Talk about your crash course for the ravers. Rave kings Happy Mondays imploded during the making of 1992’s Yes Please—heroic drug consumption, frontman Shaun Ryder’s subsequent admission to a detox program, band dissension, and poor critical reviews spelled the end of the band. And the waning of the UK rave scene and collapse of label Factory Records didn’t help.
But Ryder wasn’t about to give up the ghost. Sans brother Paul, the former 24-hour party person reemerged in 1993 with a new band, Black Grape, and subsequently released a 1995 debut LP It’s Great When You’re Straight…Yeah. His only former Happy Mondays bandmate to follow along was legendary dancer/percussionist Bez; new members included rapper Paul “Kermit” Leveridge, drummer Ged Lynch (like Leveridge, a former member of Ruthless Rap Assassins), former Paris Angels guitarist Wags, and Oli “Dirtycash” Dillon on ocarina.
“There are no second acts in American lives” wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald, but they obviously do things differently in Madchester, because It’s Great When You’re Straight ….Yeah is a funky dance masterpiece. Like the best Happy Mondays releases it’s less an LP than an infectious get-down dance party, and proof that if the rave scene was no longer sorted for e’s and whizz, its spirit lived on thanks to It’s Great When You’re Straight…Yeah and its joyously shambolic, loosey-goosey, nonstop grooves.
The LP opens with the gospel (or perhaps I should say anti-gospel)-flavored “Reverend Black Grape.” Accompanied by guest Bledynn Richards on harmonica, Leveridge commences to preach a tent sermon guaranteed to outrage the devout (“Standing in the pews/Talking bullshit, bullshit, bullshit/Bullshit, I want to know, I want to know,/Can you feel the Spirit of the Lord?”).
Ryder then jumps in and does some slagging (“Put on your Reeboks man/And go play funky tennis”) then volleys back to Leveridge, who cries “Can… I… get… a… witness?” And while Leveridge returns to his search for witnesses Ryder does more self-serving testifying (“Oh come all ye faithful/Oh joyful and triumphant/Gather around/While I blow my own trumpet” before disrespecting Hitler-friendly Pope Pius XI (Sinead O’Connor would be proud) for helping on-the-lam Nazis find “new addresses.” And so it goes, never flagging, and I’ll gladly stand in as a witness if Black Grape needs one.
Dahni Birihani’s sitar adds Indian flavor to “In the Name of the Father,” while guest rapper Carl “Psycho” McCarthy speed raps about squeezing women’s asses and what he mysteriously calls “posterior polarity.” In the meantime Ryder goes full-on cryptic with lyrics along the lines of “Well because of no manner/I get away with murder/Going bowling where no man’s been before” before stating unequivocally that “Neil Armstrong, astronaut/He had balls bigger than King Kong” and scored a hole in one on the moon while he was at it.
Ryder opens the adrenaline-fueled hard funker “Tramazi Parti,” a putdown of the benzodiazepine Temazepam (slang name “jellies”) and its aficionados. He opens the song with the lines “Good evening, welcome to the Temazepam party,” then proceeds to describe said party as one of Dante’s circle of Hell (“Welcome to your nightmare/You can have it if you treat it right, yeah”). “No-one knows what no-one said,” sings Ryder, “the jellies are on the double bed,” after which Leveridge throws in as does Martin Slattery on saxophone.
It’s with regret that I inform you that “Kelly’s Heroes” isn’t about the WWII comedy starring Clint Eastwood. It is, rather, a massive hard rocker with a funky soul that takes aim at rock stars and celebrities in general. It opens with Paul “Wags” Wagstaff’s guitar riff and Stephen Lironi’s Hammond organ, followed by Ryder exercising his patented absurdist streak (“Don’t talk to me about heroes/Most of these men sing like serfs/Jesus was a black man/No, Jesus was Batman” before an assortment of voices offer a correction: “No, no, no, no, not at all/That was Bruce Wayne.” It’s a real banger as your rave kids like to say, or at least used to like to say, because personally I don’t have a clue. It’s true I’ve been known to rave, but only at people who disrespect Black Oak Arkansas.
Ryder delivers the lyrics on the percussion-happy “Yeah Yeah Brother” in a disappointed hush; his brother’s stabbed him in the back, and Ryder invites him to send a wreath (or two even!) to his funeral. But even a down-in-the-mouth Ryder can’t resist serving up lines that are downright strange (“Open the trunk/For the pineapple chunk”) before adding “It’s frothy, man.”
“A Big Day in the North” is percussion-heavy blue-eyed soul and works on a repetitive groove and Ryder’s command (or more likely non-command) of the French language.“Shake Well Before Opening” is similarly low-key and laid back, and opens with a “Funky!” followed by “Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough!/Rub-a-dub-dub waste the doorman at a club.” You get lots of spacy sound effects, Wagstaff’s ever-present guitar is pure funky soul picnic psychedelia, and while I’m not quite certain what the song’s about I love the lines “Nailed your own head to the dartboard/You used a Rolex to roll up your keks”—Keks being North of England slang for trousers.
On “Submarine” the party’s back in full swing—the unkillable rhythm, ecstatic percussion, and guitar sizzle provide the perfect setting for Ryder’s running commentary on consumer products: “And the boy was so proud/Of the crocodile on his sock/Someone had to tell him/It comes from planet Reebok.” The laid-back, non-stop groove “Shake Your Money,” on the other hand, is a goddamn-the-pusher-man screed. “Shake your money maker/Into little airtight bags,” sings Ryder, “We need to score a kit-kat [street term for ketamine]/We just pulled an 8-hour blag.”
Closer “Little Bob” is a Tower of Power horn-driven Motown groove with a Superfly organ riff, some pure dead brilliant guitar and lots of variations on “Boom!/It gets louder and louder and/Bang!/It gets right out of order and…” Not quite sure where Ryder’s going with the lines “Cardiovascular!/Muscles to muscular!/The great smell of Brut/Coming on after you!” but what I do know is Slattery’s soaring saxophone at the end is a real bang and a boom that gets right out of order.
I don’t hear people talk about Black Grape much, and it’s a damn shame. Call me a crank if you will, but we all have a moral and ethical obligation to listen to It’s Great When You’re Straight…Yeah, if only because it disproves the ridiculous theory (often put forward by yours truly) that abstaining from booze and mind-altering substances with cute street names will wipe clean the fun center of your brain. So go nail your own head to the dartboard and buy the damn record. It’s a 24-hour party, people, and you’re invited.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
