Bummed by Happy Mondays

Bummed, Happy Mondays' second album, came out on Factory on 21 November 1988, and you can hear exactly what the Salford gang had been up to: somewhere in 1987 and early 1988 they had found house music and ecstasy, and it rewired everything. Factory brought in Martin Hannett, who ran three weeks of sessions at The Slaughterhouse in Driffield and then moved things to Strawberry Studios to pile on extra instruments.

The result is psychedelic funk with a lurching, loved-up swing, Shaun Ryder slurring over Paul Ryder's bass, Gaz Whelan's drums, Mark Day's guitar and Paul Davis's keyboards, with dialogue from the 1970 film Performance sampled throughout and colouring the lyrics too. "Wrote for Luck" led the way, and Paul Oakenfold and Vince Clarke later remixed it as "W.F.L." Critics mostly liked it, many singling out Hannett's production, even if Factory first saw it as a disappointing seller. It has since come to stand as a defining record of acid house and the Second Summer of Love.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.