We being this week’s MIS with important news for those of you who’ve purchased tickets or the Bitts Park, Carlisle gig on the 9th June. This has now been moved to the 21st July.
The band’s official Twitter feed tweeted the following update:
@MadnessNews
Unfortunately, the local safety advisory group from the council in conjunction wit the police have had to move the date of this gig to the 21st July.
This is due to a clash with another event on the same day. Hope you can make the date. If not, please get a full refund at your [place of purchase]
With three support acts; Bootleg Beatles, Chris Difford and Cattle & Cane, this looks to be a fantastic evening’s entertainment. If you the change of date doesn’t mess up your schedule it should be a brilliant concert.
See below for all forthcoming Madness and Madness related gigs and events. If there’s something we’ve missed off or you feel should be added then please let us know.
26th – Tunes in the Dunes, Peranporth Beach, Cornwall. (Madness appear on the Sunday.)
31st – Docklands, Limerick, Ireland
June
1st – Dun Laoghaire Harbour, Dublin, Ireland
2nd – Waterford, Day Tripper Festival, Ireland
7th – Market Rasen Racecourse, Lincolnshire
8th – Chepstow racecourse, Monmouthshire
15th – Kenwood House, Hampstead. This Massive North London home coming gig for Madness XL features a full scale orchestra with the band. ** SOLD OUT **
16th – Isle of Wight Festival
21st – New Market Racecourse, Suffolk
22nd – Lingfield Park Racecourse, Surrey
28th – Franklin Gardens, Northampton (Suppt: The Lightning Seeds)
29th – Newcastle Racecourse, Newcastle
July
4th – Noches del Botanico, Madrid, Spain
5th – Port America, Galicia, Spain
6th – Vida Festival, Barcelona, Spain
12th- Vivary Park, Taunton
19th – Open Air Theatre, Scarborough (Suppt: The Pigeon Detectives)
20th – Doncaster Racecourse, Doncaster
21st – Bitts Park, Carlisle (Suppt: Bootleg Beatles & Chris Difford) Orig date 9/6/19
24th – Sanddown Park Racecourse, Esher
August
17th – Newbury Racecourse, Berkshire
18th – Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh, Scotland
20th – Custom House Square, Belfast
23rd – Northern Meeting Park, Inverness
24th – East Links, Montrose
26th – Clapham Common, XL South London festival. With “Special” Guests.
30th – Wolverhampton Racecourse, Wolverhampton
31st – Winter Gardens, Margate
September
1st – The Downs, Bristol, (Suppt: David Rodigan)
November
Friday 29th – Monday 2nd December – House of Fun Weekender 2019
December
12th – AFAS Live, Amsterdam
Buy It
Before We Was We: The Making of Madness by Madness
The band’s first official book.
The story of how they became them. It’s a journey full of luck, skill and charm, as they duck and dive by day and make the name in London’s exploding music scene by night, zipping around the capital in their Morris Minor vans. Their formative years, 1970-79.
This is the riotous coming-of-age tale of seven unique individuals, whose collective graft, energy and talent took them from the sweaty depths of the Hope and Anchor basement to the Top of the Pops studio. In their own words, they each look back on their past and how during those shared adventures, they formed a bond that’s lasted forty years. Before We Was We is irreverent, funny and full of character. Just like them.
You can now buy a range of classic album design T shirts.
Absolutely returns to the official T shirt store since first appearing a decade ago as merchandise. Seven now joins the albums T-shirts range, only previously a promotional shirt. For the first time Rise & Fall (Following last year’s triumphant return of this album’s title track on tour) joins official shirt range.
Best of all, 10 years on from its box set release, The Liberty of Norton Folgate is purchasable. We are having a little bit of that!
Complete Madness. Total Madness hits albums join the range.
This range is also certainly a reaction to the continuing bullshit of bootleggers targeting social media with non licensed product not endorsed by the band and illegal.
Don’t be an idiot and buy from badly photoshopped pictures of Suggs holding a shirt up etc. Those are fake. The Madstore and official band website and gigs merchandise stands are all run by the same company with the band’s legal backing. You will only find a small number of charity shirts or some One Step Beyond shirts outside of buying from the official online store. Don’t give your money to the bootleggers exploiting you.
I Remember Way Back When
This week, MIS co-editor Rob Hazelby goes back in time to report on what was going on in the world of Madness 5 years, 10 and 15 years ago this week.
5 years ago…
Issue Number: 779 – Sunday 13th April to Saturday 19th April 2014
Eagle-eyed readers of our “Showtimes” section would have known that Suggs was once again off on his solo tour, pleasing the nation’s theatre goers with his story and added mini song moments such as Cecilia.
We could exclusively reveal that his solo music would also be returning very soon in the form of a compilation from Universal Music Group. With both The Lone Ranger and The 3 Pyramids Club now deleted albums, as well as 2007’s Platinum 1 disc collection also no longer available, this was great news. This forthcoming release would ensure that a new wave of fans could finally hear these tunes, while completists had yet another item to add to their ever growing collections.
In our regular “Showtimes” section the band announced two new dates to their summer line-up. The band would be performing in Vienna Arena, Vienne on 3rd July and at the Reggae Sun Festival, Bordeaux, France between the 31st July – 3rd (we didn’t know which date at this point).
Meanwhile, Suggs announced that he’d be appearing at the Hay Festival in Wales on the 24th May.
Over in“Live and Intensified” we featured a short YouTube video of Suggs in his opening week of his One Man show, which was due to run through from April to May.
Further down, and we had an MIS Feature in the form of a write up from Steve Farthing who reporting on his Mad Char charity gig at the famous Dublin Castle.
Steve commented at the time;
“We made over £2,500 for Cancer Research UK. That’s what makes Mad Chat a unique Madness Fans Community on Facebook, bringing fans together with real friendships formed.”
Continuing on the charity theme we reported that MIS subscriber Richard Gunn was taking part in the Birch’s 34th Annual Run to raise money for five separate charities. We included details of how you could sponsor Richard, who had been a fan of the band since 1979.
We brought this issue to a close with the news that on Saturday 19th April “Take it or Leave it” would be screened at the Prince Charles Cinema on Leicester Square. This would be its first public screening in London since its original release.
10 years ago…
Issue 519 – Sunday 12th April to Saturday 18th April 2009
We got this issue off by explaining that the reason we were sending it out earlier than usual was down to the fact that the weather was nice, and that members of the MIS editorial team wanted to get out and enjoy the delights of the local beer garden.
Well, it would have been rude not to. Right?
The articles began with release details for the forthcoming Madness single, Dust Devil. Five different formats were available – A 7”, 10”, CD, a single download and an EP download.
Fans were also able to pre-order the standard edition of The Liberty of Norton Folgate single CD album.
It was over to the Digital Spy web site next, as they confirmed that Madness would be performing at this year’s Camden Crawl. The band were booked to play on April 24th.
Next, we took a look at Chris’ Cupboard to see some of the latest questions and answers that had been going back and forth between the fans and the legendary guitarist. Most of the answers from Chris were simply there to make you laugh but one or two snippets of information were revealed.
With the release of the Madness tribute album, 30 Years of Madness, getting ever closer, the team over at the French MIS had been putting together the finishing touches to the accompanying web site, and it was now officially open for business.
The site contained details of the full track listing and what bands/artists have taken the time and trouble to record tracks for the forthcoming release.
Elsewhere we peppered the issue with a number of reviews of performances during the band’s recent tour Down Under, and brought the issue to a close with the news that Julien Temple’s film version of The Liberty of Norton Folgate was complete and would be screened at the London International Film Festival on April 17th.
15 years ago…
Issue 257 – Sunday 11th April to Saturday 17th April 2004
This Easter tinged issue was a short one due to the lack of news that had landed in our mailbox in the run-up the chocolate filled weekend. In fact, news was so thin on the ground, that we commented at the time; “It seems as if people are busy doing things away from their keyboards at the moment, as the number of news items arriving in our mail boxes has gone to just a trickle”
Still, it wasn’t all doom and gloom, as we still had enough material to get us through another week. In the previous issue we’d announced that a DVD of the Christmas Forum gig was now doing the rounds. Well, this week discovered that someone was selling it on Ebay. Filmed on the 9th of December 2003, the disc had a starting price of £7.00, and featured the following tracks: One Step Beyond / Embarrassment / The Prince / Lovestruck / My Girl / Disappear / The Sun and The Rain / Grey Day / Baggy Trousers / March of The Gherkins / Driving in my Car / Victoria Gardens / Shut Up / Prospects / House of Fun / Wonderful World Beautiful People / Tomorrow’s Just Another Day / Johnny The Horse / Wings of a Dove / Our House / It Must be Love / Madness / Night Boat to Cairo / Swan Lake / The Israelites
Moving on, we took a slightly non Madness slant for one article, as we reported (thanks to subscriber Celia Moore) on MOT’s headline gig at Camden’s famous Dublin Castle pub. Celia said at the time; “This band just gets better every time, I don’t understand why they haven’t got a promoter and recording contract yet, they are far more versatile and exciting than the present ‘pop groups’ around and the sheer enthusiasm of the lads comes through on every song!”
Celia finished by saying; “A final thought – maybe Madness could get them to do the warm up for them on their next tour – now that would be an evening to write home about!!” It would indeed!
With messages now finally appearing in chronological order, it seemed like a good opportunity to return to the official Madness Message Board to see what was being posted. Although there was a great variety in the subject matter of the posts; some people saying a quick hello, others asking when something was going to be released, one major trend were the suggestions for the band’s 25th anniversary celebrations. Suggestions ranged from holding another Madstock (this seemed unlikely as we were already halfway through April, and nothing had been announced), to an intimate party at The Forum. One Madness fan even suggested the band play in Bristol, with the reasons that the last time they played there was 1985, and the fact that it cost about £5 to cross the bridge to Wales to see them in Cardiff.
Mr. Smash was obviously in need of a few posing questions to be fired his way as the following short message revealed; “Ha ha ha, he he he………can we have some hard and testing questions please?”
Well, what were you waiting for? We urged you to send those questions in to him, and looked forward to the sarcastic and confusing answers!
Rob Hazelby
Sign of the Times
Pigeon Detectives Support at Scarborough
Platinum-selling indie band The Pigeon Detectives will support Madness when the music legends bring their 40th anniversary celebrations to the Yorkshire coast this summer. The Leeds band – who have released five studio albums since bursting onto the scene in 2007 – will open this not-to-be-missed show at Scarborough Open Air Theatre on Friday July 19.
Formed in 2002, The Pigeon Detectives are Matt Bowman on lead vocals, Oliver Main and Ryan Wilson on guitars, Dave Best on Bass, and Jimmi Naylor on drums. READ MORE: 12 of the biggest events coming to Yorkshire in 2019 Friends from school, and having known one another since they were 12, the Rothwell band enjoyed a meteoric rise with their first album Wait for Me going on to sell more half a million records. They followed this with top 40 hits I Found Out, Romantic Type, Take Her Back, I’m Not Sorry and This Is An Emergency.
The Scarborough OAT date promises to be a glorious Yorkshire coast return for Madness who last rocked Britain’s biggest open-air arena in 2017.
Time
And finally…
We bring this issue of the MIS to a close with a nice snippet from MIS subscriber Kieron Murphy, who sent in the following;
“Suggs popped into the Dublin Castle on Tuesday to say hello to some local music students along with the Mayor of Camden.
[Landlady] Peggy was on standby to welcome him back to the fold.
A few fans who happened to be on hand were treated to some autographs and photos with The great Man”.
Our thanks go to Kieron for the info and photograph.
