germ’ provided by that initial chapter in that book, Theodore Roosevelt is my favourite U.S. President, and I like to say that after he finished in that job, they threw away the mould.

Also in that book, they had another section on food, and in that section was a long chapter of text on the history behind McDonald’s, the hamburger giant. The story of how Ray Kroc eventually persuaded those two McDonald brothers to franchise their small take away burger house was intriguing and just so interesting, considering that Ray Kroc was just a milkshake mixer salesman.

Now, while McDonald’s was already huge in the U.S. that Company had only been in Australia for a short time, The first McDonald’s restaurant only opened in 1971, so they had only been operating in Australia for only six or seven years, and perhaps very few Australians knew of their existence.

That history of McDonald’s stayed with me, and then in 2004, I heard this wonderful song from Mark Knopfler, today’s featured video clip, the song Boom Like That, where the lyrics also tell the story of Ray Kroc. I had been a long time fan of Mark Knopfler, right from the start of his huge career with his band Dire Straits. He is a wonderful guitarist, when sometimes guitar music can seem like just so much noise. There was actual melody to his work with the guitar. When questioned about the song, Knopfler said that the inspiration came from the autobiography of Ray Kroc, which he read during some down time following a motor bike crash, where he broke some bones and spent a lot of time recovering, convalescing, and in physiotherapy.

As usual, he makes the guitar playing look so casual, while in actuality, it is fairly intricate, but his playing is again the main feature of his songs, and the lyrics are almost incidental, and in the lyrics themselves, Knopfler actually uses some of the same phrases that Kroc used himself.

This song was lifted from the album Shangri-La, released in 2004, and the album was generally well received.

Then, just in this last week, I heard of the release of this new movie, The Founder, based on the life of Ray Kroc, and how he came to be the driving force behind what is the vastly huge McDonald’s Corporation.

These three things came together, so I just went looking for the video clip, which shows Knopfler and his band in the studio recording the song.