Rock music criticism, for all its supposed involvement with such a debauched, rebellious industry, is overwhelmingly conservative and starchy, and brooks no deviation from the established diktats, demanding that tame, stuffy acts receive all the plaudits while the genuinely challenging and alive must get sidelined. Surely nobody seriously thinks that three Beatles albums belong in the top ten albums of all time? Or that U2 are somehow one of the mightiest living flag-bearers for rock 'n' roll (a mate of mine once sent me a series of links where contemporary reviewers had deemed each of U2's last 5 albums as "a return to form")? And then we have the infuriating case of the Happy Mondays, the greatest, most inventive, most iconic British group of the late 80s and early 90s, yet somehow certain critics blithely dismiss them as grubby also-rans to the Stone Roses, which leads to the patent absurdity of the Stone Roses receiving all the praise for fusing indie and dance with Fools Gold, despite the Mondays having done so earlier, more radically and better (Fools Gold doesn't really go anywhere, and its melody is oddly unmemorable for such a supposed anthem; at the same time, the Mondays were dazzling with the Madchester Rave On E.P.). One obvious reason why the critics did this: they felt they had to credit someone with such an innovation, but dance music was a wee bit tricky for them to comprehend, and anyway who wants to credit the Mondays, those slovenly thugs? No no, let's award the Roses, at least they didn't progress that far outside our ken. (For clarity's sake, I do like the Stone Roses, and will even assert that Second Coming is nowhere near as bad as its reputation suggests; well done critics, you managed to mess up there as well). So yes, it is clear to anyone with at least one partially functioning ear and an actual spine that the Mondays were not only the better band, but the ones who defined the epoch and the ones who belong more in the great rock pantheon. Kids, with that in mind, how good do you think Pills 'n' Thrills And Bellyaches is? With the fullness of time, everyone should be able to clock that PnTAB, along with much of the Mondays' back catalogue, set the agenda for much of the best British music of the 90s. Screamadelica's distillation of the E experience? The Mondays were first. Blur's sarky kitchen-sink vignettes? Grandbag's Funeral, take a bow. Jarvis Cocker's masturbation fantasies set to lyrics? Bob's Yer Uncle. Suede's flaneur sleaze? Who was ever sleazier than the Mondays? Oasis' magpie-like purloining of riffs of rock past? A technique itself purloined from the Mondays, the most brazen of thieves (literally: like their forefathers the Sex Pistols, they nicked all their instruments when starting out). The mainstreaming of dance music? Yes, other bands (significantly New Order) can claim more responsibility, but the superstar DJs of the 90s still owe quite a debt to the Mondays. It would make sense to call the Mondays the great codifiers of 90s British music, were they in any way interested in laws. Anyway, pointing out that PnTAB is influential is not the same as saying it's good, so I am fully tumescent with delight to preach to all you lost children that it's absurdly wonderful. Their previous album, the romantically titled Bummed, was also absurdly wonderful, but the two albums sound shockingly different from each other. Whereas Bummed is sordid and nebulous, PnTAB is sordid and sun-kissed, all acid house keyboards and crisp guitar melodies. PnTAB is also a textbook example of how to construct and order an album, without filler, with diversity of style yet unity of tone. How many other albums can make you dance like, well, Bez on one song, yet crack out the air guitar on the next, all the while making such a transition wholly organic? Along with this, the Mondays simply don't sound like any other band. The only bands to have come close are, as has been stated earlier, the bands who sought inspiration from these loony-tunes scallies. Your bog-standard insulated Radiohead fan will try to show disdain for the Mondays by saying they stole it all from Can and George Clinton, proving their foolishness by forgetting that the Mondays didn't care if they yoinked a melody or two, that the Mondays actually built skyscrapers on their thefts, and that the Mondays were so blisteringly original that even their pilfering couldn't detract from the fact that nothing on the planet resembled the Mondays at their peak, not even the multitude of bands that tried swiping a bit of the Mondays' shabby allure. Of course, I haven't mentioned the shiniest diamond on this jewel-bedecked album yet: Shaun Ryder's sheer magnficence as a lyricist. In my review of Meat is Murder, I spoke about the British songwriter's stance as the teller of uncomfortable truths. Shaun Ryder is an exemplar of that tradition, alongside Ray Davies, John Lydon and (quintessentially) Morrissey. Just take a look at the still-hilarious, still-biting opening couplet to album-opener Kinky Afro: Son, I'm 30 I only went with your mother 'cos she's dirty. The rest of the song, an inadequate father in utter self-pity pleading with his son to forgive him, but still too proud to apologise, with the son responding just as the father would have, understanding yet completely dismissive, remains one of the most astute character studies in all of rock (how many 90s indie songs repeat the trick of the singer explaining, "I get you, but fuck you anyway"?). Also note that, for all the hedonism the Mondays exhort, our Shaun's lyrics have not only thick strands of pessimism, but a worldly-wise stoicism. As the title says, pills 'n' thrills come with bellyaches. I have quoted one song. In fact, every song from the album can be quoted so, as demonstrations of Our Shaun's absolute lyrical expertise. Take Dennis and Lois: Honey, how's your breathing? If it stops for good, we'll be leaving. Or how about the chorus to God's Cop? God made it easy on me. That was intended to be a poke in the eye at the rabid, religiously zealous Chief Constable of Greater Manchester James Anderton, but it also serves as rather a nifty cocaine line (see what I did there?). Such pearlers cram, indeed constitute PnTAB. Shaun Ryder at his best is equal to Bob Dylan at his best, and Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches is easily one of the five greatest British albums ever recorded. However, there remains the question: why did the Mondays blow it? As hagiographic as I have been, I must be honest and admit their flaws. The Mondays' embrace of pleasure led them to unremitting sexism (the year after PnTAB, they guest-edited an issue of Penthouse). After Shaun made an unwise comment made whilst high (he joked about "selling my arse for 50p", which some tabloids reported as a confession that he had been a rentboy), the Mondays made homophobic remarks when challenged by an admittedly hostile journalist. As a liberal type, these blemishes make me wince, but I hope I don't sound dismissive to say that their youthful prejudices do not diminish them in my eyes; they are my favourite band (duh), and they have meant so much to me that I will eulogise them, especially as their failings, their humanity, are part of the reason their artistry is so embraceable. My father was a homophobe, but that doesn't mean I stopped loving him. Love is not blind, but it is forgiving. To suggest some perspective, I believe it's easier to pardon the Mondays' regrettable epithets than, say, N.W.A.'s witless, self-parodic anthems to murdering prostitutes. Aside from that serious ugliness, I should talk about their record label: the barmy indie totem of Factory Records. Tony Wilson, the Yeats-and Debord-quoting newsreader who helmed Factory, declared that Factory's greatest achievement was shepherding two truly great bands, Joy Division/New Order and the Happy Mondays. He was right. He was also right about the (literal) price such shepherding cost. The collapse of Factory Records has become one of the monumental legends of music. Factory was losing money due to the crushing debts of their revolutionary white elephant club, the Haçienda, and the only option the label saw was to get the Mondays to record a fourth album. However, our Shaun had become addicted to heroin, and their manager got the bright idea to record the album in Barbados, an island free of heroin. There was no heroin on Barbados, but it was festooned with crack, the least creative drug of all. All the money Factory sent over, the Mondays spent on crack. They then sold the record equipment for crack, then they sold the studio furniture, then they sold their clothes. Eventually, when Factory got the master tapes from Barbados, they discovered Shaun hadn't recorded any vocals. They quickly bandied him to a studio in Surrey to finish the album, and the resultant album, Yes Please!, proved a substantially weakened follow-up and a commercially and (somewhat justified) critically catastrophic release. Factory went into administration and the Mondays split in internecine hatred, their legacy tarnished by their own druggy stupidity. Unfathomably, our Shaun and Bez managed a successful comeback with their next group Black Grape, producing one classic album in It's Great When You're Straight... Yeah!, and one duffer in Stupid Stupid Stupid. Black Grape broke up, and Shaun assembled a bastardised, pub-karaoke version of the Mondays in one of the tawdriest, most depressing reformations in music history, with our Shaun playing the pathetic jester for the sole intention of paying off tax bills based on name recognition alone (is every detail microscopically right? No matter, I'm printing the legend). Taking this all together, this is why critics have bestowed the baggy, pilled-up glories on the Stone Roses, glories that rightfully belong to the Happy Mondays. Just because you're the best doesn't mean you win. But why should I care? Why should the Mondays care? Despite everything, despite all the ignominy they proffered and invited, they already proved themselves one of the greatest bands of all time, with two of the greatest albums of all time, and some of the greatest songs of all time. Neither they nor I need to worry about some Pitchfork-scrutinising wanker declaring them too coarse and visceral for their milquetoast sensibilities. Nietzsche once wrote that the belly is the one reason man does not take himself for a god. The Happy Mondays assert that the belly is exactly why a man can be a god. Bez' father was a policeman.