We begin this week’s issue of the MIS Online Bulletin with the news that this week saw the release of Nick Woodgate’s latest single.
Entitled “Jo Jo Man”, you can listen to it for yourself over on Spotify. Check out https://nickwoodgate.co.uk/ for more information and a link to the track. You can find Nick on Twitter at @nick_woodgate, so if you like what you hear then please let him know.
With July almost at an end fans now have to wait over a fortnight before the 40 Years of Madness tour gets back on course on 17th with a gig at Newbury Racecourse in Berkshire.
On the subject of the current tour, and while tickets for Madness at The Bristol Downs on 1st September are still available the organisers have announced that tickets are about to go up in price. So, if you’re planning on getting along to that gig but have yet to buy your tickets then don’t delay. You could save yourself some considerable cash.
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.
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
Suggs
Saturday 3rd August – DJ set at Dreamland, Margate with Max Romeo and Trojan Sound System. More info at: https://www.dreamland.co.uk
The Near Jazz Experience
August 13th, Chat’s Palace, 42-44 Brooksbys Walk, E9 6DF, London The Silencerz
August 10th, Blackheath. Free gig! ** new **
Buy It
“Jo Jo Man”; the new Single From Nick Woodgate ** new **
Nick Woodgate’s latest single finally sees a release!
Entitled “Jo Jo Man”, you can listen to it for yourself over on Spotify. Check out https://nickwoodgate.co.uk/ for more information and a link to the track. You can find Nick on Twitter at @nick_woodgate, so if you like what you hear then please let him know.
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, 10, 15 and 20 years ago this week.
5 years ago…
Issue Number: 794 – Sunday 27th July to Saturday 2nd August 2014
We began this issue by apologising for recent server problems which had plagued getting this issue out to the MIS subscriber-base. All being well, this issue should have landed in mailboxes around the globe without issue… we hoped!
This week, on the House of Fun Weekender page, the band announced the “Madhead Golden Ticket”.
“At this years House of Fun Weekender, those judged to be the most distinguished fancy dressers shall receive that most coverted of Prizes. The Madhead Golden Ticket.”
So, what did this give you? Free entry for two to every gig of the Madhead tour, that’s what. To win this you need to be voted the best fancy dressed at the weekender.
With work hotting up on his highly anticipated solo album project “A comfortable man”, we heard rumours that Carl would potentially be absent from some of the current summer shows, taking time out to sort things long in the works. We couldn’t wait to hear or attend the next Cathal Mo Chroi output, and hoped that if he was out a short while, he’d back in full for the Madhead Tour.
Moving on, and in our Live and Intensified section Daren West was kind enough to compose and send in a beautifully detailed review of the Lee Thompson Ska Orchestra gig staged as part of the Brixton Jamm on 18th July.
This 16-track gig received a resounding thumbs-up from Daren, who rounded off his review with details of the forthcoming “Lee Thompson Performs Songs From the Album Crunch!”, due to take place on 3rd August at Fiddler’s Elbow, NW5.
Next, and with three full tracks from the forthcoming Specialized 3 Mad Not Cancer album now ready for review regular contributor Graham Yates gave us an initial lowdown on “Uncle Sam” by the Ska Dogs, “House of Fun” by Cartoon Violence, and “Death of a Rude Boy” by Spahni’s Dub Dancers (featuring Dennis Bovell).
Priced at £15.99, the album was now ready for pre-ordering.
Continuing on a Specialised related note, the charity were very pleased to announce that his Royal highness KING HAMMOND had released yet another free download of a fantastic track in aid of Specialized/TCT ; “Bed and Breakfast Man Live”.
The track came from his set which had been released on his new album ” Riot In Coventry” which was recorded at the July 2014 Godiva Festival in Coventry!
The exciting this was the the “Bed and Breakfast Man” track wasn’t available on that album!
We brought this issue to a close with footage of a full Crunch! gig recorded at the Dublin Castle back in the day to get you in the mood for the forthcoming Fiddler’s Elbow set of Crunch! tunes.
10 years ago…
Issue 534 – Sunday 26th July – Saturday 1st August 2009
Originally devised and run by Madness fan Andrew Langmead, and subsequently kept alive and kickng by the one and only Paul Muscat, the baton had once again been passed on and this latest Madchart was being run by the Madness Central team.
Getting things underway was the ever capable Lee Buckley, who announced the start of this latest in the long running series of Madcharts.
Next, we handed proceedings over to Chris Carter-Pegg, who brought part 3 (of 3) of his series, covering Madness’ appearances at Glastonbury from 1986 to 2009. This week he covered their most recent of performances at the legendary music festival, which took place at 6:00pm on Sunday 28th June at The Pyramid Stage.
On to sightseeing news, and this week Google Maps launched an international initiative across several cities including London and New York, highlighting venues such as restaurants and clubs recommended by celebrities.
Dubbed ‘My Favorite Places’, the London version included recommendations from former mayor Ken Livingstone, novelist Sarah Waters, Lastminute.com founder Martha Lane Fox, comedian, writer and broadcaster Mark Thomas, and Madness frontman Suggs.
It was sad news for collectors as this week we learned that the Sugar and Spice single wouldn’t be receiving a physical release. Instead, it would be available as a download single only.
At present the single was on Radio 2’s C-list, and on Absolute Radio’s daytime playlist.
With no physical release planned fans were of the opinion that it was unlikely a video would be made for the single.
Madness stat-lovers were well catered this week as Paul Rodgers was here with yet another one of his Madness chart lowdowns. In the official album chart, The Liberty Of Norton Folgate climbed from 74 to 68 this week, with only the small matter of 10 Michael Jackson albums above it, stopping it from being number 58.
Following his excellent help co-hosting the 02 XMISCast the previous year for MIS, Owen “The Nutter” Collins took over the full controls of the MISCast Machine to bring you his mad funfair-ride through Madstock, with plenty of fans along for the ride with him too. He found time to be silly with Clive Langer, joke with Bedders, and had an aside with a friend of Jerry Dammers.
His crowning glory though came at the end of the day with a poignant seven minute interview where Lee Thompson considered retirement or taking time out of the band, reflected on the great songwriters in Madness and told us all what’s his favourite cheese was.
We brought this issue to a close with the news that the band would be appearing on GMTV Breakfast on Friday 31st July. We were told that there would be an interview as well as a performance of their single “Sugar and Spice”.
15 years ago…
Issue 272 – Sunday 25th July – Saturday 31st July 2004
With the list server suffering major problems since the previous issue went out, issue 272 proved to be a short one, as the MIS team had been spending most of their time trying to get the outages resolved and normal service resumed.
Those already subscribed to other Madness news sources would have been aware that on the night the MIS went out, The Dangermen were once again taking to the stage in the Dublin Castle. To those only subscribed to the MIS we offered our apologies, as although we’d issued two special editions to let subscribers know about the gig, the list server issues meant they’d failed to get through.
This short issue of the MIS focused on Bedders affiliation with The World Wrestling Federation (it must be true – it was on the official site!), and how you could win a prize winning competition by completing the following tie-breaker:
‘I love the WWF because. . .’
Elsewhere in the issue we had news in from The Sun newspaper, revealing that The Specials were hoping to reform to celebrate their 25th anniversary.
The report read as follows:
“THE SPECIALS hope to reform for their 25th anniversary this year.
Founder JERRY DAMMERS has met lead singer TERRY HALL and backing star NEVILLE STAPLE to discuss a tour. It would depend on the remaining four bandmates getting on board.
The event would celebrate their famous 2-Tone label, which updated 1960s ska for the 1980s.
The band hope labelmates THE BEAT and THE SELECTER will get involved.
Neville said: “It would be phenomenal.”
We finished this issue off by promising subscribers that those unable to attend this evening’s Dangermen gig, or were too drink to remember what went on, would be well served with reviews of the event in the subsequent issue.
20 years ago…
Issue 10 – Sunday 25th July – Saturday 31st July 1999
We kicked-off this week’s issue with an observation mentioning that of all the reviews we’d seen of the recently released Lovestruck single, every single one of them had been positive. At the time of typing, we had no idea how well the single had done in the UK music charts, but with subscribers emailing us to say that it’d been flying off shelves, things certainly sounded promising.
Whilst we were busy snapping up the new tune, the band had been keeping themselves busy with an excellent appearance on Top of The Pops where the crowd went absolutely bezerk! Even the female presenter seemed to be on some sort of high when announcing that this was `The new single from Madness`. To top it all off, Lee was dressed up as a jockey and was running backwards and forwards across the stage sat astride a comedy horse. This really had to be seen to be believed, and was nothing short of classic Madness.
This week we included the full transcript of an article from the current issue of the NME in which Suggs took a look at the tunes that made him a man. It was quite a lengthy article, but certainly an interesting read for those prepared to put in the reading time.
We’d been bugging him for a while, and finally he’d obliged? What were we talking about? Ian Taylor, and his Mad Not Mad fanzine plug. Ian emailed in with a detailed lowdown, not only of his current issue, but revealed what would be appearing in future editions of the ‘zine, as well as how you could subscribe.
Also this week the results of the TMML co-moderator elections were revealed, and the winners announced. The three new co-moderators would be Pete Gardner, Adele Hargreaves and Jenny Payne.
We finished off this week’s issue with a number of Lovestruck reviews taken music papers, magazines and web pages. All were giving the new release a massive thumbs-up.
Hopefully this would all translate to excellent record sales.
Rob Hazelby
Live and Intensified
Venue Change for Carlisle Concert?
Following our continual requests for reader reviews of recent gigs, we were contacted by subscriber Lucy Telford, who emailed in following the recent Carlisle gig.
“Just been to the Carlisle gig which ended up in the sands centre which I’m still not sure why but maybe due to lack of numbers but hell as good as I’ve seen them. Near the front and to here One Better Day Live made my year ! In fact life !”
If anyone knows why the venue changed please send us an email and let us know.
Our thanks go to Lucy for the above.
Sign of the Times
Talk of the Town: House of Common festival at Clapham Common this August
A bank holiday of madness has been promised to those on Clapham Common this August as the House of Common festival returns for another year, writes James Twomey.
Headlined by the band Madness, the one-day festival on Bank Holiday Monday, August 26, will see a wealth of great talent take to the stage, including special guest Jimmy Cliff plus Ziggy Marley, David Rodigan, Horace Andy, Akala, Craig Charles, Jah9 and Children of Zeus.
House of Common is fun for all the family, with under 10s admitted for free and able to enjoy the spectacular Minor Madness.
Minor Madness spans a huge area with a special House of Fun play garden, giant funky inflatables and activities throughout the day with special guest appearances from Shaun The Sheep and Hey Duggee – perfect for those who want to enjoy some family madness together.
Madness celebrate their 40th year of ska, reggae and punk with lead singer Graham McPherson – aka Suggs – still at the helm.
Time
And finally..
You may have noticed in our “Showtimes” section the addition of a free Silencerz gig at Blackheath on the 10th August.
Rumours are that a certain Mr. Lee Thompson may pop along to raise a glass to The Prince tune as the first ever Madness singles reaches the ripe old age of 40.
As always, we ask that if you get along please do email in with a review of the gig. We’d love to print it.
