Black Grape could only have been made in Manchester.
The swagger, fun and cryptic humour seem hewn from a city that offers a different way of English urban life to London.
Both Shaun Ryder and Paul Leveridge, known as Kermit, came from edgy-but-cool parts of the city. In Shaun’s case Salford, with Kermit originating Moss Side.
So we have two restlessly creative men, both from the wrong side of the tracks, neither inclined to go to art school or enrol on an MFA programme, yet loaded with street smarts and musical talent, and wanting the world. Good old punk had told every scally they could have it, and a generation went for it in their own ways, with varying degrees of success. Shaun’s astonishing rise and fall with the Happy Mondays is the stuff of legend.
As the friendship developed, so too did a stunning collaboration.
It’s Great When You’re Straight...Yeah, the ironically entitled album, gave a nod to their hook up as drugs buddies around the grizzled fag end of Happy Mondays and Kermit’s band The Ruthless Rap Assassins. It was a storming phoenix rising from the ashes of the other projects that seemed to have run their course. Black Grape followed this up with Stupid, Stupid, Stupid. Then...nothing…. until now.
Shaun’s triumphs, struggles and diversions have been well documented.
The usual contract and money hassles, a best-selling account of life in the Mondays, a stunning electropunk album from nowhere in Amateur Night in the Big Top, a serious and informative investigation of UFO’s as an author and broadcaster, a reality TV bon vivant and finally, a life as a clean-living family man, which has supplanted his old ways. And of course, there was the reformation of the Happy Mondays. Years of hard living, however, had taken their toll on Kermit.
He developed health issues making a remarkable recovery from his life-threatening condition and operation, and this would be the catalyst for another Black Grape collaboration, which resulted in the 2017 album Pop Voodoo - a rewind to more than 20 years ago, and the glory days.
Now, Black Grape are back on the road. Shaun’s word play has never been deployed to such devastating effect, and he scores a bullseye whether he hits the obvious targets (Trump), or the more obscure ones.
Black Grape will play Bedford Esquires next Saturday (March 23). You'll not find a more intimate show...
Special guests will be Collapsed Lung. Remember their anthemic Eat My Goal? Yep, you do!
Tickets are on sale at £25, but they won't wait around for long - get yours here
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