Off-Topic Sunday
Shaun Ryder, singer of The Happy Mondays and Black Grape, is one of my favourite front men. While loads of middle class pop and rock stars cultivate an outlaw image, Ryder is a proper Manchester, or more accurately, Salford scallywag, a chancer, dealer, grifter, shoplifter, narcotics hoover and a hell of a lyricist. Proper lovable rogue.
This animated short film of him telling stories at the end of an interview was forwarded to me by Sideburn bloggist, Kirk in Pasadena. Ryder tells the story of the Salford Sioux. It sounds improbable, but it's true. Shaun is just holding court in a gof club's conference suite, so he can be excused for not having every fact to hand, but he's got most of it correct.
A community of Sioux did indeed set up camp in Victorian Salford, for six months, brought there are part of Wild Bill's travelling Wild West Circus, that some of them below. But it was, it seems, two years after The Battle of Little Big Horn (aka Custer's Last Stand). One of the tribe that holed up in Lancashire, was the wonderfully named Surrounded Bytheenemy, who died of a lung infection at the camp and, for some reason, was buried in London - 200 miles away - in the Brompton Cemetery, in the Royal Borough of Chelsea and Kensington.
Anyway, listen to Shaun talk about his home city of Salford.
I like Shaun Ryder and his music. I like the premise of the story he tells...I’d like it that much better if I could understand him...🤷🏻♂️ #tinitus
#yankears
Dig. It does sound like a heckuva movie script