What does it sound like?:
This release compiles the first 4 Happy Mondays 12″s and much of the music here has never been reissued since the late 80s. Their first release, the Forty Five EP is pretty standard 1985 jangly Indie guitar fare which sounds not unlike their contemporaries James and The Bodines. It’s hard to hear what Tony Wilson heard in them and there are few clues to what was to come, apart from the Tom Jones quoting ‘Oasis’ which made it’s way (re-recorded) onto their debut album. They hit their stride with ‘Freaky Dancin’ which is here in two versions produced by Bernard Sumner (the band famously scoffed the remains of a Chinese Takeaway which he put in the bin during the session). It’s a ragged, messy attempt at 70s funk but you can audibly hear the band thrillingly falling into line and finding something resembling a groove albeit the groove that only a bunch of absolute weirdos and Postmen from a suburban Salford grotspot could create – there’s the Wah Wah guitar, the bongos and the ‘baggy’ sound and everything that the Stone Roses took all the credit for a few years later. B-Side ‘The Egg’ » Continue Reading.
