Customer Reviews

Happy?

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The best way to describe this album; Pop Heaven. The instrumentation is excellent, and catchy as hell, and to top it all off, we have John's smart and funny lyrics that make everything even more meaningful. Every song on here is worth listening to. "Angry" was quite a surprise; it doesn't sound very angry. It sounds more like festering frustration to me. The sample of paper being torn in the song was a nice touch. "Fat Chance Hotel" is another song I liked, and tells a story we all can relate to; going on a trip with our loved ones and not having it turn out quite the way we hoped it would. "Seattle" was one of the catchiest songs from the get-go. My favourite on here is "Open and Revolting", which is about being open with people and receptive to new ideas. The instrumental breaks with the synths and guitars are just tops! Come to think of it, this whole album is.

5/5

I fell down into this sublime electronic mass of (tight) electronic loose ends when it first came out. Was besotted, but also taken aback. Where did the orchestral, string-and-background-vox smoothness come from? Gorgeous! Still love this. the combination of harsh and beautiful, esp. on fat chance hotel. And rules and regulations and bodies! I like a lot of different stuff, but this is a favorite.

I still have Happy? on cassette that I bought after seeing the Seattle video way back in the depths of the Reagan era. The tape and more importantly the songs on it have held up well over nearly 2 decades now (I looked Happy? up on Amazon thinking I'd finally get a CD, but 35 bucks?!). True, the album as a whole is pretty heavily front-loaded, with the 3 best songs at the beginning, but overall Lydon's delivery and McGeogh's guitar work make Happy? a bracing musical experience despite the dated-sounding production.

although this is not cutting edge as earlier pil ,it is still what are at this stage seasoned pros on top form.fat chance hotel is my fav track lydon having a good old sarcastic winge over a dub sound.Polished 80s production seems to add something strange.

The live band John Lydon assembled in early 1986 for the "Album" tour would, in fact, endure as PiL's longest-lasting lineup: guitarist John McGeoch and bassist Alan Dias would be on board for the subsequent three albums and drummer Bruce Smith for the next two. The first album with the "new" PiL may have an ironic title, and feature Lydon's trademark negation throughout, but it's still a very exhuberant, surprisingly upbeat work - hard, but danceable, rock (this evocative, aurally-exotic music - with female backing vox - would effectively characterise the PiL sound for the next half-decade). While "Happy?" is not quite as musically innovative or consistently excellent as its predecessor, what's on the album is more than worthwhile. The bouncy "Seattle" is a terrific, all-on-board opener; 'Rules and Regulations" is a dancey number that anticipates the sound of the next album "9," and in "The Body" Lydon revisits the abortion theme of the similarly-titled Sex Pistols classic "Bodies" (good as the album version of "The Body" is, both the UK and US 12'' remixes are superior). "Fat Chance Hotel," with its Wobble-esque bass intro and repetitive melodic drone, sounds like an amalgam of the 1978 and the 1987 PiLs. Much of the album has an intrinsically 80s, cinematic feel - especially on "Save Me" and "Open and Revolving" - which is almost certainly due to producer Gary Langan's multilayered production (again, a similar approach would be taken by Stephen Hague on "9"). "Happy?" is not PiL at its very best, but it's not far off from it.

A surprisingly tight and melodic collection from a former member of The Sex Pistols. The lyrics remain politically inspired, yet this is a neat 80's-type band. Seems to me that the first three songs hit like a hammer, then the rest of the CD rolls gently downhill. All in all, this is a rockin' album and there's bound to be more than just a few songs you like on here.

Classifying this as a danceteria special really doesn't do it any justice. This was an amazing album when it came out, and one that's still quite relevant today - equal in sonic impact to the Clash's London Calling or to the Smith's the Queen is Dead, and with an authenticity neither of those other albums could match.

Since PiL had coalesced (finally) as a band, Lydon's sneering, careening vocals were able to meld seamlessly to the post-punk / dub sound that had long been the band's hallmark. McGeoch's guitar soars; Smith and Dias lay down tight, primal and hypnotic rhythms, eventually reaching a crescendo in their ode to bad vacations, Fat Chance Hotel. It's really the benchmark for post-punk in the same sense that Bollocks was the benchmark for punk. A 1980's must-own album, if ever there was one.