2018 certainly kicked off with a nutty-tinged bang for us Madness fans, as shortly after Big Ben chimed-in the new year and the fireworks commenced, the legendary “Hey You…” from the one and only Cathal Smyth got the year off to a rousing start.
If you missed the countdown and Cathal’s welcome to 2018 you can catch it here in all its glory, on the BBC’s YouTube channel;
Moving on to this month now, and the Suggs: My Life Story film and live cinema link-up for the premiere are fast approaching, and take place in just over a week’s time.
The My Life Story link up is followed by a Q and A with Keith Allen who talks to the director Julien Temple and Suggs, plus a short piano performance from Suggs and Deano at the Koko in Camden.
27 UK towns and cities have been added to the list of cinemas we have been running in our showtime section, and additional venues added including the Vue cinema chain have joined in the previous Odeon and Showcase chains involvement. Multiple London borough locations now are all bookable. The West End is now showing the cinema link up too. There has also been a cancellation of the screening at the Camden Odeon.
This updates and additions have all be reflected in our Showtimes section for you, plus a repeat of the event screening happening the next day in London and two other venues showcasing just the film itself this month. This all takes place in January before the brand new live stage show What a King CNUT takes to the stage.
You can watch two trailer videos for the film over on YouTube;
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.
Madness
July 2018
July 28th/29th – Car Fest. Announced on Chris Evans’ Radio Show!
November 2018
Friday 30th Nov – Monday 3rd Dec – The House of Fun Weekender
Ticket hotline 08450261274 / http://www.butlins.com/madness
Suggs
What a King CNUT Tour 2018
A life in the realm of Madness.
Wed January 31 2018 – SWINDON Wyvern Theatre
Thu February 01 2018 – ST ALBANS Alban Arena
Fri February 02 2018 – GUILDFORD G Live
Sat February 03 2018 – SALISBURY City Hall
Sun February 04 2018 – CHATHAM Central Theatre
Tue February 06 2018 – SOUTHEND Palace Theatre
Wed February 07 2018 – BASINGSTOKE Anvil
Thu February 08 2018 – LEICESTER De Montfort Hall
Fri February 09 2018 – COVENTRY Arts Centre
Sun February 11 2018 – HASTINGS White Rock Theatre
Tue February 13 2018 – SALFORD Lowry
Wed February 14 2018 – BUXTON Opera House
Thu February 15 2018 – LEEDS Town Hall
Fri February 16 2018 – STOCKTON Princess Alexandra Auditorium
Sun February 18 2018 – BRIGHTON Theatre Royal
Tue February 27 2018 – MERSEYSIDE Floral Theatre
Wed February 28 2018 – DUNFERMLINE Alhambra Theatre
Thu March 01 2018 – GLASGOW Pavilion
Sat March 03 2018 – HULL City Hall
Sun March 04 2018 – YORK Opera House
Tue March 06 2018 – PRESTON Guild Hall
Wed March 07 2018 – NORTHAMPTON Royal and Derngate
Thu March 08 2018 – SOUTHAMPTON O2 Guildhall
Sun March 11 2018 – BIRMINGHAM Alexandra Theatre
Tue March 13 2018 – AYLESBURY Waterside Theatre
Wed March 14 2018 – POOLE Lighthouse
Thu March 15 2018 – CHELTENHAM Town Hall
Fri March 16 2018 – BATH Forum
Sun March 18 2018 – NOTTINGHAM Theatre Royal
Mon March 19 2018 – IPSWICH Corn Exchange
Tue March 20 2018 – CAMBRIDGE Corn Exchange
Thu March 22 2018 – LONDON Palladium
Suggs – My Life Story The Movie, Premier
Koko Camden – January 17th
Simultaneous Cinema link of film and Live Q and A with Suggs talking to Keith Allen being screen at the following cinemas
It’s £5 for a CD and £2.99 for a download (plus a bonus track of Dublin Castle. All money is going to CLIC Sargent, which is Mad Chat’s current cause. Thank you!
Behind the sceneshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnSHNq-0heg&feature=youtu.be
Full House – The New Madness Best of Album – Review
Available to order now from Madness.co.uk & Pledge music. Out now!
2 CD’s and 4 LP’s make up a house full of Madness hits as latest in a long line of “best ofs”. It’s 42 tracks neatly split into 21 on each CD or set of LP’s. That includes the biggest singles and songs of the FULL band era on Full House part one. Then Mike leaves home. Uncle Sam starts part two which brings us up to Carl-less date with the band still making great music in a house occasionally with someone who’s not home today. In fact the CD mirrors this fact slightly, a beautiful cover bulging with multiple mad men all together in our full house of fun then opens up on the CD version to reveal just Woody inside another version of the house on the inner image, where the full band are driving away in their car, and a business man runs for the buss. The Vinyl is even more stunning, housing a black and white checkered floor and an upstanding 3D pop up design of the full house cover.
Madness Pale Ale, Tin and Pint Glass Set
Product description: Ladies and Gentleman, for your drinking pleasure Madness bring you one of the fines beers to ever pass your lips. An idea born in the Dublin Castle (the very pub where we played our first gigs), Madness Beers go one step beyond with flavour and style.
ABV 4.2%, Units 2.1
Check out your local Morrison’s store. Earlier this week, these were spotted for the ridiculously low price of £3 each!
MIS Feature – The Mint With The Hole – New York ’81
This week, over on The Madness Bootleg Facebook Group…
The 1981 Peppermint Lounge gig in New York is of interest to fans. Seeing early footage of the band in the USA is a bit of a treat. The songs are mostly Absolutely era album tracks, but Pac-a-mac from the Seven album is captured live here some five months before its finished album release, and one single is present too. My Girl from One Step beyond is here in full and there is plenty of nutty dancing and band banter as they appear in this legendary club late night New York time.
This is the venue that in the 60s invented the twist, in the heyday of Rock n Roll that first inspired Madness, but the Nutty Boys appear in its second incarnation as a newly invented home of the alternative new wave sounds. Many bands would be recorded on video in this club around the beginning of the 80s, as the owners ran the Pop Network which was an early attempt to launch something like MTV that would follow shortly. “Pop show” was aimed at network or state TV and consisted of half hour highlight shows “Much like Top of the pops format” and “Pop Radio Video” was a more substantial two hour package show showcasing a couple of bands each episode and available via early satellite link to some 300 stations and via tape. Though its unknown where and if the Madness footage shot was used, it’s likely they followed the go-go’s into the process around this time who were broadcast from the Peppermint lounge.
If it wasn’t enough of a thrill to have captured some footage of the band on tour in New York in their early years.
Uploader Chris Dabbs has also been experimenting with the broadcast stereo quality signal.
“Right…so after upping the Peppermint Lounge DVD and listening back to the audio, I’ve reminded myself that there’s no doubt the recorder rigged their equipment to either the mixing desk or had their own elaborate twin-track recorder.”
Using this to split the stereo channels apart Chris has created a couple of tracks minus the sound of the audience, vocals, and saxophone. Giving you a drums,bass, guitar but mostly piano heavy clear listen to Barso tinkling the ivories instrumentally back in the mid 80s. Thanks Chris. Holey Madness!
Jonathan Young.
P.S – Chrissy Boy, who can be heard on the mic between a couple of the songs, tells us… “I was absolutely pissed! It was a great night!”, and sends New Year wishes for 2018.
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 713 – Sunday 6th January – Saturday 12th January 2013
With us firmly in the Christmas and new year news-lull we went straight on to the articles, which got underway with a detailed write-up of the recent Butlins Minhead Weekender from the official Butlins magazine.
This review came with a different viewpoint as it came from a holiday goer who seemed to know a bit about the band, but nothing like the knowledge of the majority of MIS readers.
Moving on, and we’d seen some amazing Madness related projects in our time, ranging from the comprehensive Tour Madness, to the obsessive cataloguing of every Madness worldwide release ever.
This latest project we had to report on was one of the more sedate we’d investigated, but it was by no means any less impressive.
After two long years of hard work, and no doubt, many late nights it was complete – the Madness cross stitch. Graham Yates told us at the time that the photo used as a basis for the work came from the Folgate era.
The brainchild of subscriber Jackie Reid, this amazing looking piece of work can still be viewed by pointing your web browsers over to:
Further on, and we moved to part 2 of our loopback of 2012. This time we covered July to December, and charted some of the highs and lows which surfaced during the final half of the year.
We went over to a French article next, and Madness had featured extensively in a new magazine. Suggs was interviewed by Darren Tulett, an English journalist who was very popular in France. Thanks to Jean Pierre-Boutellier of the French MIS, a few sections were translated into English for us.
Next, and we gave the MIS readership a heads-up, as we revealed that a live video of the band’s performance of Small World at the House of Fun Weekender had been recorded, and that footage had been uploaded for your viewing pleasure.
We brought this issue to a close with Simon Robert’s dug-out footage of the MIS staff and friends Christmas outing from December 2006. The stuff of nightmares!
10 years ago…
Issue 453 – Sunday 6th January to Saturday 12th January 2008
In this edition of the MIS, we continued our lookback over the past 12 months with the second part of our article, charting the highs and lows which took place over the course of the past year.
Elsewhere, a certain Paul Muscat had been keeping himself busy, and whilst it wasn’t as large as some of his more famous efforts, it was indeed something that’d keep you interested for a minute or so.
Further on we had a brief lowdown, along with audio and video download/streaming links, of the recently aired Hootenanny gig, which was part of Jools Holland’s annual end of year Hootenanny. If you’d missed it then we were here to help you catch up on some excellent live Madness performances.
If the above wasn’t enough, we also had details of when Carl took over the role of DJ for a one off stint on Radio 2. As with the Hootenanny, we had links detailing how you could catch this if you were unlucky to have missed it.
15 years ago…
Issue 191 – Sunday 5th January to Saturday 11th January 2003
As at the start of January 2002 things had gone more than a little quiet, but used to the post Christmas lull by now, we advised readers not to panic, as things were bound to pick up in the next week or so.
Much of this week’s issue was taken up with our lookback at 2002, where we charted the high and low points of the year just gone by.
Although much of the issue was taken up by this we still managed to cram in a few Madness related articles that had caught our eye.
Andrew Langmead reported that Madness had managed to attain a very respectable 14th position in Virgin’s Top 100 British Artists lowdown, while on the stageshow front, What’s on Stage News announced that the Our House Musical has been given an extra 7 months to its run.
The boys were on TV over the Christmas period as part of the BBC’s “It’s the Number One Party” celebrating 50 years of the UK singles charts where they performed `House of Fun.`. As with most of the acts they were miming the show. Thommo went up on 2 wires in true `Baggy Trousers` style and tried to do as many flips as he could, almost knocking into other band members in the process.
We also reported that following a near death experience, Bad Manners’ Buster Bloodvessel had battled a near death experience, where his heart stopped for 17 seconds, and was now well and truly on the mend.
Rob Hazelby
Sign of the Times
Suggs in Q Magazine
When was the last time someone called you Graham?
Oh God. probably my mum. She’s still like…
“Stiff? Spuds. Smudge… whatever. I gave you a perfectly good name and it’s faintly ridiculous to be called that when you’re a 56 year old man!”
When did you last break the law?
Well. I’m smoking in this hotel room in Butlin’s Minehead, right now, but I don’t know if that’s actually breaking the law or not. There might be some punitive fine or something.
When did you last speak to Morrissey?
Um. Maybe two years ago at some awards ceremony. It was very brief and he was very friendly, as much as he can be anyway. I don’t dig a lot of what he says, but I like his work. He says a lot of outrageous things but often I think it’s just Morrissey’ being Morrissey.
When did you last get the fear?
A few months ago when we dug up a 500kg German bomb (for WW2 TV Show hunting the marshes around Merseyside). I’m no expert in tangled metal stuff, but I quickly recognised this big bomb shaped thing coming out of the ground. We’re just about to run when the director goes…
“Can you just do a little piece to camera?” and I was like.
“Er. not unless we do it five kilometres away!”
When did you last stay up all night?
About two months ago at Trisha’s or Gerry’s in Soho. Just the very mention of the name Gerry’s and you know you’ve got on the wrong side of the alarm clock.
When was the last time you said,“Do you know who I am?”
I don’t think I’ve ever said that. But I do remember being outside a nightclub once and Billy Idol was saying that and everyone around him was rolling around on the floor laughing. So I’ve always been very wary of that sort of outcome. When did you last get mad? Two weeks ago when we were trundling around northern Europe in this tourbus. One night we’d had a few cold drinks too many and we started talking about politics and it all went a bit haywire. “Fake new’s this, fake news that…” Who was I arguing with? Pretty much everyone and anyone!
What was the last conversation you had with David Bowie?
Well, there’s the famous incident when I went with our producer Clive langer to visit Bowie’s home In Gstaad, Switzerland. We just happened to be driving past with our families on holiday and we turned up with all our suitcases on the roof and there he is in the garage, the Starman. And just as we drove in we heard this loud crunch and my suitcase came flying off the roof and my underwear was blowing around Bowie’s drive and there he was, the great man picking up my socks and vests… it wasn’t the first impression I was hoping for but he was a very, very charming man. He was actually very’ down to earth.
What’s the last thing you’d do before the Apocalypse?
Well, in my current situation, I’d probably go for a swim in the sea, get a bag of chips then spend a couple of hours at Billy Butlin’s funfair.
Mike Barson on Free Yourself; Dave Robinson’s Radio Show
Answering questions such as “who chose what songs for Jamboree bag” and talking about how half the band currently want to do Dangermen sessions two, and the other half don’t.
Mike Barson appears at about 20 minutes into the show.
If you’d rather listen to the interview via YouTube, it’s been kindly uploaded by Matt Holt, one half of the Bed and Breakfast Men: https://youtu.be/S3279lJvtlk
Matt tells us that Mike gave The Bed and Breakfast Men’s new song “To The Moon and Back”, a plug. Check out the “Buy it now” section for more info.
MIS Feature – 2017 – An MIS Deleted Scene Lost in Translation
Our gratitude to a number of readers of MIS who got in touch over the Christmas and New Year Holidays to thank all of us here who contributed to MIS last year. Very kind of you to write in.
We’d like to thank you all back. It’s the online fan communities of Madness that are both a continued source of input, and a continuing reason to compile these weekly digests of all sources of Madness related news into an easy once weekly compendium so that if you don’t want to be bombarded in these days of multi news sources and social medias you don’t have to be, as has always been the central manifesto of what MIS does since the 90s online beginnings. If you miss something doing the rounds you’ll most often find it in your email Sunday or the webblog in the week. So a big thank you to everyone who’s own sharing brought us all news last year. Keep up the great work, a big thank you as we head into 2018 and our 1,000th issue in the middle of this year.
With compiling the news from across the myriad internet channels in mind, we sometimes find ourselves using translation services or fans outside the UK to help us understand better and report on what other countries are saying about our favourite band. Earlier this year we came across such an article that was considered for inclusion, but ultimately rejected as we couldn’t find a satisfactory translation in full or in time. We just didn’t get the full gist of the writing. Which is a slight shame because the writer, although working outside of the English language, clearly understood the band and was using very detailed idioms and expressive language to describe their greatness in the history of pop.
Describing the band as writing….
“protodramas” about “lottery tickets, unwanted pregnancies, heart attacks, business travellers and staggered ghosts.”
We were most amused by the colourful way the writer was painting a bizarre yet strangely fitting picture of the group. So in way of a deleted scene from last years MIS inclusions. Here is the greatest, most certainly slightly mistranslated, description summing up Madness that we’ve ever read or Mis-read! Cheers!
…
“Madness were the newly divorced husband who is very, very, in a corner of the bar with a Mexican hat on his head.
Madness were dressed at the time like seven skins from my town who had been thrown out the front door of a costume shop and fired from the back, after colliding with all the hangers.”
We couldn’t agree more. Well said.
Jonathan Young
Time
Before we wind up this week’s issue of the MIS we just want to give you a heads-up on a forthcoming Suggs TV appearance. Mr. McPerson is due to appear on Channel Four’s “Sunday Brunch”, on January 14th, alongside Tim Lovejoy and Simon Rimmer. The show runs from 9:30am – 12:30am.
And finally, back towards the end of October we published a request from subscriber Jim Lavery, which sadly yielded zero response. In an effort to help, we’re published the following again;
“I was lucky to be invited to dance onstage at Southsea Victorious festival back in August for Night Boat To Cairo.
Cameras were not allowed on stage (scary man told us!)
I have trawled YouTube but with no success for video evidence.
Just wandered if I could put a request out to see if anyone filmed Night Boat at Victorious in 2017.”
Did you or someone you know record this footage? If you did, please get in touch with us and we can pass on Jim’s details. Thank you!
