A gig too far. An embarassment. A car crash with guitars.

Look at them. Maggots trying to get by. Debasing a brand name and hoping you won't notice. It's like having My Mum's Rola Cola instead of The Real Thing. Like Processed Meat, with 80% added session musicians, this band isn't "reformed" in any sense.

It's stadium karaoke. It ain't the Happy Mondays. It's an evening of Happy Mondays music plus, performed by the Manchester All-Stars. There's two new guitarists, a new bassist, a DJ, a keyboardist, two session backing singers, and only three people from the 'original' band.

What a fucking mess. Let alone the shambolic Fat Dad bellowing the words out of tune. Shaun Ryder, is a fucking joke of a man : he can't sing, can't remember the words, and sounds like a dog howling into a megaphone. In fact, they'd be a much better band if they sacked their useless fucking singer.

Every song feted as legendary becomes just an embarassment. Shaun picks up verses, plonks them wherever he feels like dropping them, gets them all in the wrong order, and acts like your drunk Dad whose been thrown at a karaoke machine to howl tunelessly along to a band he used to like.

In the meantime, the band struggle on. Kudos to the backing band, who are shit hot, and certainly seem far keener on the show on the rest of the band themselves. The bassist and keyboardist seem to be having a whale of a time. They're the only ones, I think.

In the meantime, the Mondays rattle through a bunch of incredibly old songs with no alarms and no surprises. Almost. By the time that "Hallelujah" melds into Primal Screams "Loaded", and the band excrete a medly of "Mad Cyril" with "Jumpin' Jack Flash", I can't help but watch. It's a car crash. With guitars.

In the meantime, there's seven long minutes of silence as the band piss about, try to get some type of sound come out of the pitiful, unamped speakers. Shaun says as much - "They'll shut us down if we go one louder". Oh party party party.

By the end, at least they're trying to play something slightly different from the usual, moribund Greatest Hits set, with a wonderfully thrilling version of "24 Hr Party People", but it's too little, too late, and a pale shadow, a unconvincing imitation of the band at their best, or even their 1999 comeback tour.

Some bands should never reform. Even now, I try to wash the memory of The Sex Pistols doing stadium punk out of my stubborn brain. Now I have a new horror to add. It was what it was. It was a bunch of old clapped out hasbeens resurrecting the past for profit. Stadium karaoke.

Stick to the records. This ain't the Happy Mondays. This is an embarassment.

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.

Powered by AkoComment 1.0 beta 2!