Modern Rock Tracks No. 1s - Happy Mondays and "Kinky Afro"
Happy Mondays top the charts at the peak of the "Madchester" craze with "Kinky Afro," a funky mix of rock, dance-club beats, and psychedelia
Happy Mondays - “Kinky Afro”
Weeks atop the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart: 1 week (January 19, 1991)
Billboard Hot 100 chart toppers during this time:
Janet Jackson - “Love Will Never Do (Without You)”
The “Madchester” scene of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s sounds like it was a pretty good time. I was 11 when “Kinky Afro” topped the Modern Rock Tracks chart in the U.S., a time in my life when I was highly unlikely to be grooving to indie rock fused with psychedelia with a bouncy club beat. I also wasn’t doing drugs, which is clearly one of the appeals of this particular music scene. But if I were a few years older and living in England at the time, I have a feeling I might be telling a different story after getting lost in the Happy Mondays’ only MRT chart-topper.
As I approach middle age (or am I already middle aged?!), I become more cognizant of the number of years remaining in my life where I can experience certain things: riding roller coasters, holding my own in a mosh pit, going to concerts, and many other things we take for granted when we’re young before the window of opportunity starts to close and eventually slam shut. And when I listen to “Kinky Afro,” I get transported to a time when that window was wide open, when just aimlessly floating through a room listening to groovy jams felt like something you could do every day for the rest of your life.
I don’t know that I necessarily yearn for the opportunity to live this type of existence now, if for no other reason than it’d probably seem odd for a middle-aged man to participate in this type of thing from the perspective of modern youngsters. That window of time has definitely closed. But “Kinky Afro” brings out in me a nostalgia for a time I never knew, a time I felt like I experienced even if I didn’t, and is a wonderful time capsule for anyone looking to relive the freedom and mindlessness of youth.
That said, this isn’t my scene, and I’m decidedly un-British, so a lot of the lyrics go over my head:
I said dad you're shabby
You run around and groove like a baggy
You're only here just out of habit
All that's mine you might as well have it
I had to look it up, but I guess “baggy” in this context is referring to the Madchester scene itself, and how people, according to Urban Dictionary, were
”distinguishable by their lolloping, psychedelic-tinged sounds, pudding bowl haircuts and huge 21" flares (from which the name ‘baggy’ derived).” The band is definitely sporting that look in the music video, which seems to be a Madchester utopia of “shabby” fellows “grooving like baggies” in a room filled with beautiful women who are dancing slowly and emotionlessly to the rhythmic, repetitive beat. What a time to be alive!
I defer to bassist Paul Ryder, younger brother of frontman Shaun Ryder, to describe the other lyrics in the song from this interview with The Guardian in 2014:
I think Kinky Afro’s opening line – “Son, I’m 30, I only went with your mother cos she’s dirty” – is about me, because I had a kid young. Because I’m Shaun’s younger brother, he was always observing me up close. When he sings, “I had to crucify some brother today”, he points right at me. And the line “Dad, you’re a shabby, you run around and groove like a baggy” has got to be about our dad. He was on tour with us all the time, let loose from Manchester, and enjoying himself all over the world. “I don’t have a decent bone in me” could be Shaun singing about himself. For a while, he was called Evil Uncle X. He was up to a lot of bad things at that point. “I never help or give to the needy” is another line like that.
— Paul Ryder, Happy Mondays bassist
Lyrical discussions aside, this song is a stone-cold groove from start to finish, and instantly mellows you out from the first note. The guitar and bass lines are smooth, and the drums provide a rhythmic counterpoint to the wailing psychedelic hum that permeates the entire track. You’d be forgiven if you weren’t paying attention to the lyrics at all, given how hypnotic the music can be. Eagle-eared listeners probably picked up on the “yippie yippie ya ya yea yea” going into the refrain, closely mirroring Patti LaBelle’s perfect “Lady Marmalade” refrain from the mid ‘70s. That part of “Kinky Afro” fits if only to capture a particular generational aesthetic, but it works.
And maybe that was the point of Madchester all along: to integrate modern indie rock with overtures to the musical and spiritual past. I wonder if composing songs and grooves like “Kinky Afro” were intended to evoke feelings of a romanticized past for the band members, in the same way that listening to the song now reminds me of simpler times and youthful indiscretions. It’s like they were channeling the soul of musicians and youngsters from before their time, bringing that spirit into the modern era.
Or maybe I’m overthinking it.
Regardless of the themes and the reasons for its success, the Madchester scene peaked around this time and slowly dissipated from here, as this was Happy Mondays highest charting track. Their album “Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches” topped out at #89 on the U.S. album charts and #4 in the U.K., and spawned two additional MRT-charting singles: “Step On,” which peaked at #9 during the summer of 1990 when Gene Loves Jezebel topped the MRT chart, and “Bob's Yer Uncle,” which topped out at #23 later on in 1991.
The band released one more studio album, 1992’s “Yes Please,” which featured “Stinkin’ Thinkin’,” the last single from the band to chart in the U.S. It’s a fine track, but not quite on the same level as the music that came out of their previous album. The group disbanded in its original form in 1993, but has since reformed in myriad iterations since then.
I think I’d appreciate Madchester more if I was just a little bit older in the early ‘90s, but I find myself enjoying the music more than I would have expected. As my musical tastes expand through my work on this project, I imagine myself digging deeper into the bands who shaped Madchester’s sound and believe I’ll find more treasures like “Kinky Afro” to whet my appetite. I’ve kept open my window of music appreciation beyond the songs I already know and love, and I hope that window stays open for the rest of my life.
Rating: 8/10
Chart Check: A look at other notable MRT chart songs from this time period
What pairs better with Madchester than some shoegaze, a cover of a very instrumentally loose Beatles song, and Echo and the Bunnymen moving on with a new lead singer after Ian McCulloch left the band and found success with his own MRT chart-topping hit? I have all of those, along with the MRT debut of Goo Goo Dolls, transitioning their sound from punk to a softer rock edge that would be their calling card from the mid ‘90s onward.
“Sweetness And Light” by Lush: One of the earliest bands to influence the rising popularity of “shoegaze” music, Lush hit their commercial peak in 1991 with “Sweetness And Light,” which topped out at #4 on the MRT chart behind “Kinky Afro.” These songs played together would make for a very mellow, psychedelic one-two punch, with Miki Berenyi and Emma Anderson providing sweet but haunting lead vocals.
“Tomorrow Never Knows” by Danielle Dax: The Beatles closed out “Revolver” with “Tomorrow Never Knows,” a wild mishmash of instrumental tomfoolery that closed out what is arguably the band’s best album. I gotta say, for as much as I like the Beatles version of the song, I really think Danielle Dax takes it to an interesting place with her cover version. Alternative fans felt the same, and its ubiquity on the radio among tracks like those from Happy Mondays and Lush catapulted the song to a #5 peak in 1991.
“Enlighten Me” by Echo and the Bunnymen: Noel Burke replaced Ian McCulloch as the frontman for the Bunnymen with the release of the band’s 1990 album “Reverberation,” and the aesthetic of first single “Enlighten Me” fit in well with the other bands in the top 10 at this time. Critics were mixed on Burke’s ability to carry on the legacy of his predecessor, but at least initially the band found commercial success and a #8 peak with this track. But lacking McCulloch and a musical direction, this would be the band’s last top-10 U.S. hit on any chart, though they continued to find modest success in their native U.K. for many years.
“There You Are” by Goo Goo Dolls: There’s something amusing about John Rzeznik sporting ‘80s-era hair-metal hair, which typified the band’s aesthetic at the time the Buffalo, N.Y., natives cracked the Modern Rock Tracks chart for the first time with “There You Are.” This rock track, which peaked at #24 on the MRT chart behind Happy Mondays, marked a transition point between the band’s harder-rock edge in the late ‘80s, and the softer mainstream rock sound that would become their calling card from the mid ‘90s onward.
Happy New Year, friends and fans! See you in 2024!
I don’t know if you’ve seen, or ever heard of, the movie “24 Hour Party People.” It’s a look back at the Factory Records/Manchester scene, through the eyes of Tony Wilson and the bands Joy Division/New Order and Happy Mondays. The music alone is worth it, but the view into the Madchester scene is quite revealing. It’s not a documentary (Steve Coogan plays Wilson in the film), but serves as one. I think you’d like it.