Ryder checks in at CivvyCorp

Amelia Troubridge's image of Shaun Ryder tying the knot made Britons of a particular vintage smirk. 'Look, Shaun looks just as boring as us now', we droled on a break from our content management systems, enjoying the Happy Mondays' singer resemblance to a lifetime office worker who has divined the middle management game aint worth the trouble but knows enough about the tech stuff to earn his keep.

'The source of amusement for those who remember the halcyon days of the late 80s is not the suit, tie or the blue-tinted glasses – it's the incongruity of Ryder as a figure of respectability', reckoned your Guardian. We can calm down with the smirking though, because he is booted up for a wedding. Not even Shaun would pick out the gangster leather jacket, big gold chains and the best Mike Ashley's Sartorial Abortion Stores had to offer for the nuptials with Joanne.

Nevertheless, we've all been there Shaun. In fact, most of us have been rocking that look for the last 20 years, on a less-than-ecstatic Monday to Friday basis, earning money to temporarily emulate your hedo credo while you were off swanning with the bezman and making cultural interventions of increased diversity but staggeringly poor quality (remember, the lad has been responsible for two and a third brilliant albums, and virtually invented drukqz). That said, i could only share my smirks with male white men of a similar age in my meatworld; the woman from America meanwhile had no idea what a 'Shaun Ryder' is.


They may have kickstarted the meme, but cant be held responsible for the narrowing of culture into dumbed down, high street alconarcosis by rote (that was Underworld, right?). Shaun didnt invent the tiresome beefed up Reality Game schtick either. Now 47, he used to rock some pretty beguiling images in his heyday. Now the urge to have it is no doubt still there, but is increasingly stunted and fidgety.

While we're at it here's an embed of the second of those two Heavenly-sourced 80s docs where Mondays are the focus of a Granada analysis of the costs of making an album (in this case Bummed - apparently it's complicated 'because people don't just buy music on vinyl anymore' in 88). There's a great footage of Do It Better at a Dingwalls album launch at the end, and Kevin Cummins opining that this was the most important popular musick since Punk. Well better than the Roses or Oasis certainly if not quite felling the Fall or creating a new order. But we can still prosecute for their generating Northside.

And i still like watching crack-keen Ryder and Bez make Terry Christian squirm after they did Judge Fudge on The Word. But i couldnt find that on YouTube (maybe Shaun can help with my SEO) so voici an Anglia TV series on Madchester. Includes NME types Maconie and James Brown doing a tongue-in-cheek design tour of Dry Bar. And Northside! Actually I love Shall We Take a Trip but they've got Rising Star here.

And here they stoned as arse in a not-exactly thorough interview from what looks like the late 80s again, in a tour de force of the tweaked manc template.