Happy Mondays
By All Music Guide
By All Music Guide
ave culture, eventually becoming the most recognizable band of that drug-fueled scene. The Mondays music relied heavily on the sound and rhythm of house music, spiked with 70s soul licks and swirling 60s psychedelia. It was bright, colorful music that had fractured melodies that never quite gelled into cohesive songs.
Unwittingly or not, Happy Mondays personified the ugly side of
ave culture. They were thugs, purely and simply -- they brought out the latent violence that lay beneath the surface of any drug culture, even one as seemingly beatific as Englands late-80s/early-90s
ave scene. Under the leadership of vocalist Shaun Ryder, the group sounded and acted like thugs, especially in comparison with their peace-loving peers, the Stone Roses. Ryders lyrics were twisted and surrealistic, loaded with bizarre pop culture references, drug slang, and menacing sexuality. Appropriately, their music was as convoluted. Happy Mondays were one of the first rock bands to integrate hip-hop techniques into their music. They didnt sample, but they borrowed melodies and lyrics and, in the process, committed rock blasphemy. For a band that celebrated their vulgarity and excessiveness, Happy Mondays appropriately were undone by their addictions, but they left behind a surprisingly influential legacy, apparent in everyone from dance bands like the Chemical Brothers to rock & rollers like Oasis.
With their second album, 1988s Bummed, Happy Mondays became British superstars, particularly Ryder. Pills n Thrills and Bellyaches, released in 1990, marked the height of the bands popularity, creativity, and influence; although the record made the Top 100 albums chart in America, it didnt establish them as stars in the U.S. After that, the fall was quick. By the time they released their last studio album, Yes, Please, Manchester had disappeared from public consciousness; it sold respectably, but the group didnt have the commercial impact that they had just two years before. Besides the lack of public interest, Shaun Ryder had become addicted to heroin, tearing the band apart in the process. At a high-level record contract meeting, Ryder walked out for some Kentucky Fried Chicken, which was the bands slang for heroin. He never returned and the group quickly fell apart.
Ryder and the Mondays full-time dancer Bez re-emerged in the mid-90s with Black Grape. The band released its critically acclaimed debut, Its Great When Youre Straight...Yeah, late in the summer of 1995. Black Grapes sound pursued the same direction as the Mondays, only with a harder, grittier edge to their sound and lyrics.
