Black Grape

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Black Grape
Origin	England
Years active	1993 - 1998
Former members
Shaun Ryder Bez Kermit

Black Grape were a rock and roll 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.

1 History
2 Discography
- 2.1 Albums
- 2.2 Singles
3 External links

[edit] 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 disintergration 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 Jed, 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 Temazapan anti-depression 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.

It's Great When You're Straight... Yeah received critical acclaim in the UK, but the group made little impact in the U.S.. The album cover featured a picture of then recently imprisoned terrorist Carlos The Jackal.

The subsequent album Stupid Stupid Stupid was less favoured. The group split in 1998 after Ryder fired the rest of band while touring, starting with Kermit, who suffered from septicemia, and even Bez, who was unsatisfied with his financial situation.