Day 264: Happy Mondays – Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches
Ahead of tomorrow’s return to work which I’m sure will be anything but happy, I thought I’d plug up a hole in my UK music knowledge by listening to my first full Happy Mondays album. In my defence, I wasn’t even born when they were big here, and when I was, I was on the other side of the continent. Sadly no Madchester for me.
Album cover courtesy of Factory Records
The Happy Mondays was founded in 1980 in Salford by singer Shaun Ryder, his brother Paul Ryder playing the bass, drummer Gaz Whelan, keyboard player Paul Davis, guitarist Mark Day, along with their “percussionist” Bez, whose job is to dance on stage with maracas. They were a pioneering band in the Madchester sound, blending rock with psychedelia and dance music. The name of the band came from their term for the day when you receive your unemployment cheque in the mail and the activities that followed.
They released their third album Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches in 1990 after recording it in Los Angeles, with Shaun Ryder writing the lyrics on opium – he hadn’t been able to score any heroin there, so he improvised. He also shared his opium with the group, except they thought they’d been smoking cannabis before finding out after smoking it for two weeks. The band credits some of the sound on the drug, with Paul Ryder saying “Our early stuff was recorded on speed, but opium made us more laidback.”
It’s clearly an album of a band at its peak. The lyrics are suitably dadaist, but other than that, the cleverness of their sound really hides many of the excesses that the band notoriously engaged in. It’s a pretty effortless mix of different things which maybe shouldn’t go so well together, which Shaun Ryder described aptly as “Funkadelic being eaten by a giant sandwich … northern soul … punk rock … Hendrix … fuckin’ Captain Beefheart, and a load of drugs on top of that.” What more could you want?
I also couldn’t talk about this band without mentioning how aspirational Bez is, especially in this economy. He’s a member of the band, but even his Wikipedia page lists him as Bez (Dancer). My number one dream job that no longer exists is being an ornamental hermit, but number two is being Bez in his prime: travel the world maracas in tow, scoff a handful of pills, have a dance, be a mascot. I lack his moves and raw charisma, but I’d still give it a bash.
Since some of the band members have gone a bit more sober and become grandfathers, I’m assuming the gigs look a little bit different today, but I might still be able find out for myself as the band is still touring today, largely with the original line-up, too. Better late than never on my part, Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches is a 9/10.