Musical Masterclass- Madchester

Hoorah- The first ever musical masterclass was on Madchester, musical home of the stone roses, happy mondays, charlatans and loads of other guys

This week on Rising, I played out...

The Inspiral Carpets- This is How it Feels
The Charlatans- The Only One I Know
The Stone Roses- Fools Gold
The Happy Mondays- Step On
Blur- No Other Way

Some information, in case you were wondering, about Madchester:

• It was a term coined for an alternative music scene that developed in Manchester (obviously!) at the end of the 1980s/ beginning of the 1990s
• The scene mixed indie and dance music
• Although most of the pioneers of the scene were around well before the mid 80s, it was in 1988 when a series of releases came together to give the first rumblings of something big happening
• The sound, which came to be known as 'baggy' (well, it coldnt be known as madchester for ever- there were other people getting in on the act!) fused funk, psychedelia, guitar rock and house music. Strangely, it worked!
• Alongside the music, a dress code came about- everyone was wearing baggy, flared jeans (thats how it got its name!), tie-dyed tops and fishing hats.
• Come the early 90s, when Madchester was really in it's peak, the two bigger bands of the scene (Happy Mondays and Stone Roses) went off to record new albums. They didnt return for years, which meant that interest in the scene waned somewhat
• So following the demise in Madchester, other bands from different parts of the country were being influenced by it, including really early Blur, Glasgow's Soup Dragons and the Farm, from Liverpool
• Post-Madchester, you can still hear a lot of the influences in Big Beat and Brit Pop, which we'll almost certainly be dealing with in future weeks!

Article by Gemma Smith, 5 Jun 2007
Posted in The Breakfast Show

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