The Beat Surrender

When I first asked for guest list tickets for the Happy Mondays it was if i’m being honest a mixture of two things that had made me put the request in. The first was the fact that The Sunshine Underground were supporting them, the second was more out of curiosity to see just how much of a train wreck Shaun and Bez had turned into!

Strange then that i’m giving this gig a whopping eight out of ten, yet for very different reasons to what I first imagined. For a start due to incompetency on the guest list (hey how hard is it to look and find Kevin rather than Kev or at worse find one and realise it might be the same person??) we don’t get in to see The Sunshine Underground, in fact they are about half way through their set when we finally land into the steaming hot Refectory.

The second and less likely reason is because The Happy Mondays really do roll back the years in superb fashion, Shaun Ryder seems to have sorted himself out a lot and looks better for it, he’s coherent and sings pretty damn well (or as well as you can expect). Bez is his trademark self, looning around, geeing up the crowd and doing his usual mix of freaky dancing.

Musically they get the set just about spot on for me, my only gripe being that they avoid the Yes Please era completely which means I don’t get one of my favourites, Sunshine And Love, that though is just a minor gripe because they open with Kinky Afro and it just goes off from there.

We get a nice surprise in the form of Gods Cop, they chuck in a couple of new tracks including the title song from the new album Uncle Dysfunktional, Loose Fit is as sumptuous a laidback groove as you’ll ever hear and they even throw Reverand Black Grape into the mix.

Continue