Happy Mondays – The Factory Singles & Fine Young Cannibals – FYC40 (2 disc sets)

What does it sound like?:

London Records celebrate forty of years of these bands with matching two disc sets, either vinyl or CD. The first disc consists of remastered singles and the second DJ remixes.

Happy Mondays have enjoyed the longer career and are still touring. London own the rights to their Factory recordings, which cover the first four studio albums and fourteen singles, all presented in chronological order. Disc one effectively tracks their development over seven years when a gang of urchins from the back streets of Little Hulton, Salford, somehow managed to conquer the music world and produce two national treasures. Built around two brothers, Shaun and Paul Ryder, and their best mate, Bez, the chaos co-ordinator, they were unruly, immoral, hedonistic, and never worried about consequences. They delivered one of Factory Records best selling albums and bankrupted the company with the follow up. Happy Mondays spearheaded the genre Baggy, a perfect adjective for their music and their dress sense. Perhaps through a lack of ability to keep time, especially when Bez was involved, their main rhythm was a loose, muddy groove, layered with lots of percussion and led by Mark Day’s sinewy jangle guitar. It was the ideal platform for Shaun’s Sprechgesang stream-of-consciousness lyrics. His turns of phrase were arresting and demonstrated a gift-of-the gab that enabled him and his crew to get away with all kinds of trouble. You can envisage Tony Wilson ruffling their bowl-cut hair whenever they threatened to drive him round the bend.

It took a while for producers to get a grip on their unique sound to make viable records. The first few tracks are a mess. John Cale was drafted in for the debut album and he managed to mine a couple of nuggets in Tart Tart and 24 Hour Party People. Then Martin Hannett had a crack. The second album, Bummed, is more co-ordinated and marked a commercial uptick, with Wrote For Luck and Lazyitis as singles. The version of the latter here is the remake with Karl Denver co-leading the vocals. It was the involvement of DJ Paul Oakenfield and Steve Osborne that shot them into the stratosphere starting with a remix of Wrote For Luck. All the band had to do was nail their parts one phrase at a time and leave all the piecing together to the highly skilled Oakenfield operation. Fortunately, the band weren’t averse to the use of session musicians. 1990’s Pills, Thrills ‘n Bellyaches remains a classic and definitive of the Madchester scene, a hybrid of club and rock culture, joyous and funky. Step On shines in this set, as it does anytime it comes on the radio, but Kinky Afro and Loose Fit are almost as good. Fresh from success with Tom Tom Club, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz had the privilege of producing the much-maligned Yes, Please. Expensive recording sessions in Barbados led to Shaun developing a taste for crack and Bez breaking his arm three times. When he got his act together, Shaun still had it in him to come up some trademark twisted narratives as Stinkin’ Thinkin’, Sunshine Of Love and Angel the single that should’ve been, delivered at a more genteel pace. Disc one is a blast almost from beginning to end.

Disc two flows remarkably well and could easily fill a dance floor. Back in the day with EPs, 12 inch singles and cassettes, there was plenty of room for club mixes, most of which can be found on the collector’s editions of Bummed and Pills ‘n’ Thrills. Club culture was a crucial aspect of Happy Mondays’ sound. These tracks are supposed to lift you onto your feet in The Hacienda and, mostly, they succeed. Collecting eleven together on one disc emphasises how various DJs compromised with imposing their rigid formula on Happy Mondays’ meandering rhythms and gleeful mayhem. Shaun’s hypnotic vocal lines cannot be butchered into sound bites, so the last two tracks omit them altogether. Paul’s bass is allowed its moment, unless they steal from Sly Stone. Day’s guitar rarely gets as definitive as a riff, is often brutally edited, but is glorious when offset against a solid 4/4. Paul Davis must be pleased his keyboards tend to be more prominent. Fortunately, the arrival of Rowetta on classy vocals give the DJs something to sink their teeth into. Oakenfield’s Think About The Future mix of Wrote For Luck hits the spot, retaining the spirit of the band by emphasising the dreamy groove, Step On (Twistin My Melon Remix) keeps close to the original after a shaky start and the Perfecto mix of Bob’s Yer Uncle becomes laidback, Latin and filthy.

Fine Young Cannibals only released two albums but their second, The Raw & The Cooked, was such a global smash they managed a total of twelve singles. Andy Cox, guitar, and David Steele, bass, took their time after The Beat broke up, listening to over 500 cassettes of potential singers, before connecting with Roland Gift over a mutual love for soul music and movies, taking their name from one starring Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood. Recording contract offers only came in after they appeared on The Tube performing Johnny Come Home. The debut album is sweet and sultry, making it clear where the tunes came from in their previous band. The first few singles, the second a cover of Suspicious Minds, were international hits straight away. They acted as the house band in the film Tin Man and Roland appeared in Sammy And Rosie Get Laid during the four year interval between the albums. When they reconvened, they had three songs from the Tin Man soundtrack and a cover of Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’th’ve) recorded for another movie, Something Wild. Renowned Prince collaborator David Z helped them finish the album. The results were stunning, including two Billboard numer ones, She Drives Me Crazy and Good Thing. They contributed Cole Porter’s Love For Sale to Red, Hot + Blue and added The Flame to a greatest hits released after the band split up, declining to attempt to follow up their mega-successful thirty-five minutes of eighties pop perfection. Disc one of this set is consistent quality with five more experimental non-album B sides tacked on the end.

Fine Young Cannibals are the polar opposite to Happy Mondays. The songs and records are structured, organised and purposeful. Their punchy, disciplined rhythms and ear for a riff lend themselves readily to a club mix. In a way, they remixed their own songs back in the day, Steele regularly using a drum machine and constructing their product by piecing together different elements as a DJ would do. In fact a whole album of remixes, The Raw & The Remix, was issued in 1990 when the record company was impatient for new material and the band was restyled as FYC to avoid the word Cannibals. All twelve of the remixes on disc two are new or previously unreleased, effectively a set of remixes of remixes, pushing the DJs into more outlandish and strange flights of fancy. She Drives Me Crazy has three different versions, verging on overkill, and cries of “Stop driving me crazy!” Unsurprisingly, the band less consumed by club culture have the less appetising dance disc.

FYC40 is also available as a four CD + DVD box, which appears to collect everything they ever recorded in one place, plus an obligatory live concert. It’s surprisingly inexpensive, though a DVD is somewhat old-fashioned.

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What does it all *mean*?

Both acts deserve a fortieth anniversary celebration but the The Factory Singles is probably the better buy. It’s a pity you can’t buy just disc one in both cases. The Factory Singes also wins at the cover art, by Central Station.

Goes well with…

A dance floor

Release Date:

05/12/2025

Might suit people who like…

Late 1980s music.

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