Bez
Freaky Dancing: Me and the Mondays
Brilliantly written account of Bez’s early years and how he came to be the maraca shaking freaky dancer of the Happy Mondays. Full of hilarious anecdotes and perceptive musings on his upbringing and life. We see how he falls out with authority early on in his life despite or maybe because he’s the son of a dibble and a very straightlaced mother. Bez soon runs with the wrong crowd and gets an early taste of bird but also travels through Europe and Morocco sampling a life of more possibilities than he found in Salford and Manchester city centre. His drug taking must give Keith Richards a run for his money if all is to be believed and it’s this that really gets him in with the nascent Happy Mondays and their drug fuelled new sound. The way he writes really brings you into his life and hopes completely immersing me in the story and the late 80s Manchester scene as it develops. As the Mondays start to break E hits the streets and helps form the Mondays classic rock clubbing dancehall mashup sound (with a little help from Oakenfold) that takes them stratospheric. As they make it big the pranks and drugs follow suite but as the latter get heavier and more addictive the band spiral downwards along with Factory Records to the well documented ending in the Caribbean island that others have said was to get X off the smack but put him smack onto crack island. That Bez survived his story intact seems either unlikely or a miracle and to come out of it with two kids even more so. I’ve read this 15 years after it was written and would like to see the next instalment if there’s one out there. Must search for it. He says he wants to write like he speaks but it doesn’t read like it’s in a Manc dialect which isn’t necessarily bad but he does throw in a bit of street jargon (dibble for copper) and a lot of four letters. The main gripe is insisting on dropping the d for every and and the g for every ing which makes it hard to read and is just plain daft given the eloquence of some of the sentences and even putting the right accents over the e and a in debacle. It looks like they’ve gone through the whole text with a spell checker but cutting the d’s and g’s out. Tres pretentious. Anyways apart from that irritation it’s a great read that draws you into Bez’s world and makes you think about the bits that you’ve been through like pubs, teenage scraps, gigs and clubs. And some of the best descriptions of gigs and dancing at clubs I’ve read including the joys of Freaky Dancin’ and gets me wondering how the hell someone managed to make a career of it.
http://www.cerysmaticfactory.info/freaky_dancin.php
Freaky Dancing: Me and the Mondays
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| Reissue |
Brilliantly written account of Bez’s early years and how he came to be the maraca shaking freaky dancer of the Happy Mondays. Full of hilarious anecdotes and perceptive musings on his upbringing and life. We see how he falls out with authority early on in his life despite or maybe because he’s the son of a dibble and a very straightlaced mother. Bez soon runs with the wrong crowd and gets an early taste of bird but also travels through Europe and Morocco sampling a life of more possibilities than he found in Salford and Manchester city centre. His drug taking must give Keith Richards a run for his money if all is to be believed and it’s this that really gets him in with the nascent Happy Mondays and their drug fuelled new sound. The way he writes really brings you into his life and hopes completely immersing me in the story and the late 80s Manchester scene as it develops. As the Mondays start to break E hits the streets and helps form the Mondays classic rock clubbing dancehall mashup sound (with a little help from Oakenfold) that takes them stratospheric. As they make it big the pranks and drugs follow suite but as the latter get heavier and more addictive the band spiral downwards along with Factory Records to the well documented ending in the Caribbean island that others have said was to get X off the smack but put him smack onto crack island. That Bez survived his story intact seems either unlikely or a miracle and to come out of it with two kids even more so. I’ve read this 15 years after it was written and would like to see the next instalment if there’s one out there. Must search for it. He says he wants to write like he speaks but it doesn’t read like it’s in a Manc dialect which isn’t necessarily bad but he does throw in a bit of street jargon (dibble for copper) and a lot of four letters. The main gripe is insisting on dropping the d for every and and the g for every ing which makes it hard to read and is just plain daft given the eloquence of some of the sentences and even putting the right accents over the e and a in debacle. It looks like they’ve gone through the whole text with a spell checker but cutting the d’s and g’s out. Tres pretentious. Anyways apart from that irritation it’s a great read that draws you into Bez’s world and makes you think about the bits that you’ve been through like pubs, teenage scraps, gigs and clubs. And some of the best descriptions of gigs and dancing at clubs I’ve read including the joys of Freaky Dancin’ and gets me wondering how the hell someone managed to make a career of it.
http://www.cerysmaticfactory.info/freaky_dancin.php
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