If God created the Manchester of the late 1980’s, lord knows who or what spawned the Happy Mondays. The wildly incoherent poets and musical mavericks of the Madchester scene seemed hell bent on a hedonistic cultural takeover. Yet just as the sun rose so dramatically over Shaun Ryder’s head, at the Hotel Subur Maritim in Sitges Spain, during the video for the 1990 single ‘Step On’, so it rapidly set on their careers in a bewildering maelstrom of drug abuse, theft and punctured egos. Their all-too-fleeting blaze across the musical landscape of the eighties and early nineties was a stark lesson in rock and roll excess. In that brief moment in the sun though, they managed to reach legendary status and turn out some timeless tunes. ‘Kinky Afro’, ‘Step On’, ’24 Hour Party People’ and ‘Stinkin Thinkin’ all sound as fresh, funky and full on as they did three decades ago. The Mondays embark on a greatest hits tour with such a strong back catalogue of funked-up indie dance classics it will be well worth the re-visit. The extreme excess might have gone, but the classic tunes live large.
Wed 6 Dec 7pm at O2 Institute, 78 Digbeth, Birmingham B5 6DY £33.75 www.ticketmaster.co.uk
Words: Giles Logan
Published on: Mon 4 Dec 2017