Baggy Bands: Overrated Shite?

[corporate whore]

See I'd agree about the Stone Roses - don't think the album is as great as all that, and it is directly responsible for a whole lot of dross in the time that has passed.

I reckon the Mondays' music has stood the test of time, mostly because no-one else has sounded anything like them since (Black Grape notwithstanding for obvious reasons). I heard 30 minutes of live stuff from 1992 on the radio the other night - think it was their last gig before the initial split - and it was pure quality - Ryder's voice intact, snide asides at his brother, soaring synths.

Beautiful.

 

[JTG]

Fucking marvellous in many ways.

Sproston Green still makes my hairs stand on end.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

Overrated, but not shite. In my fence sitting opinion. I find the 'Stone Roses' album being talked about as up there with the best ever a bit laughable really, but it's mostly nice enough.

 

[ether]

Stone Roses: Fools Gold; Made of Stone; I Wanna Be Adored; Love Spreads
Happy Mondays: Hallelujah; Wrote For Luck; 24 Hour Party People; Step On
Inspiral Carpets: Move; Joe; She Comes In The Fall; This Is How It Feels
Charlatans: The Only One I Know; One To Another

Exactly! ...and Screamadelica too. The Farm. Soup Dragons - I'm Free. Candy Flip anyone?

 

[ouchmonkey]

...... I have no idea why they are thought of by some as revolutionary. Seems fairly standard jangly guitar pop to me. Nothing special at all.

Agree with you. and Hollis.
The Stone Roses - nothing special then, nothing special now either. extremely overated album.
If you've seen him interviewed recently you'll be even more amazed that the Roses got away with this 'revolutionary' nonsense based entirely on Ian Brown's gobshite charm. The Roses were obviously going to be the biggest band of the lot 'cos they had accessible tunes - unafraid of recycling a bunch of old musical cliches, they dressed it up in new clothes - having nothing to do with old 'rock' cliches in terms of style, dress or attitude with the result that an overexcited music press could pretend they were new and exciting while still embracing a band who clearly loved the Beatles and Hendrix. Absolutely everything on that album was familiar, even the really good bits (Waterfall, I Am The Resurrection)

On the other hand, The Mondays were one of those bands that when you first hear them you can't work out what's going on or where it's coming from, this bizarre, spastic funk punk thing with seemingly jibberish lyrics. It seems odd now but when they first pitched up it was only The Fall who you could compare it to - and that didn't seem to fit. It is a bit of a 'You had to be there' thing 'cos of what came after but while the first album isn't a complete success I still think Bummed captures close to what they were like before they had too much money to stop Ryder wasting it all on pills (and latterly pies)

 

[Sunspots]

Agree with you. and Hollis.
The Stone Roses - nothing special then, nothing special now either. extremely overated album.
If you've seen him interviewed recently you'll be even more amazed that the Roses got away with this 'revolutionary' nonsense based entirely on Ian Brown's gobshite charm. The Roses were obviously going to be the biggest band of the lot 'cos they had accessible tunes - unafraid of recycling a bunch of old musical cliches, they dressed it up in new clothes - having nothing to do with old 'rock' cliches in terms of style, dress or attitude with the result that an overexcited music press could pretend they were new and exciting while still embracing a band who clearly loved the Beatles and Hendrix. Absolutely everything on that album was familiar, even the really good bits (Waterfall, I Am The Resurrection)

On the other hand, The Mondays were one of those bands that when you first hear them you can't work out what's going on or where it's coming from, this bizarre, spastic funk punk thing with seemingly jibberish lyrics. It seems odd now but when they first pitched up it was only The Fall who you could compare it to - and that didn't seem to fit. It is a bit of a 'You had to be there' thing 'cos of what came after but while the first album isn't a complete success I still think Bummed captures close to what they were like before they had too much money to stop Ryder wasting it all on pills (and latterly pies)

Bang on, on both points IMO.

Early Happy Mondays (pre-'Bummed') was very reminiscent of The Fall. The warped lyrics, the jumble sale clothes, the DIY haircuts, the speed, the shambolic scratchy looseness.

 

[montevideo]

Agree with you. and Hollis.
The Stone Roses - nothing special then, nothing special now either. extremely overated album.
If you've seen him interviewed recently you'll be even more amazed that the Roses got away with this 'revolutionary' nonsense based entirely on Ian Brown's gobshite charm. The Roses were obviously going to be the biggest band of the lot 'cos they had accessible tunes - unafraid of recycling a bunch of old musical cliches, they dressed it up in new clothes - having nothing to do with old 'rock' cliches in terms of style, dress or attitude with the result that an overexcited music press could pretend they were new and exciting while still embracing a band who clearly loved the Beatles and Hendrix. Absolutely everything on that album was familiar, even the really good bits (Waterfall, I Am The Resurrection)

On the other hand, The Mondays were one of those bands that when you first hear them you can't work out what's going on or where it's coming from, this bizarre, spastic funk punk thing with seemingly jibberish lyrics. It seems odd now but when they first pitched up it was only The Fall who you could compare it to - and that didn't seem to fit. It is a bit of a 'You had to be there' thing 'cos of what came after but while the first album isn't a complete success I still think Bummed captures close to what they were like before they had too much money to stop Ryder wasting it all on pills (and latterly pies)

tony wilson wanted the happy mondays to be a cross between acr & joy division, & nearly succeeded. Early mondays stuff was very dark, echoey, very hacienda, the stone rose were the recluse hustlers who couldn't really make a record beyond the first. Which was a classic despite the future it created.

 

[absinthe]

give us an example of this 'dark echoey very hacienda' early mondays then old fella...

 

[Sunspots]

give us an example of this 'dark echoey very hacienda' early mondays then old fella...

Their first couple of 12"s ('Delightful/This Feeling/Oasis' and 'Freaky Dancin'/The Egg').

I was so in love with that longer (and looser) version of Freaky Dancin'. Used to play it over and over. I'd never heard anything like it at the time, and nobody then could've predicted what they would later evolve into.

 

[montevideo]

Their first couple of 12"s ('Delightful/This Feeling/Oasis' and 'Freaky Dancin'/The Egg').

I was so in love with that longer (and looser) version of Freaky Dancin'. Used to play it over and over. I'd never heard anything like it at the time, and nobody then could've predicted what they would later evolve into.

true enough, supposedly done live with the boy ryder shouting 'ready' at the beginning. Very echoey, very hacienda.

Kuff dam as well.

 

[Sunspots]

supposedly done live with the boy ryder shouting 'ready' at the beginning.

That's the one.

 

[huxley]

I'll remember it for

I'm Free

and

Can You Dig It


Soup Dragons and Mock Turtles (always got 'em mixed up ;-))

 

[Biffo]

I'll remember it for

I'm Free

and

Can You Dig It


Soup Dragons and Mock Turtles (always got 'em mixed up ;-))

Steve Coogan's brother was the singer of The Mock Turtles.

 

[Bomber]

The Stone Roses first album is not shit & neither is 'Second Coming' to these ears ! Alongside some of the insipid shite that passes for rock music nowadays it is positively wonderful. I still think of the Mondays as a band that made a few decent singles, but I love The Charlatans, excellent live band

 

[goldenecitrone]

See- its just attractive to a narrow band of 30-34 year olds in the main.. Being slightly above the age bracket, and having enjoyed my formative years in the company of The Smiths, it just seemed a dull follow on.. sorry.

Black Grape - loved the singles.

I grew up with the Smiths, too, but the first Stone Roses album is a classic. John Squire is up there with Johnny Marr, no question. Brown and Morrissey are very different but still streets ahead of the rest.

 

[Hollis]

I grew up with the Smiths, too, but the first Stone Roses album is a classic. John Squire is up there with Johnny Marr, no question. Brown and Morrissey are very different but still streets ahead of the rest.

Wrong

Wrong

Wrong

 

[Dr. Furface]

The first Roses album is a fine record, but as others have said, it was nothing new or different. I saw them at the old Powerhaus at Islington shortly before it was released, and they were excellent, but I just felt they were a good band but didn't really have anything special, even though you could tell they were gonna be massive. I always thought of them as 'old rock in new clothes'.

But the Mondays were something else, the way they sounded and looked WAS different. They had character and attitude to spare - the Roses had little of either. Those first singles and album were indie-sounding, but not like anyone else. And then Bummed, which - with a big thankyou to Martin Hannet - was this weird synthesis of indie and dance, but sounded like something else altogether, and unlike anything else before or since. And then the Madchester ep, where they started sounded like some mental Manc version of Can. After that it was downhill all the way - though Pills, Thrills was a good album, but just nothing special and clearly intended as a cash in.

The only other baggy-ish band of any note were The Shamen, who similarly to the Mondays put out some interesting indie releases, then some reasonable dance-influenced stuff, before going down the spout with rubbish like Ebaneezer Goode - which funny as it might have been, was still a piece of crap.

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

i'm not convinced there was a massive desire for the youth of Seattle to rebel against scruffy mancunians singin about twisting melons...

Fair point - I was thinking more of the success of grunge in the UK when I wrote that, particularly in the UK indie type scene...

 

[FreddyB]

The Stone roses album defines my youth, every track has a vivid memory attached to it almost all of them great.

The Mondays are the same but not quite as much and the Charlatans and Inspiral Carpets slightly less again. All bands that I still listen to and always lift my mood and take me back.

I'ms seeing the Mondays at Birmingham Accademy tonight

 

[goldenecitrone]

Wrong

Wrong

Wrong

Come on, I know that deep down, hidden from the public gaze, far from the realms of prying eyes, almost imperceptibly on the furthermost fringes of your being, You wanna be adored.

 

[cathal marcs]

Inspiral Carpets most underated band ever FACT!

 

[shoddysolutions]

The inexplicable success of the Mondays and the Roses can be put down to two simple infuluences - ecstasy and acid.

You didn't have to be wigged out on drugs to appreciate their music, but it certainly helped.

The Roses were riding the wave of the post-acid house revival of psychedelia and the hippy culture of the 1960s, while the Mondays were just doing what they always did - making dance music for demented white youth.

The rest of us who mainly indulged in weed and booze really couldn't understand what all the fuss was about and continued to buy Dinosaur Jr and Pixies albums instead.

That's not to say that I didn't know that there was something very, very big going on. I was working in a record shop at the time in Stoke-on-Trent and i have never seen a record fly off the shelves as fast as the 'Hallelujah' ep.

 

[Bomber]

I was working in a record shop at the time in Stoke-on-Trent.

Mike Lloyd's ?

 

[Flashman]

I was working in a record shop at the time in Stoke-on-Trent and i have never seen a record fly off the shelves as fast as the 'Hallelujah' ep.

Must dust it off one day and give it a listen.

 

[ouchmonkey]

Mike Lloyd's ?

I wanted to ask that too.

come on solutions - pipe up

Saw the Mondays at Victoria Hall if I remember right.
Massive version of Wrote For Luck with all the strobes goin' on the crowd the whole time. God they were good.

 

[shoddysolutions]

Mike Lloyds ('89-90) and Lotus in Piccadilly Arcade ('90-'92), yup.

Oversaw the glory days of lotus as it transformed itself into a dance specialist outlet, working alongside the inimitable Pete Bromley who can perform magic with two pieces of vinyl and a pair old turntables. I designed and produced Golden's first ever banner and flyer and DJed in their back room at the Academy. A friend and i used to preside over 12-hour marathons each bank holiday at the Tontine pub in Hanley, where we were paid in beer and a friend of mine spilled her wine all over Robbie Williams. Ah, happy days.

Never caught the mondays at the Viccy Hall but I did go to the Sasha all-nighter there and also saw the Pixies.

 

[Batley]

If you were 17 in a northern town in 1989 The Stone Roses and The Happy Mondays felt like nowt on earth. It wor grand.

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

All I can say is that for me Happy Mondays were the right band at the right time, I can't imagine my teenage years without them

 

[Strawman]

the music of my youth so no way are they overrated shite

 

[Pigeon]

I bought a copy of The Stone Roses first album the other week for £4.99.. Its shite. Thought it was shite in 1989, still think its shite.

That was a fiver well spent then.