Legendary Manchester band Happy Mondays will be landing in Southend as part of their first headline tour in Five years. They will be joined on this special run of shows by very special guests and fellow ‘90s British music icons, Inspiral Carpets and Stereo MC’s.
Billed as ‘The Been There Done That Tour’, Happy Mondays front man Shaun Ryder, Bez (freaky dancing and percussion), Rowetta (vocals) Mark Day (guitar), Gary Whelan (drums) and Dan Broad (MD/guitar/keys) will perform the band’s classic hits such as ‘24 Hour Party People’, ‘Step On’, ‘Hallelujah’, ‘Loose Fit’, ‘Judge Fudge’, ‘W.F.L.’ and ‘Kinky Afro’, amongst many others.
Happy Mondays became the pioneers of the Madchester sound after signing to Tony Wilson’s Factory Records in the late ‘80s, blending their love of funk, rock, psychedelia and house with the sounds of the UK’s emerging rave scene.
The band became icons of Britain’s biggest cultural phenomenon for a generation when they crossed over into the mainstream with the release of their third album, 1990’s platinum-selling ‘Pills ‘n’ Thrills And Bellyaches’.
The Happy Mondays’ reputation as one of Britain’s most influential and loved bands was recognised in 2016 when they won the Ivor Novello Inspiration Award.
Alongside Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets were one of the most popular bands to emerge from the late-‘80s/early-‘90s Madchester scene. Following their 1989 Indie Chart-topping singles ‘Find Out Why’ and ‘Move’, the band released their breakthrough hit ‘This Is How It Feels’, which began a run of four UK Top 20 albums.
Nottingham’s Stereo MC’s first achieved mainstream success when their 1992 single ‘Connected’ became an international Top 20 hit. Taken from their smash hit Top 10 album of the same name, Connected was followed by hit singles ‘Step It Up’, ‘Ground Level’ and ‘Creation’, firmly cementing Stereo MC’s place in Hip Hop/Electronic Dance history.
