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Black Grape biography

Black Grape was a rock band from England.

Black Grape's music is funky and eclectic, using varied instrumentation and samples. Ryder's lyrics seemed to derive mainly from nonsense rhymes and humorous catch phrases.

History

The band was formed in 1993 by former members of Happy Mondays, Shaun Ryder and Bez. It was Ryder's first musical project after the disintegration of Happy Mondays due to his multiple drug addiction, and also the other former band members disagreeing about money earned, and was intended as much to be a line between his past life and his new one. They recruited rappers Kermit and Psycho, and drummer Jed Lynch, plus guitarist Wags, formerly of the Manchester based group the Paris Angels. Recording of new material started that year, although the group were not under contract.

In 1995 they signed to Radioactive Records (an imprint of major label BMG) and released their debut album. It's Great When You're Straight... Yeah. It immediately charted at number one in the UK Albums Chart, and spawned three Top Twenty singles.

The first single "Reverend Black Grape" even managing to outsell the Happy Mondays cover of John Kongos "(He's Gonna) Step On (You Again)", despite attempts by the Catholic Church to have the record banned for repeating long held accusations that they'd helped some Nazi war criminals escape after the war in exchange for gold and works of art they'd looted throughout Europe.

The third single, "Kelly's Heroes" - a song lampooning society's obsession with celebrities and idols that was as much to do with Ryder's own previous hero worship of people he now saw as wastrels - had its opening lyric changed before recording from "Don't talk to me about heroes - Most of these guys snort cocaine." to "Don't talk to me about heroes - most of these men sing like serfs." (Ryder initially intended it to be "Smurfs", but feared he could be breaching copyright). On the album, another song, "Temazi Party" lampooned the craze at the time for abusing Temazepam sleeping pills (aka. "jellies"), but was misspelt on the album sleeve as "Tramazi" instead of "Temazi" in order to stop any legal injunction against the album's release.

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