Happy Mondays

Enormously influential on both the music and club scene of late-1980s/early '90s, the Happy Mondays emerged from singer Shaun Ryder's desire to merge the energy of dance music (distinct from funk) with the rawness of the post-punk era, filtered through the anything-goes atmosphere of the '80s Manchester/Factory Records scene. Fuelled by drugs and manic energy, the Mondays' first couple of records were cornerstones of what would become known as 'baggy'. Highly publicised drug problems contributed to the band's dissolution, but Ryder and cohort Bez reappeared in the mid-'90s under the banner of Black Grape.

• rock
• alternative/indie
• britpop
• 1990s
• 1980s
• 2000s