Monday 22 September 2025

The glorious heyday, between 1987-1992, of Madchester‘s legends and 24-hour party people HAPPY MONDAYS is long gone. But they keep on touring for years now (bills
need to be paid, I guess) mostly in the UK.

But last night they landed in my hometown of Ghent (Belgium)
for the first concert of their European tour.

And? The sound mixer messed up big time. He created a dung pool of noise, where
all instruments and voices seemed to try too hard to be the loudest, which turned the
whole resonance into a dissonant chaos. A real pity for big fans, like me.

That aside, we noted that Shaun Ryder‘s voice is still intact, well in the
moments it didn’t drown in the turbulence, and he’s still not moving.

The voiceless mover and groover, is the incomparable Bez of course, swinging from left to right and back, rattling his marakas non-stop, shaking hands with the front row now and then, inciting the crowd, of whom most weren’t really bothered by the disturbing racket and swayed their hips to the beat.

Without Bez (then and now) the energy and party vibes would drop to point zero. He is
the hardest worker in the band. Also notable is that longtime female singer Rowetta left the band at the start of this year and is now replaced by a similar great soul voice, named Firouzeh Razavi. She’s Bez wife.

1990

It was nice to see the former e-cstatic dopeheads back again after all these years. Nostalgia, you know. But as said the sound mixer turned the whole shebang into
an annoying havoc. Fire him.

Wait, I’ll stream their greatest hits (again) to make myself happy.

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Live photos by Turn Up The Volume