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Happy Mondays
Squirrel and G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out)

(Factory, 1987)

Bamboozling nastiness in groove form courtesy Mancs' street-nurk debut.

Happy Mondays

Reminiscing recently with a fellow Midlander about the rock venues of '80s Birmingham, I experienced a Proustian rush that time-tunnelled me back to a New Order show at Ladywood's Tower Ballroom, October 2, 1986. Supporting were a group that could only have been on day release from the special school, dressed with supreme disregard for any extant style code and playing some kind of clattering, diseased funk hybrid while a "dancer" gave it maximum Edvard Munch's The Scream. "Spread your bug, pass your bug, spread your germs," instructed singer Shaun Ryder (for it was he) in a chewy Manc bellow, a fisherman's hat crammed so low on his head that no eyes could be seen. A cold shiver ran up my spine and my brain flashed CATEGORY ERROR. The following April, I bought Happy Mondays' debut album and played it to the exclusion of all other records, hypnotised by its ugliness and seemingly unprecedented sound, kept cold and bare by producer John Cale at his transparent Modern Lovers/Horses/The Stooges best.

Listening back in 2010, Squirrel & G-Man... remains passing strange, although I can trace some of its DNA: Paul Ryder's Bootsy Collins basslines, guitarist Mark Day's autodidact Afro-inflections (check out the almost James-like Olive Oil) and drummer Gaz Whelan's ACR-indebted groove (in fact A Certain Ratio's supercool Don Johnson [far left] had given him lessons). Amid the scratchy, relentless junk-funk of Kuff Dam, Tart Tart, Russell and - perhaps strangest and best - Little Matchstick Owen, it's the sheer not-giving-a-f**kness of Shaun Ryder that most alarms and delights. Did he really just sing "Jesus is a c***"? Yes he did. Did he rip off Ob-La-Di-Ob-La-Da so heedlessly that one track, Desmond,had eventually to be excised in favour of the somewhat-out-of-place Twenty Four Hour Party People? I fear so. Through Ryder, a scary, drug-wibbled street world opens up, one where "thinking and sleeping and smoking and whoring" goes on uninhibitedly, unfiltered by any interest in how an external observer - or a society of observers - might perceive or judge the narrator. It's one of the strongest statements of identity in any art of the period, and an arm-punch of a reminder that if rock'n'roll can be this it can be anything, truly anything at all.

Danny Eccleston

Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 23/07/2010

Further Listening

Happy Mondays – Bummed (Factory, 1988)

A Certain Ratio – The Graveyard And The Ballroom (Factory, 1980)

The Stooges – The Stooges (Elektra, 1969)

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Happy Mondays

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  • Brilliant recollection of a brilliant album. Made me dig it, Bummed and a rake of early EP's out immediately. What a cracking day it's been since.

    These early pieces of Mondays magic really emphasise how underappreciated they are/were. Sure a lot of it is stolen mumbo-jumbo, but has there been such brilliant blagardery since?

    Posted by Ronan Casey at 10:14 PM GMT 26/07/2010 Report Abuse

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