Author: TinyHands (Alias for privacy) Editor: Valfajr
Madchester was a musical & cultural scene that existed in the British city of Manchester
(Hence the name) during the late 1980s. The scene was associated with indie-dance aka.
indie-rave which saw artists merge indie music with elements of acid house, psychedelia
and 60s pop music. Factory Records' (A British label popularized by their music press)
Tony Wilson popularized the term Madchester. This music scene's most famous groups include
the Charlatans, Inspiral Carpet, Happy Mondays, the Stone Roses, 808 State, & James. The
scene was additionally highly influenced by drugs such as MDMA where the Haçienda nightclub
(co-owned by members of the New Order) was a major catalyst for the unique musical ethos
in the city which is now known as the "Second Summer of Love".
Hacienda interior during its heydays (1990)
The scene has a lot of indie and other assorted alt dance genres that are related, these include
genres such as: baggy, acid house, balearic beat, chillout room music & grebo.
Shall we take a trip?
Northside - Shall We Take A Trip? (Official Video)
James & the Stone Roses were one of the progenitors from the Madchester scene, just like the original
author of this post I encountered them in Guitar Hero 3 (without looking into them further).
The Stone Roses - She Bangs the Drums (Official Video)
Guitar Hero 3 - "She Bangs The Drums" Expert 100% FC (311,804)
The Stone Roses - Fools Gold (Official Video)
Tiny: I only had portable consoles for a majority of my childhood and would often play a lot of cheap shovel-ware games including this FIFA game (CLICK HERE) that had a heavily compressed 9 second loop from Fool's Gold. I used to just open the menu up and let it run, lol. Unrelated, but those other two songs on the soundtrack are also classics.
James - Say Something (US Version)
Tiny: This album was produced by Brian Eno and was a personal favorite of my local indie radio station (WXPN 88.5). I would hear it all the time as a kid either being played by them or my dad.
The following video is a documentary that covers some of the Madchester scene and contains a stellar soundtrack.
A Short Film About Chilling
Quoted from IMDB:
Seminal film capturing the UK infiltration of the Ibiza club scene before it took off on a massive scale commercially. Many of the DJs/artists featured are experiencing somewhat of a reneossamfe whilst others have taken their musical journey in other directions. Soundtrack contains some of the classic "Balearic" tunes of all time.
IMDB link: (CLICK HERE)
Soundtrack: (CLICK HERE)
The compilation "Various Artists: Come Together - Adventures On The Indie Dancefloor 1989-1992, 4CD" (CLICK HERE) is named after the following song.
Primal Scream - Come Together (Farley Mix 7")
The "Second Summer of Love" is exemplified by dance bands that cover late 1960s-early 1970s songs, remixing them for the club:
World Of Twist - She's A Rainbow (Right Foot Yellow Mix)
Original: The Rolling Stones - She's A Rainbow
Remix: Fluke
Strawberry Fields Forever (Raspberry Ripple Mix)
Original: The Beatles - Strawberry Fields Forever
Saint Etienne - Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Andrew Weatherall Mix)
This song has a decent amount of renditions and remixes...
Original: Neil Young, 1970
Remix: Andrew Weatherall
The editor (yours truly) also likes Saint Entienne's cover of "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" which is included in their debut album Foxbase Alpha (1991),
Saint Etienne's pop music is intertwined with dance-pop and is highly influenced by
clubbing and 1960s pop.
Saint Etienne - Only Love Can Break Your Heart
Tiny: Earlier this year I had the pleasure of seeing the Charlatans and shoegaze legends Ride live and it was was one of the best concerts i've seen. The Charlatans performed the entirety of their sophomore album Between 10th and 11th + some extras
My fav song from that album:
The Charlatans - Tremelo Song
Ride performed the entirety of their debut album Nowhere + some extras
My fav song from that album:
Ride - Vapour Trail (Video)
Tiny: Ride brought Tim Burgess (vocalist of the Charlatans) back out to play harmonica on Here and Now
Fun fact: the connection between these two bands goes all the way back to 1990, when Ride named their song Polar Bear after the Charlatans' Polar Bear
This section will be a good segue into another topic I want to discuss: the crossover of indie dance and shoegaze/dreampop music
It's easier to dance when gazing at your shoes.
My Bloody Valentine - Soon (The Andrew Weatherall Mix)
*another one from A Short Film About Chilling
Tiny: Shoegazing and Madchester happened more or less at the same time/place and crossed over with each other as much as they ran adjacent to each other.
Creation Records:
Known for being the home for many of the shoegaze pioneers (My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Slowdive, Swervedriver, the Boo Radleys, the Telescopes, Medicine), Creation Records were also known for their contributions to dance/acid house with the likes of Primal Scream's Screamadelica and Ed Ball's Love Corporation project. Keeping the Faith compiles some of their most dancefloor-focused releases.
----
Moving onto in my opinion the most underrated shoegazing band: the Telescopes.
TELESCOPES - Everso + Celeste
Tiny: Upon being signed to Creation, they were challenged to write songs with the potential to become more popular than their previous noise-rock works. At the time, Madchester was popular so groovy basslines and funky rhythms were the mandate. The resulting singles were Everso and Celeste (my personal favorites from the band) and the sprawling psychedelic remix Celestial.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fD6a1DkyfI
speaking of Ed Ball
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHknOqd8Pb4
*also a Weatherall remix, full version here, original here
Even before his foray into acid house, Ed Ball had a long and storied indie career. He would late go on to be a touring member for the Boo Radleys for their album and magnum opus Giants Steps which fused many disparate influences including but not limited to dance & dub.
Rodney King (Song for Lenny Bruce)
*features vocals from Meriel Barham of the Pale Saints, more shoegaze royalty.
This track also received the remix treatment from the dance group St. Etienne, who were friends and housemates with the Boo Radleys around this time.
The Boo Radleys - Rodney King [St Etienne Remix]
There were a few more associated with this album, but I will be skipping over them for brevity's sake.
The ambient chillout duo (Mark Pritchard & Tom Middleton) provided this ethereal remix for Slowdive
Medicine (Warning for beginning portion lol) were the first American band signed to Creation Records and despite being many timezones away from Manchester, they also dabbled a little with dance.
I've mentioned Ride a few times in this write up despite them never really making dance music, however they did have an apparent appreciation of the scene. Here is Mark Gardener from Ride pretending to play the keyboard for one of Primal Scream's TOTP appearances:
Anyways, on a related note, here is Debbie Googe of My Bloody Valentine actually playing bass for Primal Scream when she was a touring member of the band:
Pete Astor, Slowdive, Ride, Swervedriver, The Telescopes, and Bobby Gillespie (Primal Scream) give the lowdown on their favourites.
Madchester was largely a youth movement with a lot of drugs involved but I wouldn't entirely label it as "rebellious".
Here is some cross-generational fun that was had by EMF
playing their hit single Unbelievable with the legendary Tom Jones.
Tom Jones & EMF "Unbelieveable"
playing with David Letterman's studio band.
EMF - Lies (Letterman Show 1991)
I'm talking about the good, the bad, the average, and unique
Let's hear it for the grebos, the crusties, and you and I
Hello, good evening, welcome, and goodbye
The Grebo fashion style was dreadlocks, partially shaved heads and high ponytails, undercut or shaved long hair, leather bike jackets and/or jeans, baggy clothing (esp. shorts), boots, basketball sneakers, lumberjack shirts, loose tatty jeans, army surplus clothing, and eccentric hats and scarfs. One can say they pretty much dress like Sam Hyde.
Neds Atomic Dustbin
Carter USM
EMF
We’d just go to Cinderford village hall and muck about dressing up in jumble sale clothes. -James Atkins, vocals
We looked to American hip-hop for fashion, and we used our first advance to buy really big dodgy puffer jackets -Ian Dench, guitar
Pop Will Eat Itself
Jesus Jones
At this point I could post more but you get the point it's pretty much Sam Hyde.
Prior to the whole Madchester scene, Manchester was known for its post punk music with bands like Joy Division, New Order, the Smiths, the Chameleons, etc.
Between the distorted guitar riffs, gravelly growling vocals, and cryptic lyrics I think New Fast Automatic Daffodils were the Madchester band that most retained the post punk sound that had preceded their movement.
New Fast Automatic Daffodils - It's Not What You Know
Not all of the artists on the scene were specifically from Manchester; some weren't even from Britain.
Parallel to the emergence of acid house in the UK, Belgium had a similar-sounding genre known as New Beat. Praga Khan and Jade 4 u (both from the group Lords of Acid) were the major international crossovers between new beat and acid house. Here's a couple of their appearances on British tv:
I'M IN ECSTASY!
Praga Khan would later go on to form the Immortals with Olivier Adams (also of Lords of Acid) to create the soundtrack for the home release of Mortal Kombat.
Fellow ravers the Utah Saints remixed the theme for use in the Mortal Kombat Movie.
Creation Records dance music feature (Snub TV) February 1991
Primal Scream - Loaded (Original Video)
Hypnotone – Dream Beam (MTV-E 1990 recording) Upscale from letterboxed PAL VHS + Audio Remux)
State of the UK indie music scene in 1990:
The Times , Happy Mandays , Stone Roses , New F.A.D. , Northside , Paris Angels , Inspiral Carpets , The Carlatans , Pixies , Birdland , Ride , The Soup Dragons , My Bloody Valentine , Ocean Colour Scene , My Jealous God, Moonflowers , Primal Scream , The Farm , Flowered Up , Swervedriver , Teenage Fanclub , Chapterhouse , Galaxie 500 , Lush , Cranes , Beef , The Family Cat , Carter USM
Kurt Loder's 1990 report on MTV's 120 Minutes about Manchester UK's new music scene featured The Stone Rises, Happy Mondays, 808 State, Inspiral Carpets, New Order, etc.
"When the White Love single was to be released in the US, the record company in NY thought the Stephen Hague radio mixes were a bit sanitised and that the original Weatherall mix would go down much better. (At least someone was finally seeing sense in London Records.) So we quickly nipped into a studio to film some extra footage, which was edited together with extra scenes from the original video. On Jim’s bass guitar is a piece of tape with Viva Pedro scrawled on it, which remained there for most of our UK tour and beyond. (Pedro was our tour manager.)
This was shot around the same time we were doing the photo shoot for Why Don't You Take Me single promotion, when Dot shocked us all by walking into the studio with bright red hair."
One Dove // White Love | Guitar Paradise Mix (Official Music Video)
One Dove - Breakdown
"This was the Breakdown video that was shot in LA, for the promotion of the film The Chase which used the song as part of the soundtrack. This version is the full band edit without any footage from the film. And definitely far superior to the alternative film footage edit."
One Dove - Why Don't You Take Me
Shot in New York in December 1993, this was the video for the single taken from the album Morning Dove White. Locations in the video featured Coney Island and the infamous Chelsea Hotel.
(all text sourced from band member Ian Carmichael's youtube channel)
One Dove - Fallen
One Dove - Jolene (B-side Cover)
King of the slums - Fanciable Headcase - Live 1989 4K
"King of the Slums were a British alternative rock band. Formed in Greater Manchester in the mid-1980s, the band specialised in a kind of electric violin and guitar-driven rock music, and released their debut single in 1986. Whilst the band earned some critical acclaim from the UK music press, commercial success eluded them and the group disbanded in the early 1990s following the release of their second studio album, Blowzy Weirdos (1991). An album of new material plus some older songs appeared in 2009 credited to both King of the Slums and Slum Cathedral User, which was the original name of the group.
Formed in Salford and Hulme, Greater Manchester, England, by writer Charley Keigher aka Charlie Keighera (vocals, guitar) and Sarah Curtis (electric violin), initially as Slum Cathedral User,the group made its recording debut with the "Spider Psychiatry" single in 1986 on a small independent label (SLR Records). Curtis had studied violin at the Royal Northern College of Music, but dropped out after Keigher reportedly assaulted someone there. Further releases followed in 1988 and 1989 on the Play Hard label, now with bassist Jon Chandler and drummer Stuart Owen (who replaced a succession of drummers), most of which were collected on the album Barbarous English Fayre (1989). The band also recorded a session for John Peel's BBC Radio 1 show in 1988. An incendiary live performance of "Fanciable Headcase", shown on the influential Snub TV television programme, earned the band national exposure, and helped to push their EPs up the independent chart, "Bombs Away on Harpurhey" reaching #8. After switching to Midnight Music, the band issued its debut album proper, Dandelions (1989), to favourable reviews in the British music press. Keigher and Curtis were now joined by a new rhythm section. The following year, King of the Slums signed to Cherry Red Records and issued the Blowzy Weirdos album in 1991, with Keigher's gritty take on British life again finding favour amongst the critics. Later in the year, however, the band broke up without ever achieving a commercial breakthrough to match their critical acclaim. The band performed nearly 200 concerts during their career resulting in numerous bootlegs being circulated, all of which the band disowned. A cult following has remained and grown over the years since the band broke up."
