POP MUSIC REVIEW : A Sad Little Outing for England’s Happy Mondays

Maybe everybody involved should think of the Happy Mondays concert at the Ventura Theatre as Disappointing Tuesday.

Shaun Ryder and the rest of the highly touted British rock band must have felt right at home when they arrived at the theater late Tuesday for a sound check.

It was the kind of dark, rainy afternoon that might be rare in Southern California, but which is common back in Manchester, where the Mondays are the co-leaders with the Stone Roses of a hugely promising dance-rock scene.

There was no mistaking, however, that Ryder and his mates were in a foreign land a few hours later when they stepped on stage and saw that the 850-capacity theater was less than half full.

For the band, that was Disappointment No. 1.

There is expected to be a much larger turnout for the Mondays tonight at the Hollywood Palladium, but the fact that the band is returning to the 3,750-capacity Palladium for the second time rather than moving up to a larger room is another reminder that the Mondays--for all their influence and success back home--have yet to connect with the U.S. commercial mainstream.

For anyone concerned about the health of rock music, that is Disappointment No. 2.

At a time when most bands in rock are standing still artistically, the Mondays and other British acts--from the Stone Roses to Jesus Jones--are trying to inject some much needed ‘90s energy and vitality into the pop scene.

Their contribution isn’t just in the bands’ psychedelic-edged rock and dance rhythms, but also in their healthy disrespect for the existing pop order. In this way, the attitude of the Mondays and their informal coalition is reminiscent of the leaders in the British punk movement of the late ‘70s.

Yet this healthy, ‘90s wave of British rockers is finding it almost as hard to get mainstream radio exposure as the Sex Pistols and the Clash did back then. Given this, it’s doubly important that groups’ live performances be so strong that everyone who does show up walks away from the concerts sufficiently enthralled to tell their friends.

Which leads to Disappointment No. 3.

While the Happy Mondays’ musical direction exhibited encouraging individuality on stage Tuesday, the performance itself was only periodically stirring. Things were fine if you joined the hyperactive dancers in front of the stage and got caught up in the intoxicating barrage of dance-rock grooves and in the glitter of the flashing lights.

But if you stepped back a foot or two from the crowd, the whole experience too often seemed curiously flat. This is a band that is very dependent on audience energy to make it work--which can leave a serious void on nights when there aren’t enough bodies on hand to generate that energy.

Ryder is not exactly a dynamic front man. He spent much of the band’s hour on stage Tuesday as if he were still walking through the afternoon sound check.

To compensate, the Mondays employed a true front man, Bez, who danced about in a somewhat loony but disarming fashion; he may serve as a symbol of the Manchester Everyman, but will never remind anyone of James Brown. For added visual flash, the Mondays’ cast included a female dancer who wiggled around in exotic lingerie for a couple of numbers and then disappeared.

Things started heating up near the end of the set when Ryder took off his jacket and finally looked as if he was going to stay a while. Not only did his singing get more involving, but the grooves--supplied by synthesizer, guitar, bass and drums--tended to kick in more strongly on “God’s Cop,” from the band’s latest Elektra album, and the earlier, even more potent “Wrote for Luck.”

During this sequence, the music reached well beyond the fans bouncing about down front, establishing the band’s potential to deliver knockout blows. Just as the music heated up, however, the band left the stage, returning only for a single encore of “Step On” before calling it a night.

Disappointment No. 4.

Here’s a band with some marvelous music, a valuable attitude and a promising future, and it should have stayed on that stage until it had left little doubt of its value.

There is something to be said about the old pop-rock adage that you should play every performance as if it’s your last, with full imagination and passion. This is especially true of a band with as much to offer and as much to prove as the Happy Mondays. For them on Tuesday, this show seemed too much like, well, another show.