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“Kinky Afro” – Happy Mondays
(Words/music: Shaun Ryder, Paul Ryder, Mark Day, Paul Davis and Gary Whelan, available on Pills ‘n Thrills and Bellyaches, Factory 1990)

I’ve used this space to do a number of different things – including my not-so-shocking admission that I have weak dancing abilities.  This is directly related to my aversion to dance clubs, which directly influences my pedestrian knowledge of dance music.  For example, I know everything I know about the late ‘80s / early ‘90s Madchester scene from a handful of things I’ve read on the internet and 24 Hour Party People.  I don’t have all of the details down, but I do have a general timeline and some key names, so a flag went off in my head when Factory Records’ Tony Wilson came up in conjunction with the Happy Mondays.  It’s also worth noting that I only sought out some of the Happy Mondays’ music (aside from “24 Hour Party People,” which I enjoy a lot) after seeing the movie.  I didn’t know that the first three Mondays’ records were produced by (in order), John Cale from the Velvet Underground, Paul Oakenfold, and Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz of the Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club.  That’s enough historical context for me to start digging a little deeper.

What I found (to be fair, I’ve mainly gone through the singles / best of) sounds terrific.  “Kinky Afro” in particular captures this liveliness and electricity in the music.  It manages to blur the line between my concept of “dance” music and guitar rock, and I hear all of those things mixed in there.  There are elements of the Brit Pop I loved as a teenager as well as some of the post-punk that preceded the Mondays on Factory.  Similar to Primal Scream’s early ‘90s output, “Kinky Afro” surprised me with how fresh it sounds – I might have expected this to sound dated, but it reminds me of a lot of stuff from the past few years.  In particular, Shaun Ryder and James Murphy from LCD Soundsystem are joined in my mind.  Ryder doesn’t sing in the conventional sense (and I imagine that is a dealbreaker for a lot of people), yet he sings enough to let his personality shine through the track.  He’s uncompromising and kind of funny, especially during his most curmudgeonly points on “Kinky Afro.”  His brash and unforgiving persona here laid the groundwork for the snarky persona Murphy cultivated on the early LCD Soundsystem singles.  Still, I have to think that Ryder, the center of the storm, might be the reason why the Happy Mondays are nonentities in the United States and Jesus Jones topped the charts here (while stalling in the 30s in the UK).  On this one, the Brits had it right.

More on Happy Mondays: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm