As Happy Mondays Tour Bummed, Remember Their Deviant Genius
From late-night ’80s TV, Factory’s funky street drinkers play a gobsmacking Performance for the late Tony Wilson. Watch if you dare!
WAS EVER A GROUP more gloriously wrong, yet right, than the Happy Mondays in their prime? One outstanding filthy triumph was 1988's Bummed LP, and tonight at the Kings Hall in Herne Bay, the reformed group begin a 25th anniversary tour playing the album in its entirety.
Time to revisit those carefree days, in the Armani-suited company of Factory Records’ Anthony H Wilson, the Mondays’ label boss who was, coincidentally, presenting Granada TV’s late night arts show The Other Side Of Midnight at the time. Against a merciless white studio background, this er, performance of Gollum-esque Bummed tune Performance suggests a febrile creative chemistry balanced on the point of collapse.
With bassist Paul ‘Horse’ Ryder and drummer Gaz ‘Ronnie’ Whelan as dependable anchors, Mark ‘Cow’ Day lays on oddly Country & Western-flavoured sheet metal guitar, Paul ‘Knobhead’ Davies gives it some Una Baines on the keys and vibrating totem Bez gambols forever onwards in an unending grooveworld of his own. Over it all, in Timmy Mallett specs, mucky-minded Shaun ‘X’ Ryder hilariously reads the psychedelic tea leaves in a tale of an urban hobgoblin with a weakness for mucophagy and, well, see for yourself...
Fashion watchers, note dapper Shaun and the gang browsing Joe Bloggs gear in an unidentified Manc boutique before the track starts. Can any melon-twisted ‘Baldricks’ then on the ground clarify which one it was?
