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.
W.F.L. Think About The Future Paul Oakenfield Remix
Johnny Come Home Frankie Knuckles Remix
I loved FYC back in the day, but more the first album than the second. Probably as I wasn’t a club kind of person, explaining also why I never invested in the Happy Mondays. In hindsight I often wonder, if 5 to 10 years younger, whether I would have been as good a hacienda hedonist as I was at being the serious young man I was in the 80’s.
I went to the Hacienda regularly. There was no VIP area. Band members had to mix with everyone else like a normal punter. Nobody bothered them. The crowd were only interested in dancing.
I donned the clothes of respectability, or its presumption, far too soon in life. 23 saw me a booze soaked reprobate, but within 2 years I was married with a kid on the way, doing the “proper” job my years of wildness were preparing me for. Regrets? Too few to mention, except when youngsters like you regale your 80s.
(I think you are a year behind me, professionally speaking if not chronologically. )
To my shame, I remained a booze soaked reprobate well into my thirties.
@tiggerlion Remember seeing Martin Fry and Morrissey in The Gay Traitor. What a bizarre place it was. There was a baked beans and potato cafe at
One point.
That’s a very Morrissey friendly cafe. It might explain all of his subsequent hot air.
Not forgetting the Vince Clarke mix of W.F.L. which propelled a Hannett-produced track onto daytime radio (and to number 68 on the hit parade) and which opened the floodgates for what came next.
London Records have because they don’t include it here. 😎 To be fair, Oakenfield does deserve first dibs, I think.
It was a double-A single with Vince on side A for radio, and Oakey on side AA for dancing.
Also, credit due for including the vastly superior MacColl version of Hallelujah.
It was an ace time to be young. I saw the Railway Children, Happy Mondays, ACR and NO in the Finsbury Park Supertent in 1987 (?). What a day!
Pills n Thrills n Bellyaches is a great album that nobody seems to talk about much these days. I’ve still got the original CD. Has it been deluxified or supereditionised at any point?
The whole baggy / late 80s indie dancefloor scene deserves a bit more love than it gets I think. When you listen to bands like Happy Mondays, Stones Roses, St Etienne and Primal Sceam and how they collaborated with producers and remixers, you can see where 90s Indie could have gone. It didn’t though, instead we got Britpop and the indie shuffle. I mean Britpop was fun, but it didn’t really move things forward.
I agree that some of this stuff has aged surpisingly well (i.e. those you mention) but from how I remember it everyone seemed to discover that ‘there’s always been a dance element to our music’ so it got a bit silly for a while.
I mean, I love the Lilac Time more than most bands, but I don’t think indie-dance was meant for them.
It did get a bit silly (We’re looking at you, The Beloved and Flowered Up!) but even when it did it was still good fun. I mean, I’m Free by The Soupdragons is a piece of opportunistic fluff, but I think it’s aged a bit better than some of the more po-faced indie stuff that was around at the time.
But without Flowered Up’s early baggy rubbish, we wouldn’t have had the magnificent Weekender.
It’s on!
I’ve got the 12″…
I’m not surprised!
And Flowered Up at Shoreditch Town Hall (?!) was a memorable gig: it seemed like all their families (kids and OAPS) were there.
Happiness by The Beloved is an album that still holds up now as a regular go to listen from start to finish.
Their ‘new dance direction’ certainly has aged better than their previous po-faced indie Peel Session stuff.
Much as I was/am also partial to some po-faced Peel Session indie stuff generally.
Yeah it was and is a really good pop album
It really is a top pop album with no fillers ruining its flow
Feels like a lost pop classic although glad I found it for back then and even for now
The Beloved were moving away from their jangly Peel noise a long time before the rest of the indie-dance bandwagon. There were dance singles in 1987 (Forever Dancing), 1988 (Loving Feeling with an actual Acid House track, Acid Love, on the flip) and January 1989 (the first version of Your Love Takes Me Higher). Needless to say, I bought them all.
The Sun Rising didn’t come out until October 1989 and, after what felt like an eternity, the Happiness album in Feb 1990.
In summary: they had form.
Good call. Also, The Shamen went in quick with Acid House in 1988, after the XTC-like debut and before the Mr C stuff .
I’ve got the 3” CD single of Acid Love
There is a Collector’s Edition with five bonus tracks, mostly extended versions, and a DVD of their videos.
Just a tiny, pedantic point of order: Fine Young Cannibals’ second single wasn’t the Elvis cover, it was the fantastic and generally overlooked anti-Thatcher opus Blue. And regarding Roland’s film roles, he was also in the Stephen Ward/Profumo Affair movie Scandal.
Speaking of his thespian activities, I once saw Mr Gift playing Romeo in a production of R & J at Hull Truck Theatre.
Yes. I knew that. Suspicious Minds is track three straight after Blue on disc one. I really don’t know why I put “second”.
As for Roland, he was certainly gifted.
I remember seeing that production of R&J at the Edinburgh Festival. I got serious brownie points from a friend who was a massive fan and I had managed to get front row tickets and part of the show had Roland Gift stood right next to us. Strangely, the other thing I remember was he was wearing bright red either DMs or Basketball boots……
As an aside, Hull Truck in the late 80s / early 90s (under John Godber) had a fabulous run of productions.
FYC is an odd career, or the lack of it. None of them have ever done anything else that I’m aware of. And never even a reformation or the 80s revival circuit. The falling out must have been epic. I suppose the money was good enough not to run out if they were sensible.
I saw Roland Gift with a band at Brentwood Festival a few years ago. The set leaned heavily on the FYC hits of course, and he was very cool, but it wasn’t really my thing.
My impression is that there wasn’t a big fall out. I think they decided not to follow up Raw & Cooked. The pressure to have another global smash was huge. As I allude to, they tended to struggle for material. Their copywriting process was slow. By all accounts, they enjoyed one last hurrah with The Flame.
They could retire and indulge other interests, acting, soundtracks and so on. Who can blame them?
Roland has been filmed this very day on the concourse at St. Pancras International, performing FYC hits and his new single. He’s neither sorry, worried nor caught in a trap.
They are paradoxically the most successful also-rans of all time.
“What is wrong in my life that I must get drunk every night?” Hmmm
I wish I’d paid more attention back in the eighties. 😐
I may be alone in this theory …
The Happy Mondays (and The Stone Roses, and Madchester in general) can draw a line to the birth of Britpop.
The Raw and The Cooked (particularly the imagery in the Good Thing video,) also plays a part
There was a soul revival in the mid to late 80s. I got the quiff. 501s were a thing. Heard It Through The Grapevine was on that ad. FYC kind of fit into that world. Johnny Come Home sounds like a film or a song title from a certain time. I remember buying a compilation called The Originals that introduced me to all these great songs. We used to go The Stage Club in Oxford, a student venue that played all this retro music. Good times.
UK Street Soul?
Mainstream Pop went big on soul for quite a while. Culture Club, Phil Collins, Style Council, Eurythmics, George Michael all released soul records. Haircut 100, Scritti Politti, Japan and The Associates had set things off. By the late eighties Sade, Lisa Stansfield and Soul II Soul were making waves. FYC were right in the thick of it all.
The Commitments was massive in bringing soul classics back to a younger audience. The first soundtrack album went triple platinum.
That was 1991.
Too young to have seen the Pistols at the Lesser Free Trade Hall, I saw The Commitments at the flicks with my keyboard-playing pal ‘Fingers’. As we left the cinema, we looked at each other and said “we could do that”, and we did, for the next five years. I ended up, at one point, being in three bands simultaneously.
It all fell apart when Fingers moved to Oxford, and I met the future Mrs F (who was living in Bracknell).
I have to acknowledge the all to rare mention of Bracknell in these pages. Did you haunt the hallowed halls of South Hill Park at all?
Home of Bracknell Folk Festival, visited twice in the very early 90’s. So folky that Ian Dury performed at the second one we went to.
Also home to the Cellar Bar where Onaaw legendary surf punk revivalists The Surfin’ Lungs. And very good they were too.
When we first met, she claimed to live in Ascot. What she really meant was “I live just off Ascot Road in Bracknell.”
Our pal Diana lives round the corner from South Hill Park. I saw La Haine at the cinema there in 1996. Why do I remember this shit?
Great review. I had been tempted to buy this Happy Mondays collection – was only partly interested in them when they were a thing but over whenever I have heard their songs in recent years they have chimed with me more than when they were first released. I don’t mind being late to the party.
On the other hand FYC were part of my record listening then and are still held in high esteem.
This collection is a good entry point for Happy Mondays. Give it a stream first. 😉
Long FYC interview over on SDE.
https://superdeluxeedition.com/interview/the-sde-interview-fine-young-cannibals/
Including the explanation that the wheels came off FYC when their manager left them for Ocean Colour Scene. I was not expecting that!
Interesting. When The Beat split down the middle, my money would have been on General Public rather than FYC becoming massive. GP did have some success in North America, but soon fizzled out.
Lyrics went to GP and tunes went to FYC. Tunes beat lyrics every time.
Yes, I didn’t know at the time who did what.
That’s an insightful SDE read on why Fine Young Cannibals never followed up on the success of The Raw & The Cooked album. It likely was for the best since they did drift apart as a group based on the interviews.
The money, from the commercial success in America especially, probably made it easier not to force a likely disappointing follow up amidst band management driving a wedge between all three of the band members.
And I didn’t know until now The Raw & The Cooked album name was based on a concept one side was to be “old-sounding soul songs and one of the more modern songs” although that sequencing “just didn’t work”.
It was a time CDs became dominant as the main albums format so the concept was untimely anyway.
It was a vinyl album released as CDs were becoming dominant. Just 35 minutes long.