May All Your Mondays Be Happy
In an effort to help you start your week in a cheery fashion, we thought it might help you to have a happy Monday if we spotlighted – wait for it – the Happy Mondays!
What, too obvious?
Well, too bad, because we’ve already got the piece written. (Plus, we spent a lot of time pulling together a playlist to go with this piece, so you’ll just have to tough it out.)
Although the Happy Mondays didn’t find any significant chart action until the late ‘80s, the band was actually formed way back in 1980, when lead singer Shaun Ryder and his brother, bassist Paul Ryder, joined forces with guitarist Mark Day, keyboardist Paul Davis, and drummer Gary Whelan. Mind you, it took another half-decade before the Mondays managed to release their first effort, the Forty Five EP, a.k.a. the Delightful EP, and even at that, it wasn’t until they were discovered by Tony Wilson that they really began to rise up through the ranks in a substantial fashion.
You can attribute the Mondays’ initial burst of success to Wilson, certainly, and probably a bit to Bez, their resident dancer, as well, but let’s not discount the efforts of the individuals who produced the band’s music, either. Their 1987 debut album, which bore the highly unwieldy title of Squirrel and G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out), was helmed by John Cale, with the band recording the follow-up, 1988’s Bummed, under the watchful eyes and ears of Martin Hammett. Ultimately, though, it was the efforts of producers Paul Oakenfold and Steve Osborne on 1990’s Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches – and, more specifically, on the singles “Step On” and “Kinky Afro” – that helped the band finally, if somewhat belatedly, earn the attention of Stateside listeners.
Unfortunately for the Mondays, success also brought a certain degree of overindulgence, resulting in some questionable decisions within the band. Case and point: their 1992 album Yes Please! Even the presence of Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth couldn’t save the project from going down in history for costing so much to record that it reportedly sent Factory Records into bankruptcy. So many rumors floated around the project that it’s hard to say for sure what’s true and what’s not, but suffice it to say that the album was neither a huge critical or commercial success, thereby killing much of the band’s accrued momentum. By 1993, the Mondays were no more.
Except their dissolution didn’t take. In fact, they’ve gotten back together so many times since then that’s almost hard to believe they ever broke up in the first place. They even managed to record a new album in 2007 (Uncle Dysfunktional), and, hey, good for Shaun Ryder for getting his act together and getting back on the road and into the studio. With that said, however, it’s the Happy Mondays’ material from the ‘80s and ‘90s that’s stood the test of time across the decades, and that’s where the focus is in the playlist we’ve put together. Give it a spin, get into the groove, and if things go as we’ve intended, hopefully it’ll make your Monday a little bit happier.
