Back in my early "content group” days, we were encouraged to produce them in reams. Our goal: Yahoo! carousel promotion. “Ten Slow-Dance Standards for Dental Hygienists.” “Five Pre-Neil Peart Rush Songs Superior to Anything on ‘Presto.’” “Seven Slayer Slashers for Your Grandma’s Wake.” Sometimes we’d purposely leave entries out, so someone in a comment thread could chirp, “What about … ” and spark discussion, resulting in “engagement,” “eyeballs,” whatever.
Yet I must admit they’re fun. Fun to read and, from a research standpoint, a blast to write. Though I always cringe at what I’ve forgotten. In fact, this one’s supposed to have four additional entries for a nice, round 10: Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane,” Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” Don McLean’s “American Pie” and Randy Newman’s “Louisiana 1927.” There are thousands more (Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock”! Camper van Beethoven’s “Tania”!), going back to the topical songs of the early 20th century.
Alas, I ran out of room. It pains this unrepentant bloviator to bypass the SS Fitzgerald, and I apologize for its omission. That deserves a full story of its own.
I hate lists, man.
“I Don’t Like Mondays” by The Boomtown Rats
Despite a quiet demeanor, 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer was well acquainted with the San Diego police. Petty stuff, mostly, as the Patrick Henry High junior recalled. “But it never went to court,” she claimed. “I always got off.”As a child, she’d attended Cleveland Elementary. In her adolescence, she broke one of its windows. The school was a convenient target, as it sat across the street from her house.
But shortly before 9 a.m. Monday, Jan. 29, 1979, Spencer told her father, Wallace, she didn’t feel well and trained her gaze on the campus again, this time from her bedroom window with a semiautomatic .22 rifle.
And for 15 or 20 minutes, she unleashed 15 rounds of gunfire, killing principal Burton Wragg and custodian Mike Suchar as they attempted to protect students. Eight children were hurt, as was responding officer Robert Robb.
Spencer barricaded herself for roughly six hours, communicating with law enforcement and the press by telephone. In an interview with San Diego Tribune reporters, she explained her actions thusly: “I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.” She then cut the conversation short with “I have to go now. I shot a pig, I think, and I want to shoot more.”
That afternoon, she surrendered in her driveway and was taken to the city’s juvenile center. Charges included two counts of murder and 10 counts of assault with intent to commit murder. She was tried as an adult and — a day after her 18th birthday in 1980 — received a life sentence. After a failed parole hearing (her seventh) this past February, Spencer, now 62, remains at the California Institution for Women in Chino.
She remains notorious for both the heinousness of her crime and for a catchy No. 1 U.K. single written that year by Bob Geldof and Johnnie Fingers of The Boomtown Rats. Geldof recalled in late 1979 that as he watched the news zip across a radio station’s telex, he was drawn to the girl’s exchange with reporters. “‘Tell me why’ / ‘I don’t like Mondays’” became the chorus’ thrust. “It was the perfect senseless act,” he explained to Smash Hits, “and this was the perfect senseless reason for doing it.”
Though the song’s now regarded as classic, Geldof has expressed mortification that he contributed to the event’s immortality. “She (Spencer) wrote me and said she was glad she’d done it because I made her famous,” he admitted in 2013, “which is not a good thing to live with.”
“The Great Boston Molasses Flood” by The Dead Milkmen
In retrospect, it’s ludicrous, but this actually happened. Note the startlingly bold headline on the Boston Evening Globe’s front page: “15 killed, 150 injured in North End explosion.” (These were preliminary numbers, reported just hours after the incident.)It began Wednesday, Jan. 15, 1919, during the Purity Distilling Company’s lunch hour. A tank on the property holding 2 million gallons of molasses burst without warning, sending a foreign rumble through neighborhoods and releasing heavy syrup in waves for blocks. It destroyed buildings and homes (often tearing them from the earth), smashed cars and crippled anyone in its path. Twenty-one citizens lost their lives, many of whom were consumed as the molasses thickened, hindering rescue efforts. Some were shoved into Boston Harbor. Plenty went undiscovered for months.
“[F]or a radius of some 200 to 250 feet,” the Globe reported, “there was a scene of great wreckage, while the shouts and the screams of the dying rent the air. For the first quarter of an hour, pandemonium reigned.”
That furor continued as investigators worked to determine responsibility. The United States Industrial Alcohol Company, which had purchased the distillery a year earlier, blamed anarchists. The real answer didn’t come for another six years, when the firm — whose responsible tank split in structural failure — was ordered via class-action lawsuit to shed $628,000 (more than $12.3 million in 2025) to victims’ families. A pungently sweet odor, it’s claimed, haunted the area for decades.
Nearly a century passed before The Dead Milkmen — responsible for “Punk Rock Girl” and “Beach Party Vietnam,” among others — visited the disaster on their 2014 album, “Pretty Music for Pretty People.” Their “Great Boston Molasses Flood,” however, isn’t a straight retelling, as its early 20th century voice — essayed by frontman Rodney Linderman (Rodney Anonymous to you, friend) — namedrops the Dresden Dolls, a duo that wouldn’t exist for another 80 years, and references Puopolo Park, where the tank once stood. “But I haven’t got time to think of that now,” Linderman sings, resigned to his thick fate, “Sweet, sticky death is headed my way.”
“Smoke On The Water” by Deep Purple
This rock ’n’ roll incident’s about as decades-spanning-ly world-famous as it gets, yet only about 2,000 people experienced what happened on Saturday, Dec. 4, 1971. Also, unlike almost every other entry here, the musicians in question lived through it, too.Many assume Deep Purple played that night at the Casino de Montreux in Montreux, Switzerland. No, the members had chosen the venue as a location to record their sixth album, its third with vocalist Ian Gillan. In 1997, bassist Roger Glover recalled the building’s ideal acoustics and, even better, its availability for a month. They just had to wait for Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention to split after a matinee performance so they could unload their equipment and get to work.
All were present at the afternoon show. Zappa’s band neared its set’s completion, chugging through a “King Kong” encore. Keyboardist Don Preston stopped an ascending run suddenly as someone yelled, “Fire!” then appended a music-related joke, “Arthur Brown, in person,” referring to the artist and his 1968 hit of the same title. “Calmly go towards the exits, ladies and gentlemen,” Zappa instructed as everyone abandoned ship.
The ensuing exit, though audibly semi-frantic, went off without a hitch. No injuries or deaths were reported. One would imagine a minimal disaster from the scene’s tenor. However, this was not so. The blaze was massive, swallowing the casino right off the Lake Geneva shoreline. The Mothers lost everything they’d left behind.
Outside, Glover watched the structure die slowly. He continued observing, mesmerized, from his hotel. “As I looked out through the large glass windows … in the dying afternoon light,” he wrote, “I could see a huge pall of black smoke from the doomed building stretching high up and out over the placid blue surface of Lake Geneva.” So, the title wrote itself.
Deep Purple convened later to begin what became 1972’s “Machine Head” at the Pavillon (now the Petit Palais), also in Montreux. During an evening session, then-guitarist Ritchie Blackmore debuted a reverse-Beethoven riff he called “Title No. 1,” inviting his bandmates to jam around him. Their volume proved too much for the surrounding tranquility, forcing everyone to retreat to another local spot, the Hôtel des Alpes-Grand Hôtel, to continue working.
Here, “Smoke on the Water” was truly born, with its mentions of “funky Claude” (assistant casino director/band friend Claude Nobs, who did help concertgoers escape) and “some stupid with a flare gun,” identified later that month as 22-year-old Czech refugee Zdenek Spicka, who allegedly fled the scene after firing his device toward the ceiling. He’s never been apprehended.
(Stripped of music, “Smoke” contains a second Zappa reference: Gillan’s “Break a leg, Frank,” recognizing injuries the frontman suffered at London’s Rainbow six days after the Montreux fire, canceling the remainder of his European tour.)
The lost casino was rebuilt, reopening in 1975. Deep Purple perseveres, too, following infinite lineup changes. (Blackmore’s more than 30 years gone.) And the band still goes down to Montreux to unpack its meatiest groove.
“The last time we were there,” Glover told the Guardian’s Ray Simpson in August, “signs by the lake read, ‘No smoking on the water,’ and four jets released smoke over the water as we played. That felt very emotional, but I never get tired of playing the song. Someone once said it’s like having a button that you press to make the audience go nuts.”
“What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?” by R.E.M.
Who’s Kenneth? Who knows? Newsman Dan Rather doesn’t, though he remembers the incident all too well.He was in Manhattan at the time — Saturday night, Oct. 4, 1986 — walking home from dinner shortly before 11 p.m. At Park Avenue and 88th Street, a man eventually identified as William Tager (two “well-dressed” suspects were originally reported, but nothing is known of the second) approached him and loudly demanded, “Kenneth, what is the frequency?” Rather, of course, gave him the only reply possible, either “You have the wrong guy” or “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” depending on which account you read.
This resulted in a violent pummeling that sent the CBS anchor fleeing into a nearby building. Tager and his apparent accomplice pursued him into the lobby, where they renewed both the attack and question, “Kenneth, what is the frequency?” A doorman and building superintendent, neither named Kenneth, came to the rescue.
The strange event’s motivation was still mysterious when it inspired R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe to write “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?,” the first single from 1994’s “Monster.” He described its central character in a 2021 Mental Floss retrospective as a “guy who’s desperately trying to understand what motivates the younger generation.”
Rather wasn’t one of those types, telling Entertainment Weekly upon the track’s release, “I like it. Tune in to R.E.M., Kenneth.” In good spirits, he performed it with the band on Thursday, June 22, 1995, for a hopelessly discordant Madison Square Garden soundcheck.
With the song’s popularity and the passage of time, the story became something of an urban legend. That is, until The New York Times’ Frank Bruni uncovered more details in 1997, like Tager’s name and his responsibility for the shooting death of NBC stagehand Campbell Theron Montgomery three years earlier. According to Bruni, Tager believed he was receiving messages from news broadcasts, hence his questions about frequencies. He received a 12½- to 25-year sentence for manslaughter and was released in 2010.
Kenneth’s fate and whereabouts remain unknown.
“Boom Boom Mancini” by Warren Zevon
On Saturday, Jan. 18, 1984, Zevon must have been eager to catch his friend, World Boxing Association lightweight champion Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini, as he faced Bobby Chacon for the title that night at the new Lawlor Events Center in Reno. (Zevon likely did not attend the match but watched it live on HBO.)Both fighters had courted controversy. The previous year, the World Boxing Council had snatched Chacon’s junior lightweight belt — which he’d himself taken from Rafael “Bazooka” Limón in December 1982 — when he declined to face rising contender Hector “Macho” Comacho. That body, therefore, did not recognize his brutal 12-round May 1983 decision over Cornelius Boza-Edwards, leaving Chacon with nothing but a win to wrap around his waist. Three months later, Camacho won the suddenly vacant title over, yup, Limón. Meanwhile, Chacon leapt to the lightweight division.
As per Zevon’s song, defending titlist Mancini had met South Korea’s Duk Koo Kim on Saturday, Nov. 13, 1982, at Las Vegas’ Caesars Palace. Horrifically, a 14th-round technical knockout sent the challenger to Desert Springs Hospital, where, following three hours of brain surgery, he became dependent on a respirator. Four days later, Kim died, becoming the fourth boxer killed that year after in-ring activity. Mancini’s brazen “Someone should have stopped the fight and told me it was him” riposte was entirely a Zevon creation. He was, in truth, stricken and contrite, telling an AP reporter, “I’m very saddened, very sorry it had to happen. It hurts bad to know you’re a part of it.”
The Chacon-Mancini bout was scheduled for 15 rounds. Despite immense crowd support, however, Chacon lasted just three — not because he was knocked out, but because referee Richard Steele, who’d monitored the bloody Chacon/Boza-Edwards clash as well, stepped between flurries of wild fists and declared Mancini the winner. Fans doused the venue in loud disapproval, as some had paid $200 for a main event shorter than a “Diff’rent Strokes” episode.
So, Zevon’s “Hurry home early / hurry on home” imploration can be taken two ways: as anticipatory excitement or as warning of a coming fracas that, like life itself, is all too brief.
“Same Old Lang Syne” by Dan Fogelberg
This is my favorite: an event quietly significant to just two people yet universal enough to mean everything.Shortly before the 1975 holidays, singer/songwriter Dan Fogelberg, three albums into his all-too-short career, visited his hometown of Peoria, Ill. That Christmas Eve, in pursuit of whipped cream for Irish coffee, he drove from his parents’ house to the nearby Convenience Food Mart, one of the few open stores, at the corner of Frye Avenue and Prospect Road. There, he encountered the former Jill Anderson, an ex-girlfriend and Woodruff High School classmate. She was there for eggnog. They hugged. They talked. They got what they needed, then split a six-pack of Olympia outside in her car.
Over the next two hours, these 1969 Woodruff graduates swapped plenty of still-fresh stories. Those long, young nights on Grandview Drive, the Illinois River carved through trees. There he once sat with guitar and pen, pulling verses into melodies, some of which resurfaced, finessed, in his work. The baked cookies, the traveled countryside. The moment when they parted, he to Urbana, her to Macomb. Then to the permanent split, when he headed west to become a soft-rock king. She went to Chicago, found a teaching job and got married.
It was a beautiful, bittersweet, but uneasy reunion, all careful truth and emotion. Adulthood had intervened, chased by uncertainty. She wasn’t happy; he didn’t like the traveling that came with the musician’s life. Their talk even ended with cinematic flourish: Fogelberg bade farewell, then stepped from her car as drifting snow melted to rain. (As he later said, this was no metaphor but the actual weather.)
The woman may have sometimes revisited this chance meeting. But like all memories, she pushed it back. Life, right? Five years later — first husband in the rearview — the remarried Jill Greulich listened to her car radio one morning and heard a new song in a familiar voice: “Met my old lover in the grocery store / The snow was falling Christmas Eve.”
“Same Old Lang Syne” was largely true, she recalled, though a few details were different. For instance, her eyes weren’t blue but green; however, “blue” rhymed better with “gratitude” in the song’s next line. Also, her ex taught P.E. and knew nothing about architecture. And honestly, the market hardly qualified as a “grocery store.” It’s one of three small shops in a plaza, about the size of a 7-Eleven.
Fogelberg and Greulich largely kept this memory between them. She spoke little of her involvement until he died in December 2007. Then she confessed, in an interview about the song, to the Peoria Journal Star. Another revisit came in 2020, for “Lang Syne’s” 40th anniversary, and in 2021, for what would have been Fogelberg’s 70th year. “I’ll always have a special place in my heart for Dan,” she said. “Dan would be a very special person to me, even without that song.”
Peoria seems to feel the same way. If you drive down Prospect past the old Central Illinois Appliances building and the Get the Funk Out Laundromat, you can see what’s now called Short Stop Food & Liquors right there at Prospect and Frye. Cars out front, purses spilled inside. At the light, head left on Frye to Abington, which becomes the Honorary Fogelberg Parkway.
And if you happen to be near the T.F. Erhart Company on Morton, take a right into Riverfront Park. Get out of your car and walk toward the Illinois River, where the artist himself took inspiration. Gaze upon the Dan Fogelberg Memorial. His words are written in stone.
