Happy Mondays: "Kinky Afro"

17 October 1990

"At least they're thieving stuff with a bit of humour."

— Robert Smith

By the autumn of 1990 I had become a full-on Anglophile. My TV viewing was made up of Coronation St, Home & Away (an Aussie soap but one that I first encountered in Britain so it was close enough) and any British sit-com new and old that I could find. I drank tea everyday, wore my Tottenham Hotspur and Norwich City scarves regularly and began reading Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole novels. And the music I listened to was almost entirely from the UK.

There were, however, gaps. I have still never seen an episode of Only Fools & Horses, imported British chocolates were prohibitively expensive and as a result were only consumed at Christmas and The Stone Roses somehow completely passed me by until I sought them out in 1995. I also lacked context for what was going on. I didn't have access to Smash Hits (I now wonder why I didn't get a subscription but the thought never occurred to me at the time) which ensured that I'd be permanently out of the loop. When baggy emerged it took time working its way across the Atlantic. I suddenly became aware of a whole new generation of indie guitar bands and I figured they all came packaged together. If it now seems odd putting Happy Mondays, The Stone Roses and Inspiral Carpets (a group who have never come close to prompting me to want to dance) under one umbrella, Madchester had become even more of an odd ball assortment when they were teamed up with Candy Flip, Jesus Jones, EMF, Blur, The Beloved and even The Cure.

While most acts put out remix albums because of record label pressure, Robert Smith and whoever else happened to be in his band at the time seemed to do so as an artistic statement. Mixed Up came out that fall and if it is "complete bandwagoning" as Smith admits, at least they did so in a timely manner. Like most remix LPs it isn't very good, consisting mainly of extended mixes that fail to add anything to the originals. The highlights are new track "Never Enough", which is as baggy as they ever got, and a Paul Oakenfold reworking of their 1985 single "Close to Me".

Smith must have been happy with the results as he nearly made it his Single of the Fortnight in his second go at reviewing the new releases for Smash Hits. I suspect that not wanting to be seen as a total prat prevented him from doing so. Instead, he goes with Happy Mondays and their latest offering "Kinky Afro". Where The Cure busy were doing their "bandwagoning", Smith praises ver Mondays for sounding "refreshingly unlike [their] and it hasn't got that "Manchester beat" on it".

This is the third SOTF for Shaun Ryder, Bez and the rest which reaffirms that 1990 was their year. It wasn't quite an imperial period (while "Step On" and "Kinky Afro" would both become big hits, their remix of "Lazyitis" failed to grace the Top 40; album Thrills 'n' Pills and Bellyaches got a lot of critical acclaim but it failed to top the charts) but impressive nonetheless for a bunch of ne'er-do-wells who hadn't sniffed a hit single prior to a year earlier. While there are a small number of singles and albums from that year that I prefer, no one better represented the first year of the nineties like the Mondays.

As I have previously mentioned, there was a lengthy gap between the Top 5 success of "Step On" and the release of their third album. More acid house/indie rock rave ups were expected of them (which probably goes at least some way to explaining the failure of "Lazyitis") but the Mondays were surprisingly musically diverse in their own warped fashion: they weren't about to try to master one sub-genre when there were several more they could butcher in their own unique way.

Smith makes note of Ryder's memorable "yippie-yippie ey-ey ay-yay-yay" in the chorus being nicked from Labelle's classic seventies' hit "Lady Marmalade" (even if he initially thinks it came from Sister Sledge) and this something that older listeners would have been aware of. To those of us of a more tender age it wasn't borrowed at all, it was something new and cool. Now it seems cool that they chose to pinch a bit of nonsense from an R&B trio that dabbled in funk and glam rock.

"Kinky Afro" proved to be an apt opener to their breakthrough album. Are you expecting loads and loads of Madchester beats? Look elsewhere. But if you want something grubby, loutish, sexy, moronic, funny and wise? This is the place. It was also an effective single to move them away from the baggy scene. Who knows which direction they were going but it was certain to be someplace mad and unique.

While it doesn't have quite the thrill of "Step On", "Kinky Afro" is still an ace number in its own right. Robert Smith is impressed that they returned with something so unexpected and this is a quality that few would credit Happy Mondays with. All ten tracks stand out on their own but it manages to be an effective taster for Thrills 'n' Pills and Bellyaches because it opens up listeners to a host of possibilities, not unlike the way "Taxman" got The Beatles' Revolver going. 

Meanwhile, I had grouped all these indie dance bands from Britain together when most of them had nothing to do with one another. In my isolated world, Madchester was alive and well throughout 1991 and '92, the groups that were using hip hop influences or were Shoegazers or were ushering in the Britpop era or were typically classified as 'grebo' were in my mind all extensions of baggy. And I think I proved correct because very few of them had anything in common beyond being unruly youths with crappy haircuts and bad clothes — and that's precisely what Madchester had always been. As Brian Eno said, only 10,000 people bought the first Happy Mondays album but everyone who did grew a mushroom cut, dropped acid and formed a band.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Seal: "Crazy"

The man who sang on Adamski's "Killer" didn't get a featured artist credit but being on one of the singles of the year must have raised his stock. "Crazy" was nothing like its predecessor but vocalists venturing out on their own have put out far worse. Smith doesn't give it all of his attention, his thoughts diverging to crapping on rap and Adamski's "bloody ugly" dog, with only the observation that it sounds like "half the groups in the charts" being directed at the song itself. Surely Seal's voice alone gave it a fresh air, right? It sure seemed like a might good record at the time but the singer's subsequent move towards more mainstream pop has undermined it a bit. He could do well to go a little crazy himself from time to time.

That Petrol Emotion: "Genius Move"

21 October 1987

"I like what they do because it sounds like they're enjoying themselves and it sounds like they could go wrong and I like that in a record. They are a group that's got integrity."

— Robert Smith

Integrity. Integrity. Not a word you hear a lot in music circles anymore (to the extent that I'm not sure whether to poo-poo Robert Smith for being so cliched and dated or if I should tip my hat to him for being so bloody novel). It's an obvious throwback to simpler, more rockist days when you were supposed to play your own instruments and write your own songs. A term frequently used yet seldom expounded upon. U2 allegedly had integrity but Rick Astley didn't and no one ever bothered to question this line of thinking; it was true simply because that's what we all believed.

I've knocked populism in the past in this space but it's worth considering that its forerunner wasn't up to much itself. Rockism was all about the dogma that old school rock 'n' roll values were all that mattered. It's why Bruce Springsteen remains slightly overvalued and why Tom Petty is worshiped for making a career out of creating the same pleasant but unremarkable Tom Petty records. Why power pop is considered a gold standard yet is all-too-often boring. Schoolmates who liked grunge or gangsta rap belittled me for being into Pet Shop Boys and Depeche Mode (even though members of both groups wrote their own songs and played their own instruments) because my stuff was "queer" while their's had a "message". Exploring past eras, Led Zeppelin was revered but ABBA was a "guilty pleasure" (again, the Swedes wrote their own songs, something the drunken Brummie foursome didn't always do). For all its sins, at least poptimism is all about judging the quality of music, not the supposed "integrity" of the artists.

I'm not sure Robert Smith is a rockist (I'd be very surprised to discover that's what he is) but integrity is important to him. The Cure grew out of punk and that generation was as protective of its spirit as they were down on the prog rockers and stadium theatrics that came before it. Keeping the flame of punk going in the indie scene mattered to a lot of people in the underground, especially with 1987 being the most eighties year imaginable. The writing/production assembly line of Stock Aitken Waterman was beginning to dominate the charts (Smith also reviews Astley's tepid follow up to "Never Gonna Give You Up" and has already had enough of them), rock dinosaurs were back and the post-punk generation was beginning to fade away so it's no wonder a fragment of what had been part of the scene ten years earlier would be so warmly greeted by some.

All this may read like I'm dumping on Smith's stint as singles reviewer but there's lots to enjoy in his write up. He makes several amusing remarks (of Astley's "Whenever You Need Somebody", he says "I'll probably find myself completely mortalled in Fellini's disco in Stockholm and dancing to this"; of The Fat Boys' Falling in Love", "...it's a very thin foundation on which to build your career — being fat. I speak from inexperience of course"; the great thing about the latter is that it's funny whether Smith means or not, especially given the rounder state he is in of late) and some of his tastes mirror my own (I think I love him just a little bit more because of how much he hates Eurythmics). He does better when trashing the records he doesn't care for than when he struggles to provide much of substance to say about his favourites — and I don't blame him. All in all, he does well in the role and was good enough to be asked back for a second time (he, in turn, must have enjoyed the task enough to have accepted the invitation) which we will get to next year.

This is the second appearance on this blog for That Petrol Emotion, the first being earlier in the same year when Shane MacGowan gave his approval to "Big Decision". It's notable that two guest reviewers who were close to the same age and both children of punk would be their biggest supporters in Smash Hits. The single "Swamp" was released in the summer of '87 but no one bothered reviewing while Barry McIlheney gave a positive critique of their album Babble, one that didn't fawn over the group's "integrity". The likes of NME and Melody Maker were enthusiastic of them but they, too, were there to keep the punk fires burning in the indie scene. While they didn't go so far as to brandish the word 'integrity', there was always a sense that they were championed by people who admired what they stood for rather than what they created.

"Big Decision" didn't do much for me either but at least a vague hint of its chorus and tune has stayed with me over the past few months; on the other hand, I've been listening to "Genius Move" over the past week and I still can't remember anything about it. I put it on and it goes about its business as if refusing to want my attention. As is inevitable, Smith mentions the connection to The Undertones, a band he used to like though not love since he never cared for Feargal Sharkey's voice. And, yeah, the Shark's singing is an acquired taste and I can understand it not being everyone's thing but implied here is a preference for the generic vocals of Petrol frontman Steve Mack. And while the young American doesn't ruin "Genius Move", he isn't able to make it rise above the competition either. And no one does in the end. There's nothing wrong with it except that it's just another pained indie hopeful in a scene drowning in them. You may believe that alternative acts from the eighties are "overlooked" or that they "deserved a bigger audience" — just don't say "criminally underrated", a term that no longer has any meaning — but the special groups tended not to fall through the cracks. Groups that were much better than That Petrol Emotion, though they did have integrity, I'll give them that.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

The Jesus & Mary Chain: "Darklands"

Smith considered the latest from the Reid brothers for SOTF and he would've done better had he gone with them. A little less thrilling than their early work (Smith admits it "isn't particularly stunning" and implies that he's much fonder of The Jesus than the single itself; I suppose they oozed integrity too), "Darkness" requires more time to digest but the listener's patience is rewarded by the multitude of hidden depths. As Smith notes, the Reids were masters of pinching melodies and riffs from a bevy of sources and making it seem like it was all their doing. They sound less like The Velvet Underground here but that could just be because they sound more like everyone else. Amazingly, no one managed to sound like them.