1 – THIS IS WHERE THE MADNESS BEGINS – The obligatory intro.

2 – ANOTHER POSTMORTEM FROM A NOT-QUITE-DEAD BAND – Broad sweeping
generalisations are the fuel that propels global discourse, even
at the cost of gross oversimplification. The primary
generalisation dogging Madness is that they are a relic of the
’80s, and among those who do recognise that the band is still an
active unit today, the general understanding is that they haven’t
produced anything of merit since Margaret Thatcher was in office.
Reviewed by D. Trull. Lard Biscuit Enterprises

3 – TOTAL PIE-FLINGING MADNESS GAME NOW ONLINE – It’s been many weeks
and months in the making, but at long last the Total Pie-Flinging
Madness game is now up and running. Full details here.

4 – FRENCH MIS INTERVIEW CHRISSY BOY ABOUT BOX SET – Here’s some news
for the fans who can’t understand the French-MIS interview of
Chris Foreman.

5 – MINEHEAD, MADNESS AND OH, THAT WEATHER – This is not a complete
review of the House Of Fun Weekend, it’s not got a set list etc
I’ll leave that to better men than me. This is just my musings
of a weird but overall memorable weekend. Subscriber Steve
Richardson reports.

6 – MADNESS’ CHAS SMASH: ‘WE’RE THE WORKING-MAN’S PINK FLOYD’ – The
veteran multi-instrumentalist talks with THR as the ska-pop band
prepares for the release of its 10th studio album, “Oui Oui, Si
Si, Ja Ja, Da Da”. Source: Hollywood Reporter Music. Interview
by Phil Fisk.

7 – THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS – This week MIS co-editor, Rob Hazelby
goes back 5 years to issue number 447, and the week of Sunday 25th
November to Saturday 1st December 2007, and then back 10 years
to issue number 185 and the week of Sunday 24th November to
Saturday 23rd November 2002.

8 – THE CROWN JEWELS – The duckers, divers and borstal-bound rude boys
of Madness grew into pop maestros with an infallible common touch.
Now their national anthems form soundtracks for Olympics and
Jubilees. “Why did it take so long?” They ask Phil Sutcliffe.
From Q Magazine November 2012. Transcribed by Darren ‘Dicka’

9 – THAT’S YER LOT – A few last minute bits and pieces before we
finish for the week.

[1] – THIS IS WHERE THE MADNESS BEGINS

Hello, and a very warm welcome to this week’s edition of the MIS
Online newsletter.

If you’ve yet to start your journey back from this year’s Madness
Weekender at Butlins Minehead, please drive carefully. The road
conditions are terrible out there.

Those of you who left early and are already home, we trust you’re
probably looking forward to your own beds and a decent night’s
sleep.

Before you think about sleep though there’s a packed edition of the
MIS to get through.

Enjoy the read!

Liz Maher, Simon Roberts, Rob Hazelby, Jonathan Young
Email us at: liz, simon, robert, jonathan @mis-online.net

[2] – ANOTHER POSTMORTEM FROM A NOT-QUITE-DEAD BAND

Madness, Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da
Reviewed by D. Trull
Lard Biscuit Enterprises

Album Rating: 5 Lard Biscuits

Broad sweeping generalisations are the fuel that propels global
discourse, even at the cost of gross oversimplification. The primary
generalisation dogging Madness is that they are a relic of the ’80s,
and among those who do recognise that the band is still an active
unit today, the general understanding is that they haven’t produced
anything of merit since Margaret Thatcher was in office.

Of course this “conventional wisdom” is nonsense. Madness persists in
a state of dead-or-alive uncertainty like Schrodinger’s cat, having
now produced four albums since their alleged demise. Among the critics
and fans who have acknowledged the baffling existence of these
dispatches from beyond the grave, each has been conveniently labeled
and pigeonholed. Wonderful is known as the disappointing and uneven
comeback. The Dangermen Sessions Vol. 1 is known as a poorly produced
testament to creative bankruptcy. The Liberty of Norton Folgate is,
astonishingly, rated a grandiloquent masterpiece, their career-topping
finest album, etc. And it would appear that Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da
is being pegged as the inevitable letdown after such Icarus-winged
heights:

Madness have lowered their sights to lightweight pop songs for this
latest posthumous gasp, sounding a bit tired, not up to snuff with
Folgate, and so forth. Or so most seem to have agreed.

For my part, I think these snap judgments of the modern Madness canon
are as foolish and reductionist as the view that they’re only good for
Baggy Trousers and House of Fun. All the “new” albums have their good
points, their moments of greatness, and their stumbles. I’m happy
Norton Folgate has been so acclaimed, but I really don’t see it
towering over the rest of the offerings so mightily. In my estimation
Oui Oui is following directly in the same vein, a mix of danceable pop
and complex, insightfully crafted numbers, in roughly equal parts of
both. If you subtract the considerable theatrical grandeur lent by
Norton Folgate’s epic title track and overture, that album exhibited
basically the same amalgamation of elements. Hailed as an artistic
triumph though Folgate may be, let’s not forget it features its simple
love songs and a pop ditty about a girl’s vibrator. Conversely, the
likes of Circus Freaks and Small World can’t be written off as nuggets
of fluff.

Yes yes, I love love Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da. It’s pure Madness
delivered with panache, verve and numerous flashes of brilliance. The
crowd who deny the band’s continued viability will find little here to
change their closed minds, but we fans get much to be delighted with.
Now, I’m not going to run through a full track-by-track commentary
here.

Partly because I’ve grown tired of all the other reviews ambling
through that obstacle course, and partly because I disagree with the
album’s running order.

In my book the band’s album sequencing woes date back to the bonehead
exclusion of You’re Wonderful from the Wonderful album. My own
playlist restores the namesake track as the closer, and also moves
Saturday Night, Sunday Morning to its ordained spot as the opener. The
Liberty of Norton Folgate betrayed inner turmoil with the wildly
divergent track sequences found on the deluxe box set and single disc
releases. Madness have embraced their indecisiveness with Oui Oui, as
even the Peter Blake cover invites do-it-yourself interaction. Pick
your preferred discarded title, arrange your own playlist, choose your
own adventure.

For those interested in replicating the D. Trull Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja
Da Da experience, the following is the correct order:

01. My Girl 2 (Langer/Andrew Mix)
02. Black and Blue
03. Big Time Sister**
04. Never Knew Your Name
05. La Luna
06. How Can I Tell You
07. Kitchen Floor
08. Misery
09. Leon
10. Circus Freaks
11. So Alive
12. Death of a Rude Boy (Free Download Mix)
13. Small World
14. Powder Blue
15. My Girl 2 (Album Mix)
16. Death of a Rude Boy (Extended Remix)

(**Placeholder for the restoration of justice and sanity)

Why? Because the original arrangement of My Girl 2 is 400 times better
than the “Tainted Love” bubblegum lounge version. Because Black and
Blue doesn’t fit at the end, and it’s nice having more peppiness up
front before the melancholy of Never Knew Your Name. Because the free
preview mix of Death of a Rude Boy has a better Chas Smash rap, and
because Small World followed by Powder Blue makes the ideal proper
finale, before the appended alternate versions. And because I can.

So herewith I wish to discuss the best five Oui Oui songs and the
reasons why, a more interesting proposition than detailing the whole
lot, provided you’ve stuck with me thus far. Rest assured, I do like
every track on the album (except I suppose for Liam Watson’s damaged
My Girl 2), but these are the ones I love most.

5. Death of a Rude Boy. An unlikely choice, but one I’ll stand by. I
think somehow this song got dismissed among fans as the free
throwaway. It’s also branded as sounding like the Dangermen era,
which as previously noted has come to be an unwarranted mark of
shame. But I think Death of a Rude Boy is excellent. Tough and
menacing songs are a rare category for Madness, the best other
example being Razor Blade Alley. It sounds great played loud with
that big booming bassline and that instant singalong chorus. I
love how the rude boy is memorialised not for vicious gangster
deeds but for his many virtuous attributes, which puts me in
mind of the Japanese chivalrous yakuza films I’m so fond of. If
the band had seen fit to preview any one Oui Oui track when I
saw them back this spring, I wish it had been this one, because I
know it would have gone down a treat with the U.S. west coast fans.

4. Small World. It’s just a beautiful, breathtaking song. When I saw
the 2011 London riots on the news, I felt a sadness born out of
that sentimental connection tourists develop, seeing fires and
looting ravage “my” beloved foreign place. Woody’s lyrics evoke
that despair for “deserted streets and burning shells, familiar
shops I know so well,” though of course it’s immeasurably more
profound for residents and those with loved ones caught up in the
chaos. Small World also features the most lovely female backing
vocals ever to grace a Madness track, courtesy Woody’s wife
Siobhan.

3. Circus Freaks. Pursuant to the unseemly omission of Big Time Sister
and Doolally, Oui Oui winds up bearing only one composition from
lyrical genius Lee Thompson. At least we can take solace in the
fact that it’s a humdinger. Suggs nearly torpedoes this magnificent
beauty by ripping into his opening “Baby!” with overblown rock-star
swagger, but the song’s genuine soul quickly asserts itself.
Belying the title that promises a carnival fairground knees-up,
Circus Freaks reveals itself to be a dark elegy to Camden Town
homegirl Amy Winehouse. It’s a marvel of bombast and raw emotion
that only El Thommo could manifest, driven by Barzo’s haunted-house
organ and Chrissy Boy’s guitar riffs. Before I even heard the song
or knew what it was like, I felt certain Circus Freaks would be
the title of the album. Maybe I should have been right.

2. How Can I Tell You. This gem could have turned out a perfectly fine
mid-tempo number by playing out the opening section’s quirky rhythm
and the buzzy little keyboard figure. But then the “fast part”
kicks in, and this cute caterpillar of a song takes flight as a
monarch butterfly. Suggs succeeds once again with his trusty Ian
Dury method of turning lists into lyrics. As another reviewer
observed, the song vividly answers its own question with a litany
of non-verbal possibilities of how to tell how one feels. On the
basis of his inventive bass rhythm that brings the whole thing to
life, I’m going to go ahead and deem Graham Bush a full honorary
member of Madness until such time as the prodigal Bedders comes
home. This is the Oui Oui track I would name as the best candidate
for single release and maximum public exposure, since its
remarkable positive energy has the most potential to grab casual
listeners. How can I tell you Madness ain’t dead yet? Listen to
this.

1. Leon. Well, this song is just magic. I can name three tracks as the
Magic Trilogy of Madness’ post-comeback incarnation: You’re
Wonderful, Rainbows, and Leon. My top picks from each of respective
album, each one possessed of a soaring emotional spirit. Each of
these classics sounds like nothing Madness ever recorded in the old
days, but they form essential new additions to the canon. In short,
they are my best evidence that Madness is still a vital creative
enterprise and no mere nostalgia act. Woody Woodgate has emerged as
a songwriting force in the band’s fertile old age, along with the
aid of brother Nick. Their story of a bored, daydreaming
schoolteacher applies to the unfulfilled dreams in all our lives.
Suggs enriches Leon with his best vocals on the album – when he’s
banging out the verses to that Mike Barson piano melody, you hear
the very alchemy of the Nutty Sound itself gushing forth. I would
say this sounds like a lost treasure from the vault recorded in
1984, but even intended as a compliment, that’s really not a fair
statement. The truth is that Madness recorded it in 2012, and they
could not have recorded it until 2012. And as a fan that makes me
very happy indeed. Yes yes.

Donald Trull

[3] – TOTAL PIE-FLINGING MADNESS GAME NOW ONLINE

It’s been many weeks and months in the making, but at long last the
Total Pie-Flinging Madness game is now up and running.

The idea’s a simple one – The band, in their Total Madness double
decker bus, travel from left to right across the screen.

Your task is to arm yourself with custard pies, and hurl them at
the band members as they stick their heads out the bus windows.

What would be a simple task is made that much trickier due to the
heads only staying up for a limited amount of time before they duck
for cover. Not only that, but you can only hold a short supply of
pies, so quick re-loading (by clicking on the sign at the bottom
right of the screen) is vital.

Once the bus has completed its journey you can submit your score.
Here, you not only get chance to see how your skills compare to
other Madness fans, but the top 5 score entrants will be entered
into a draw to win a signed copy of Total Madness and a signed Total
Madness poster. The 4 runners-up will each receive a copy of Total
Madness.

To take part, point your web browsers at:

http://www.unionsquaremusic.co.uk/total_madness/

Good luck!

Our thanks go to Holly Barringer for the heads-up on this.

Rob Hazelby

[4] – FRENCH MIS INTERVIEW CHRISSY BOY ABOUT BOX SET

Here’s some news for the fans who can’t understand the French-MIS
interview of Chris Foreman :

The boxset could be out in April or May 2013. It will have a double
CD with a DVD. The double CD will contain songs like “Doolaly”, “Can’t
Keep A Good Thing Down”, ” Big Time Sister”, “My Obsession” and
alternative versions of “Never Knew Your Name” (slow version with
some verses in French lyrics sung by a woman), and a Soul version of
“Powder Blue”…

The band have recorded around 22 tracks for “Oui Oui”. The Box set
could be named “Yes Yes” or “Non Non, No No, Nein Nein”… It will
feature a DVD with some Butlins live of 2011 sets…

To Be Continued !!

“My Obsession” we have spoken to Judge Fredd about. It could be
titled “Perfect Crime” on the box set.

We are aware of the song being played live by The Nutty Boys (Crunch!)
back in the early 90’s, though a demo by Crunch never surfaced in any
fan circles to our knowledge.

Judge Fredd and JP

http://french-mis.be/

[5] – MINEHEAD, MADNESS AND OH, THAT WEATHER

This is not a complete review of the House Of Fun Weekend, it’s not
got a set list etc I’ll leave that to better men than me. This is
just my musings of a weird but overall memorable weekend.

The 5 hour journey down from Bolton Lancs was mostly uneventful on
the Friday apart from an overturned HGV on the opposite carriageway
(I hope everyone involved is ok).

The check in was pretty quick and we found our room only accommodation
basic but clean. We found we could keep abreast of the conversations
and general goings on through the walls of the three surrounding
chalets which was nice. Whoever was snoring during the brief time we
spent relaying on the Saturday afternoon listening to Suggs’ I’m only
sleeping, thanks for the accompaniment.

We turned out Friday evening to catch a bit of the Cuban Brothers. I’m
never really that bothered about support acts as I can’t wait for the
Madness to begin but they made us both laugh and were strangely
entertaining.

Madness arrived and took us through the new album. I’ve not had chance
to get to a Madness gig since they started to reveal the new material
so it was really good to hear all the new stuff live. Jackie my missus
hasn’t heard it much as I’ve mostly been playing the new album on
repeat in the car whilst traveling to and from work and as a semi
Madness fan there more than a few songs she really likes.

So it was off to mooch around the various venues and have a few drinks
we were both a bit pooped after a long week, long journey and dancing
the whole way through an excellent album so we headed off about
midnight to save ourselves the embarrassment of collapsing during the
Saturday gig (TANNOY “Clear up on row ten 45 year old fat person needs
scraping up”).

Shame about all the rain on Saturday we wandered around the camp and
in to town then watched the comedians on centre stage. We missed
Finn Taylor and Eric Lampert. Peter Cain started slowly but delivered
a really funny set. Poor Benny Boot died over and over, I shouldn’t
laugh, oh but I didn’t did I. When I’ve got a spare ten minutes I’ll
write him something funny and send it to him. A very brave man though
it takes guts to get up in front of hundreds of people and try to make
them laugh, but then to die and die and die. Keep going Benny but you
need some new material mate as nothing really worked.

The visual comedian George Egg was great, part magician, part
impressionist, part stand up, very funny. It’s the first time I’ve
seen Norman Lovett do stand up, he was pretty funny although slightly
strange which was great. All floating plastic bags and tails of hot
dog poo…excellent.

Now we can skip the relax in the room to the tune of someone elses
snoring and the food we ate to the main event.

Madness produced a fantastic set with some tunes I’ve not heard live
for a while mixed in with the standards and some of the new stuff
which all worked really well and was presented with the usual flare
and gusto we really enjoyed it. It was however a bit strange to find
ourselves almost surrounded by people who didn’t seem to interested
in dancing as they had drinks in their hands and were scared of
spilling them some had a drink in each hand and most moved away
slightly from us in fear of their precious drinks.

During Chris’ showtime we made our way to one of the bars for a quick
drink thinking the bars would be empty and we would get swiftly served
and be back for the majority of the aforementioned Showtime. We were
however surprised to find masses of people intent on getting smashed
rather than watch or even listen to Madness. We hightailed it to a
drinks machine and returned to the crown.

We pitched up near the back to carry on dancing to again find
ourselves with people who didn’t seem interested in dancing, some even
had their hands in their pocket and despite some of them looking like
true Madness fans with trilbies etc they were firmly rooted to the
spot. Some of them even filmed other people dancing.

Although a bit of a strange one an most enjoyable gig none the less.
We all experience things differently and although not dancing at a
Madness concert and getting absolutely smashed whilst watching
football or boxing not even within earshot of the boys is not my
thing as long as they enjoyed it so what.

We had decided to head home after the gig as we needed to be home before
midday Sunday and here the nightmare began. We retuned our keys and
turned out of the camp to find the main road out closed. Not to worry
the satnav recalculated and onward to Bolton. Little did we know that
outside the bubble of Madness that the roads of the Southwest had been
thrown into chaos. The first three foot deep flood in the road caused
the engine to stall just before the other side.

Luckily or not the engine restarted and we carried on, not wanting to
turn around and go back through. The fog/mist came down at this point
and the rain started to lash down again. The car waded through a
couple more flooded parts until we entered a lake of water which my
poor car couldn’t quite cope. The exhaust was under water and the
battery had taken a beating in the previous incident. Poo to say the
least. I got out and pushed us to the other side.

I’m not the tallest bloke at 5’8” ish but the water was up to about
three inches below my knee on the far side and would have been
perhaps up to my waist in the middle. A couple of attempts to start
again resulted in the battery going to flat for any hope of getting
going. Nightmare, but at least we had a signal on the old mobile to
contact the RAC for the first time ever since we joined them over
ten years ago.

25 minutes at standard rate we got through to be told that driving
through water isn’t covered and would cost me £85 callout. Whatever,
I need help so held to ransom we summonsed the “trusty” chap who
turned up some 45mins to an hour later sans jump leads or adequate
towing apparatus to tell us he could abandon our car and take us
back to Minehead or could call a tow truck out to take us home at
our cost. F*%Cling bollocks to say the least.

I’m an ex mechanic with 15 years in the trade so I knew that jump
leads would have got us going as no water had entered the intake (I
pulled the air filter and checked before he arrived) anyway such is
life, we ordered the tow truck.

3am we were in the truck and on our way again. Before we hit the M5
the driver had to negotiate two more flooded roads and avoided one
which he thought he wouldn’t get through near Taunton town centre.
One bumpy ride later we arrived home 7am £85 plus £300+ lighter.

Despite the nightmare of getting home, the strange crowd, Madness
more than made up for it with two fantastic gigs. It’s all part of
the experience of life in the end and what doesn’t kill and all
that.

Misery loves company so do something else instead. Oh and just a
note to the Southwest of England after this weekend and the holiday
we spent this year in the rain you won’t see me or my car until you
fit the massive drain plug I’m sending plans for in the post.

Don’t be put off by anything I’ve said here it was mostly great and
I’d definitely recommend attending if there is one next year. It’s
a shame it’s not easier to let the train take the strain as the
nearest station is Taunton and when I checked it would have taken
6hrs from Bolton just to Taunton.

Next time if the wife will ever agree to go, I’d check the Environment
website and watch some news before setting off there or back. I’ve
been out in all kinds of weather in all kinds of vehicles, I’ve been
on the top of moors bogged down to the axle but, I’ve never been on
roads and out in weather so bad as to think I couldn’t have got home
under my own steam. This is not the fault of Madness it is the people
who know this is going to happen (Environment Agency, local and
national government) and do nothing but close the roads too late when
it happens.

You should be able to attend a Madness concert without the need to
wade through two+ feet of water though most of us don’t mind THAT
much.

Steve Richardson

[6] – MADNESS’ CHAS SMASH: ‘WE’RE THE WORKING-MAN’S PINK FLOYD’

Source: Hollywood Reporter Music

Phil Fisk
Madness

The veteran multi-instrumentalist talks with THR as the ska-pop band
prepares for the release of its 10th studio album, “Oui Oui, Si Si,
Ja Ja, Da Da” (out Nov. 13).

Some things seem to endure forever, Madness being one of them.
Although the ska-pop band has gone on hiatus a couple times during
its 33-year career, it keeps coming back like a manic episode.
Energised by 2009’s The Liberty of Norton Folgate, its first album of
originals in a decade, the group continues the momentum with its
terrific 10th studio set, Oui Oui, Si Si, Ja Ja, Da Da (out Nov. 13).

The Hollywood Reporter caught up with multi-instrumentalist Cathal
Smyth, aka Chas Smash, fresh from a year in which the English group
played its biggest hit, “Our House,” at the Closing Ceremony of the
London Olympics and showing no sign of letting up.

The Hollywood Reporter: What led you to employ several different
producers (Charlie Andrew, Clive Langer, Liam Watson, Owen Morris,
and Stephen Street) on this album?

Cathal Smyth: The main reason is we’ve worked with Clive Langer and
Elmore Stanley on pretty much every album. Clive essentially is like
an eighth member… but we’ve worked with him for so long it felt
like a change would be interesting. So we felt we’d try a few tracks
with different producers. Obviously it could go really wrong, or it
could go really right. It was just different energies. Stephen Street
is very calm and collected. Owen Morris is very much boisterous and
energetic. Charlie Andrew, who works in preproduction and on some
mixes with Clive, he’s an up-and-coming set of ears; Alt-J, one of
the acts he produced [won the Mercury Prize this month]. And Liam
Watson, he’s very much old-school 8-track analog. The thing with
Madness is you can work on any song you like, but once it goes through
the process of being worked on by the band, it sounds like Madness,
so there is never any fear that you’re going to lose “the sound.”

THR: You’ve had a couple hiatuses. What provided the spark for your
latest return?

Smyth: We reformed in ’92 [releasing the concert disc, Madstock], we
did an album in ’99 called Wonderful, and we did another album in
2005 [covers disc The Dangermen Sessions, Vol. 1]. I think what
really sparked the fire was The Liberty of Norton Folgate. It was a
really enjoyable experience. It sort of repositioned the band in the
eyes of a lot of journalists and the fans. A lot of people saw it as
our best album. I may not agree with that, but it seemed to spark a
certain enthusiasm as far as rediscovering one’s passion for the band
and the band as a vehicle for one’s writing. I personally look at it
as a new beginning, and if that’s the case, then we’ve just done the
difficult second album.

THR: There are some really strong melodies on the new album,
particularly during the first half.

Smyth: The British love a good melody. I remember reading in art
school a couple years ago an article with Puff Daddy; he was asked
what he looks for in a track, and he said melody. I think really
melody and the platform for that melody is the essential ingredient
for a great song.

THR: Well, there have been periods where melody hasn’t held such
strong sway.

Smyth: Sure. I think maybe that reflects the mood of a nation or a
culture or the globe — who knows? That sort of collective expression,
like punk. I think in times of conservatism, you can take risks —
when everything is comfortable. When things are uncomfortable, you
want less risk. You want to be comforted, not challenged, when times
are tough. We began with our first release in ’79 during a recession.
We reformed in ’92 during a recession, and here we are again in a
recession. So quite simply, I like to think we’re the working-man’s
Pink Floyd, a bright shining virus of joy hoping to spread a little
joy and happiness when things are hard.

THR: What is it the album’s title is affirming, or are you simply
trying to get someone to shut up?

Smyth: The cover of the album is all the alternative suggested titles
crossed out. So it sort of shows the complexity of trying to come to a
decision in a band. In its essence, I suppose, we’re in Europe, and
it’s really an affirmation of how positive life can be, how positive
you can be in life.

THR: I understand you wrote “So Alive” for a girl who tossed you over.
Did you ever hear anything back from her?

Smyth: She got married — she has a kid with a guy, but I think the
thing is this, right? You come out of a relationship for a helluva
long time [separating from his wife after 27 years], and you play the
field a little bit. You’re looking, and then you stop looking. You
think you’ll never find love again. Then you meet someone, and you
fall head over heels. You act like a stupid kid again. And I think the
thing is, thank God you at least felt that. So part of writing “So
Alive” was processing those feelings without getting bitter… even
though feelings that didn’t feel so good, the mere fact that you can
feel that intensity of love, that sort of obsessional love, is amazing
and encouraging. .. F—, it hurt at the time. But love involves risk.
Without risking it, you never have it, do you?

THR: I talked with Flogging Molly’s Dave King some years ago, and he
spoke about getting to the place where he wasn’t writing for anyone
else but simply trying to write the most honest song he could for
himself. After 33 years, what is it about for you?

Smyth: I was talking to an artist the other day. He came from a kind
of underground place, and now he’s got a No. 1 single, but he wants
to get back to a more casual or dark or not-caring-about-it vibe. We
were talking about the “three years in,” where you’ve been on the
road, you’ve been in hotels, you’ve been on TV shows doing interviews,
and you’re wondering where you’re going to get inspiration from. It
seemed to me it’s not where you get inspiration from, it’s your state
of mind that you have to work on and your interest in life. It’s all
about your internal perception, what’s between your ears. If you’re
not enjoying what you’re doing, of course you’re not going to write
something that’s going to lift you — or maybe not lift you but make
you feel complete in the sense that you can represent it live with
confidence and belief. That’s the challenge. You can take that same
approach to all aspects of life. It’s like getting up in the morning
and wanting to face the day even though you’ve lived those years and
years. How are you going to face the new day? How’re you going to be
engaged in life? What’s going to rock your world?

[7] – THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS

This week MIS co-editor, Rob Hazelby goes back 5 years to issue
number 447, and the week of Sunday 25th November to Saturday 1st
December 2007, and then back 10 years to issue number 185 and the
week of Sunday 24th November to Saturday 23rd November 2002.

5 years ago..

Issue number 447 – Sunday 25th November – Saturday 1st December 2007

This issue got off to an exciting start, with the news that Madness
had just been booked to play the Snowbombing Festival, which was due
to run from the 31st of March to the 6th of April. According to the
press release

“Thousands of British snowsports & music enthusiasts
will flock for a fiesta that stretches across
mountains, streets and nightclubs for a whole week
of flurry and fun”

Anyone fancy a nutty ski?

Next, it was over to Scootering Magazine, who, in their latest
issue had featured an interview with the one and only Suggs. In the
interview the great man talked scooters, Madness, and what us fans
could expect in the future.

Video news now, and according to Chris the video for the NW5 single
would simply be footage taken from compilations and live shows. Fans
were quite vocal in their disappointment, with one Vince Carden
declaring;

“A great song deserves a great video? Madness
don’t think so.”

Meanwhile, Chris Carter-Pegg commented;

While Chris Carter Pegg replied to us that:

“I would of course prefer one of their old style videos
too, but I totally appreciate the economics of it all…
The single will probably only sell a few thousand copies
(Drip Fed Fred sold only 1,700!) hence if they throw a
sum even as a tiny (in video terms) as £5,000 at making
a video…then this wouldn’t even be covered by the very
small revenue from the single sales!”

10 years ago…

It was over to The News of The World next, as we featuring a full
transcription of an interview the paper had recently conducted with
Suggs. Here, he talked about manufactured pop bands currently wowing
the public on X Factor.

Next, we passed the baton over to Duff Kelly and The Sun newspaper,
where the two sources covered an in-depth lowdown on the recent Prince
Buster gig on the 23rd November in Croydon, complete with YouTube
clips.

We brought this issue to a close by mentioning the MIS calendar, which
registered MIS web site users could log in to and edit, by adding any
Madness dates they felt would interested other visitors.

Issue number 185 – Sunday 24th November – Saturday 1st December 2002

Exciting news reached us this week in the form of a release date for
the forthcoming Butterfield 8 album, which was now penned in to drop
on December the 2nd, at a reasonably priced £9.99.

Stuck with a mountain of duplicate Madness merchandise that’s simply
sat around your house and collecting dust? If so, the Madness Trading
Ring had an idea. Simply list the items you were trying to sell (non
bootleg, of course!), and the MTR maintainers would put them together
in a once-a-week classifieds email.

It sounds like a fantastic idea, but we can only assume (as we can’t
remember back that far!) that it didn’t gain the support from the MTR
members it needed. A shame really, as it’s an ideal way to make a
few pennies from items you no longer want, but another fan is keen
to add to the collection.

With the Christmas gigs now fast approaching the details of the
forthcoming Birmingham gig were blasted out in this week’s issue.
Naturally, the obligatory pre and post gig booze session would almost
certainly be on the cards.

Elsewhere this week the One Step Behind web site received a revamp,
with a batch of photo uploads. For those people who had yet to see the
band in action, this was an excellent opportunity to see just what
they’d been missing all this time.

We finished off this issue with a look at November down the years with
‘Tour Madness’. Here we finished off the November 1985 tour, by
looking at the string of gigs held from the 8th to the 24th of
November.

Rob Hazelby

[8] – THE CROWN JEWELS

Q Magazine November 2012

Transcribed by Darren ‘Dicka’

The duckers, divers and borstal-bound rude boys of Madness grew into
pop maestros with an infallible common touch. Now their national
anthems form soundtracks for Olympics and Jubilees. “Why did it take
so long?” They ask Phil Sutcliffe.

“So I said to the Queen, Now’s the time to retire gracefully,” gravels
Lee Thompson, Madness’s saxman, recalling his Royal encounter at the
Diamond Jubilee aftershow.

“Well, she’s got up and walked off and I’m calling after her: Not you
ma’am. Us!”

Done guffawing, he ruminately adds, “I mean, where do we go from
here?”

“Here”? He means the roof of Buckingham Palace. Yesterday’s men
singing Our House, a celebration of ordinary life’s mundanity and
private anxiety to celebrate the nation’s most unordinary life in all
its splendour and public serenity, while the Palaces serves as a blank
screen for projected images of the modest homes where the onlooking
millions live, each one falling like curtains to reveal another.

“Our house, in the middle of our street… I remember way back then
when everything was true.” The song always was a crafty bag of
implications about British society, class, past, present and everybody
having a high old time. Because that’s what Madness do. Maybe even
the Queen enjoyed that court jester’s liberty, “in the middle of one’s
street”.

How to follow that? Only with the Olympics: another Madness/Majesty
double-header. The Closing Ceremony, the UK selling itself to the
world, and there she is on high representing our dignity and there
they are on the back of a lorry representing our duck-and-dive
survival instincts.

When Q meets Madness in Gospel Oak, the London NW5 bailiwick where
they grew up, keyboardist Mike Barson reckons their Jubilee-Olympic
year as “quite big”. And wasn’t the recognition lovely? “Not
thoroughly undeserved. But why did it take so long?”

Well, with no new Top 10 single since 1983 and only two albums of
original songs since 1986, they had let it slide. Which makes it all
the more remarkable that, two years ago, following the rebirth that
was The Liberty Of Norton Folgate and during a spell of what singer
Suggs calls “sitting on a park bench scratching our bollocks”,
Olympic then Jubilee bright sparks came knocking.

Here they are then, the old bastions, holding a banner aloft for jolly
tragedies and mournful comedies in the grand tradition of British pop
music hall.

“Scumbags from Camden Town on the crest of the planet?” Suggs muses.
“This surreal moment will pass.”

Chris Foreman – Guitar
They were playing his song. At the Jubilee and the Olympics, that is.
Chris Foreman wrote the music to Our House, Carl Smyth the lyrics,
“We got no money from either time. Well 200 quid from the Olympics
for the publishing. I will carry that grievance to my grave!”

Perhaps contrarily, he proceeds to talk up the Royals: “After we did
the Jubilee some people on the Madness website said, The Royal Family,
what have they ever done for us? And I wrote this long essay about
what they mean to me. Because I’ve met ’em all.” With a droll grin,
he catalogues the Queen Mother’s visit to his infants school, Prince
Charles’s to the council garden he worked on in the 70’s (with
Thompson, also his associate in the window-cleaning and shoplifting
enterprises), a nice chat with Prince William at the Jubilee telling
them he liked “one’s house”.

Brought up from childhood by his father, a teacher and folk singer,
Foreman paid no attention at school and by 1976 he was living in a
squat with a wife, a baby and no direction at all. But he bought a
£20 guitar and Thompson introduced him to Barson. “He knew where the
chords were,” says Foreman. “C7? Hit that one. He nurtured Thommo and
me” – they became the Aldenham Glamour Boys, whose graffiti art and
train-hopping to foreign parts impressed 15-year-old Suggs.

Foreman worked out what the keyboard and sax dominated Madness needed
from guitar, and contrived “little tunes” that inspired lyrics from
Suggs, Smyth or Thompson – Baggy Trousers, Shut Up, Cardiac Arrest,
all hits. Through every subsequent upheaval and flatlining doldrum he
remained steadfast, until 2005; when Madness succumbed to recording a
covers album, The Dangermen Sessions Vol. 1, he quit. “You’ve got so
much song writing ability, you shouldn’t be doing that!” he argues.
“My advance for that LP was £16,000 and I refused the second half.”

However, a visit to a …Norton Folgate session drew back. “It was
all going swimmingly and then fucking Chris turns up with his guitar
case and we had to start again,” as Suggs recalls. Affectionately, of
course.

“We have a laugh – apart from a few strop-offs,” says Foreman, who’s
54 now, living in Brighton, thrice married and a grandfather. “I’m a
doubter, I over-analyse. Lee calls me Victor Meldrew. I’d say I’m
realistic.”

Lee Thompson – Saxophone
Until he spotted him across the artists’ warm-up area at the Olympic
closing do, Lee Thompson had never met songwriting hero and fellow
North Londoner Ray Davies: “Wearing my fez and everything I went over
and shook his hand. He says, Who are you? I say Baggy Trousers! He
says, The penny’s dropped.”

In Madness, everything connects. From the Southampton Arms, Thompson
points across Highgate Road towards Little Green Street, the alley
opposite. It’s where he was brought up – by his mother because his
father was pleasuring Her Majesty – and the setting for The Kinks’
1966 Dead End Street video: “They’re carrying this coffin.”

He’s often written about that childhood, right through to Idiot Child
on …Norton Folgate: “That’s about me and my friend Bobby Townshend”.
Criminals at 12, they thieved and burgled until dispatched to separate
reform schools in 1971-3. Townsend never changed and died in poverty,
with Thompson one of three mourners at the funeral. But Thompson ran
into his former infant schoolmates, Barson and “Chrissy Boy” Foreman:
“They pulled me to one side and said, You should try music. As
opposed to crowbars.”

When Madness fell together in 1976-9, Thompson brought the “nutty
sound” of Prince Buster, and a blatant itch for the spotlight: “First
chance I’ve got, I want that solo! I want that!”

He’s been with the same girl, Deborah, since they first went out on 6
February 1974 (they married 10 years later) and he’s shown the same
commitment to Madness. He endured the “pointless” period after Barson
turned Buddhist, moved to Amsterdam and left the band in 1983 and
Madness’s complete break-up, 1988-’92. And he struck with every
erratic step until vibrant creativity finally resumed and “Olympic
winds filled their sails.” as Suggs puts it.

Thompson, 54 now, will insist he wants a break and have a moan about
how the most opinionated members, Barson and Carl Smyth, debate on a
“he who shouts loudest” basis – “It wears you down”.

But the rough mixes from Madness’s new album – on it’s 15th
provisional title – prove there’s no softening in his writing (Circus
Freaks’s subject is Amy Whinehouse and her husband, Doolaly’s the
Russian roulette suicide of a traumatised soldier). “Keep it real,
keep it sharp,” he says. “You need a line of integrity.”

Suggs – Lead Vocals
“They made me a present of Mornington Crescent/They threw it a brick
at a time,”

Suggs intones, quoting music hall comic-songster William Hargreaves’s
The Night I Appeared As Macbeth. “When I was young I didn’t know
anything about music hall. Then Ian Dury started talking about it
and Ray Davies did a tour dressed as Max Miller and it turned out
Chris’s dad, John was an exponent – he taught me all those songs.
They talk about real lives in an ordinary way and make that into some
sort of poetry.”

He didn’t really get the hang of it until after Madness’s first album,
One Step Beyond: “The first time I took songwriting seriously I was at
Lee’s flat on the Caledonian Road in a sleeping bag on the floor,
thinking about Ian Dury. I thought if I just wrote down all my
memories of school, the wasted fucking time and the fun, then tried to
put them into some kind of rhythmic order… the mixture of happiness
and sadness, pathos. That was Baggy Trousers and I thought, I’m on
to something here.”

Crucially, he’d found the Madness voice, seven members, seven writers,
all matching in a higgledly-piggledy way. At 51 and still a rooted
Camden Townsman, he says it comes from largely single-parented kids
(his father left when he was three) being together for so long.
“The surrogate family thing, the years trapped together on a bus
learning how to get on, how to become men. So what we do is more than
play music. All the ups and downs, the fighting, the loving, goes
into the pot and transcends…. normal expectations.

“There’s a good deal of hot-headedness in this band and I mediate
quite a lot. I feel responsibility about being the frontman and I
never play the ‘I’m not singing that’ card.”

Considering Madness in middle age, he asserts that …Norton Folgate
comprised the “one more great British pop album” he needed to die
happy, and he feels the new one again finds them acting their age:
“Songs are about getting divorced, not pulling girls”.

But the intimacy of their work can still catch them on the hop – for
instance, Barson’s music for Powder Blue, Suggs’s lyric about an early
morning with his wife (Anne, they married in 1981): “Mike sent me this
demo and it was a shock hearing him sing it. It was so personal. But
when I listened later I heard what he intended and what was great was
he did get that feeling I was trying to express.

Mike Barson – Keyboards
“We all like discordant stuff,” says Mike Barson, provider of the
angular piano excursions that help steer the band’s homely localism
clear of sentimentality: “That’s the thing about Madness, the
wildness, but you can’t have empty wildness.”

Unlike his casually attired bandmates, Barson still sports 1979-style
porkpie, shades and sharp suiting. Amid a band of suburban Cockney’s,
his voice is notably old-time London, Henry Cooper reading a script by
Harold Pinter.

Madness myth portrays him as the leader, disciplinarian and mentor –
after all, he sacked Suggs early on because he let Chelsea FC distract
him. Barson agrees that he was the “conscientious” one: “People would
come in with a couple of chords on a piece of paper – not a song! So
there was mishing and mashing.” Didn’t such practices provoke
arguments on the royalties front about who wrote what? No problem, he
says, “because we’ve always had a publishing deal giving 50 per cent
of every song to the band, no matter who the writers are.”

Thompson told Q that, in his view, Barson has re-established himself
as natural leader. “I think I should be,” he laughs. “These days
there’s a lot of chiefs, not a lot of Indians. I would like everyone
just to do what I say, but they don’t. It’s in my nature to bring
people together, though. Carl can be very difficult, but he breaks
boundaries – he wants every song to be great.”

Still Buddhist, 54, just married for the second time and living
between Gospel Oak and various European retreats, Barson fancies
writing the political lyrics he used to poo-poo because “working
people are getting f*cked over”.

He still treasures a good Madness co-write, though, and this taut man
gets quite mellow over recollections of writing music for a romantic
Suggs lyric on the band’s forthcoming album: “Powder Blue is about him
being up all night, sitting on the sofa with his wife, the dawn coming
up, and everything’s melting into that powder blue. As a songwriter I
could taste that moment, I felt I was really… hitting the note.”

Daniel Woodgate – Drums
When Madness started their new album, Daniel “Woody” Woodgate brought
20 songs along, most written with his brother, Nick. A bit prolific
for a drummer. But then his family background as “the middle-class
one” did include grandfathers who respectively ran a BBC choir and a
dance band.

Now 52 and based in Beckenham with his second wife, he grew up in
Camden Town, single-parented by his photographer father. He got
caught up in Madness via bassist Mark Bedford – currently on a
sabbatical except for the Jubilee and the Olympics – and found his
prog-jazz drumming style fitted no better than his hippy hair: “There
was me, triplets on the bass drum, a roll every other f*cking bar,
and Mike kicked me off the kit and went, No, It’s like this. Boof,
smack, boof, smack… I became efficient.”

He got through an excessive phase when he wasted away to skin and
bone – only for Suggs, Smyth, Thompson and Foreman to ease him and
Bedford out in 1986 via a “con” as Woodgate puts it. They declared
Madness over. Only for (abortive, one-album) The Madness, featuring
the other four, to rise again. “It was a terrible cop-out,” Woodgate
says, benignly enough now.

Still, intervening years with Voice Of The Beehive restored his
confidence and, by 1992, when Smyth rang to propose the Madstock
reunion he leapt at it and duly boof-smacked the Finsbury Park masses
into such nutty-dancing fervour that seismologists mistook it for an
earthquake. “The most wonderous experience,” Woodgate marvels. ”
To be loved!”

Madness’s golden-oldie years ensued. “We did very well, just getting
together a couple of times a year, greatest hits, an easy life,” says
Woodgate. “But we needed that sense of paddling in the deep end, and
so we came back to writing new songs. Wonderful (1999) wasn’t
wonderful because the battles for supremacy re-emerged. We used to
follow Mike, but now, we said, Hang on. You can’t go blunderbussing
your way through Madness.”

So another 10 years, a few bits of tours and the covers album passed
before, finally Suggs inspired them with “the great concept of The
Liberty Of Norton Folgate”. Now, artistically refreshed, he’s proud
of Madness’s standing as “social commentators”… “We’ve been a part
of British Life for 30 years now,” he concludes.

Carl Smyth – Vocals
Some days after the Southhampton Arms pictures, Carl (really Cathal)
Smyth is back home in Ibiza and on the phone to Q – singing, playing
piano and guitar, reciting, sometimes even talking. A touching song
about the aftermath of his divorce, 2006, after a 27-year marriage.

A dirty ditty involving slatterns and bawds. A poem called Happy
Man, featured in the …Norton Folgate special edition DVD. Glum
to gleeful, they’re all beautifully written by the man chiefly known,
and under appreciated, as Madness’s original nutty dancer, Chas Smash.

Our House being his lyric lent the Buckingham Palace experience a
special piquancy: “Like I was walking through a dream. Seeing that
sense of Royal protocol have it’s effect on people. The spine
straightens, one behaves oneself. However republican you are…”

He isn’t, or not very, but still a socialist, conscious of his Irish
dancing, concrete-pouring, labouring antecedents, his sense of
history enhanced by reading Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn – listen to
his …Norton Folgate song Clerkenwell Polka (admired by Jerry
Dammers, Smyth proudly reports).

In his teens, he says, he always blagged his way into jobs he couldn’t
do and Madness was no exception. But he simply rejected rejection.
The first time he joined he clashed with Barson over his bass
deficiencies and left. Then Thompson told him he wasn’t wanted. But
he pressed on and one night at Aylesbury Friars, in 1979, he stood at
the back of the hall until some magical force bore him through the
crowd, “the water parted”, he jumped onstage, started dancing and…
that was it.

He brought steps, words, tunes, a drop of trumpet as and when:
“Madness has been a constant experience in my life, like a grown-up
playpen, but with ‘the privilege of responsibility’.”

He took the phrase from some “some monsignor”, but he felt it
personally. When Madness died for four years, he brought them back
to life. Using his temporary music biz guise at Go! Discs, he
parleyed their erstwhile 3000-capacity popularity into 75,000 over
two nights of Madstock in August 1992.

And no letting go ever since, for all the shilly-shallying that
preceded the renaissance of …Norton Folgate and the new LP – and
despite his bellicose barneys with Barson, which Thompson so
detests: “There’s always conflict in art! Compromise dilutes your
message! You have to fight what you believe in! Reasonable change
can be made by unreasonable men! Well, Madness still has that burning
life to it. “Here we are” he says. “Old dogs for the long walks.”

[9] – THAT’S YER LOT

We’re almost done for this week’s issue of the MIS, but before we go
we do have a few last minute bits to pass in your direction.

First-up..

The Near Jazz Experience have launched their debut 7 inch single.
It’s a spilt A-side with another band called Dear Thief.

The single was launched last Tuesday at Indo. The limited release
featuring Mark and Terry, is available from Satorial label.

Next…

Theatre mangers of Suggs’ live show tell us that this Monday (26th
November) Suggs will be announcing his solo 2013 My Life Story tour
dates.

Moving on…

MIS had a pleasure of working with The Ska Orchestra this week, on
backdrop videos for the Butlins gig.

Lee wanted clips of Laurel and Hardy constantly laughing, Laurel and
Hardy – Way Out West – Dancing in the street – Gene Kelly in Broadway
Ballet, and a montage of Fred and Ginger dancing in old movies.

Beyond this vintage stuff he asked us to edit a 70’s Alex Harvey show.
Another inspiration for stage antics. It was a strange sequence
involving stockings that went from being licked, to being used as god
father like Marlon Brando mouth extenders before finally being a
muggers mask affair. Lee said. “It’s the punters expressions that do
it for me”.

We added logos and an EP plug to the clips and delivered silent
versions for the stage projection, with an added band tattoo we knew a
fan had just had done on a Circus Freaks costume for Butlins.

And on the subject of Butlins, all being well we hope to have a full
lowdown of what went on in next week’s issue.

In the meantime, here are a few snippets Jon sent in over the course
of the weekend.

“Butlins Friday. Madness played Entire album
So, live debuts of Leon and Small world.

Sex and drugs and rock and roll. In encore
with Our House and It Must be Love”.

—

“Saturday. MIS film event went down well.
Thanks to all. Especially. Mr scurf. Dicka.
Sharon & Sarah. All who attended.
Film on youtube in December featuring All
who attended as the magic extras.”

Have a good week!

Rob, Jon, Liz, Simon
(With special thanks to Darren ‘Dicka’, Judge Fredd and JP,
Steve Richardson and D. Trull)