Without Lennon’s crazy stream of ramblings on ‘Come Together’ and some funky loops, it’s questionable whether ‘Kinky Afro’, ‘W.F.L’ and ‘Loose Fit’ would have ever seen the light of day. But who knows? In a strange parallel universe where everything is four-sizes too large and weird bods on E’s shuffle up and corridors with a pair of maracas, they may well have happened regardless. And whilst there’s no denying the source material – two-parts acid house funk to one-parts shoegazing indie shuffle – there’s clearly no way anyone BUT Shaun Ryder and his ugly bunch of miscreants could have shaped such misshapes into something resembling gold. Were they unique? Of they weren’t. The Stone Roses, New Order, Stereo MCs and the Charlatans were all there or thereabouts. What was unique was the sheer grotesque unlikeness of it all. Regionality was no longer a lingering aside in the swinging paradigms of rock, it was central to all that a band was. If the Happy Mondays weren’t the sound of Manchester, they were at the very least the sound of getting absolutely loved-up and mashed down its legendary nightclub: the Hacienda. And then there was Shaun Ryder, the pug-ugly icon of a generation gurning lasciviously on every occasion, replacing the eloquent sophistry of departing icon Morrissey with complete and laudable nonsense and pissing us all off with his bevy of beautiful ladies. It was unique for all the wrong reasons: it was decadent, despicable and damning. And we loved ‘em for it.
So here you have it. All the best bits of the Mondays (‘Kingky Afro’, ‘Loose Fit’, ‘W.F.I’, ‘Mad Cyril’, ‘Bob’s Your Uncle’, ‘Lazyitis’, ‘Stinkin’ Thinkin’’ ‘Twenty Four Hour Party People’ ) and a few of the (many) embarrassments (‘The Boys Are Back In Town’, ‘Stayin’ Alive’). There’s also a couple of remixes too, although why we have the Club Mix of ‘Hallelujah’ over and above the original is anyone’s guess.
Okay, it’s unlikely to have ever happened the way it did without the prodigious production know-how of Paul Oakenfold – master crossover merchant – but for the first time since the Pistols it seemed that you didn’t have to sport make-up or a mullet to score a hit in the UK charts. It was real then. It’s real now.