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

2 – THE YEAR TO REMEMBER – SUGGS TALKS TO RADIO 2 – Suggs speaks to
Clare Balding on Radio 2, about the year 2012.

3 – THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS – This week MIS co-editor, Rob Hazelby
goes back 5 years to issue number 452, and the week of Sunday 30th
December to Saturday 5th January 2007/2008, and then back 10 years
to issue number 190 and the week of Sunday 29th December to
Saturday 4th January December 2002/2003.

4 – NEWMARKET NIGHTS – Newmarket Racecourses will be turned into a
House of Fun next year with the return of Madness. From edat.co.uk
Our thanks also go to Colin Hinchley for the heads-up.

5 – A LOOKBACK AT 2012 – PART 1 – In this first of a three part series
we look at January to April 20

6 – VOTE FOR YOUR FAVOURITE SKA/ROCKSTEADY/REGGAE ALBUMS OF 2012 –
With the Reggae Steady Ska web site currently running an online
poll where you can vote for your favourite Ska, Rocksteady or
Reggae album of 2012, and Madness’ latest production down as one
of the shortlist, we detail how you can place your nomination.

7 – MAD DISCOUNTS OVER AT THE MADNESS WEB STORE – You may not be
aware, but the official online Madness web store are currently
running a new year sale, with 15% off nearly everything ’til the
4th of January!

8 – THAT’S YER LOT – A few last minute words before we finish, not
only for this week, but for the year!

[1] – THIS IS WHERE THE MADNESS BEGINS

Hello and a very warm welcome to this, the final MIS of 2012.

These past 12 months have been exciting times, not just for us, the fans, but also for the band, who have experienced one of their most active periods in many, many years.

In this issue we take a look at the first six months of the year just gone, and highlight some of the highs and lows of January to June.
With so much having taken place, we’ve not been able to cover everything, but we hope to at least jog a few memories along the way.

We’ve also got news of the first racecourse gig of 2013, details of how you can nominate Madness for the best Ska album of the year, discounts that can be had at the official Madness web store, and much more besides.

Enjoy the read!

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

[2] – THE YEAR TO REMEMBER – SUGGS TALKS TO RADIO 2

Suggs speaks to Clare Balding on Radio 2, about the year 2012.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p683n

Our House is played.

Jubilee

Suggs talks about seeing the graphics on a laptop, and the gasp when people thought the building was collapsing. He went down to talk to news agency the next day and got mobbed by people all singing Our House at him.

Suggs went to the boat pageant, of the Jubilee, and they had a party after the jubilee at Bow Street.

Suggs explains the Tommy Cooper Joke, how he dropped a cup and Princess beatrice told him off, for littering.

Olympics.

Suggs talks about the wonderful spirit in the country for a time, and about forgetting the first line of the song, just before going on.

He talked about Our House being the chosen song at both events and for a while this being a bit of a debate. House of fun was considered for the Jubilee but because of it’s song meaning was decided against.

Paralympic was talked about as a revelation.

The new Single Never Knew Your Name is played.

Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da

Suggs tells of Peter Blake doing the artwork and the changing title, and knowing Peter through Ian Dury.

Clare calls the album title, Sexy!

Madness 10 albums.

Suggs explains why Madness haven’t done more than ten albums in 33 years. Suggs talks about 86-92 and other years of being off and on.

Clare asks if any song off the new album will be played at public events. Suggs gives a very good album.

Touring in 2012/13.

Suggs says he likes playing concerts, but not travelling for touring.

Every night of the last tour, he says from a great celebration of a great year.

We are doing about 20 racecourses next year.

They continue to read letters, including one listener who managed to make both Jubilee and Olympics Madness appearances, and much of the years’ sport is discussed.

Our Thanks to Warren Moyle and “Madness” group page on facebook.
Taken from Radio 2.

[3] – THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS

This week MIS co-editor, Rob Hazelby goes back 5 years to issue number 452, and the week of Sunday 30th December to Saturday 5th January 2007/2008, and then back 10 years to issue number 190 and the week of Sunday 29th December to Saturday 4th January December 2002/2003.

5 years ago…

Issue 452 – Sunday 30th December – Saturday 5th Dec/Jan 2007/2008

Madness news is always thin on the ground this time of year, so it would come as little surprise to many that this issue featured a mere five sections, and two of those were taken up with the intro and outro text.

The majority of this issue was taken up with a transcript from the June 2006 issue of Sound on Sound, where journalist Richard Buskin interviewed Langer and Winstanley, and documented how important they were to the success of Madness. Even now it’s still a fascinating read.

With the end of the year just around the corner we kicked off our lookback over the past 12 months with part one, which took a whistle stop tour from January through to June.

We brought this issue to a close by passing the baton over to Jermaine of Tour Madness for some small news snippets, before we finished off by wishing our readers a very happy new year, and a thank you for the support over the past 12 months.

10 years ago…

Issue 190 – Sunday 29th December – Saturday 4th of Dec/Jan 2002/2003

This final issue of 2002 suffered a similar issue to this very one you’re reading now – the traditional end of year lack of Madness news.

Still, despite the limited amount of Madness news, it was actually a packed issue.

We started off with some slightly off-topic news from Andy Davarias, revealing that The Beat were booked to play a one-off gig at The Royal Festival Hall on the 7th of February.

Continuing, but on a more Madness related note, subscriber Dan Fossard wrote in with his in-depth review of the recent Docklands gig, which took place on the 23rd of December. Following on from the previous day’s drunken Madmeet Dan forced himself back down to London’s financial capital once more to witness the last date of the Madness Christmas tour.

On the subject of Dan Fossard, drummer of North London outfit, MOT, we spent time this issue looking at his band’s latest release.
Entitled ‘Songs From Seven Sisters’, this 6-track release featured brand new material from the band, which whilst we dearly loved, felt that unlike the tracks on their previous disc, there wasn’t a single release amongst them. They ‘were’ fantastic, but not catchy enough to pull them out of album track or b-side status.

With news being decidedly thin on the ground we took the chance to give UK-based Maddies the chance to spend even more money (if they hadn’t spent enough in the run-up to Christmas) by listing some of the largest record fairs being staged in the first month of 2003.
We managed to resist spending what was left of our cash, but we have no doubt that some of you went out and added to your already bulging Madness collections.

We finished this issue off with a fantastic review of the recently released ‘Take it or Leave it’ DVD, which had been lovingly pulled apart, analysed and investigated by one Jonathan Young. As good as the disc was, Jon was still able to find a few things that weren’t quite right, and this was all down to a batch of mistakes on the packaging itself. Still, for a mere £11.99, he considered it “Another good addition to anyones Madness collection”.

Rob Hazelby

[4] – NEWMARKET NIGHTS

Newmarket Racecourses will be turned into a House of Fun next year with the return of Madness.

Suggs, Chas Smash, Barzo, Chrissy Boy, Thommo and Woody will perform pop classics such as One Step Beyond, Baggy Trousers and It Must Be Love at Adnams Newmarket Nights on the July Course on Friday, July 19, 2013.

More than 100,000 saw concerts there this year, including more than
21,000 people for Madness’ appearance in June.

“Madness were hugely popular with our visitors in the
summer and we are delighted to have been able to book
them again. It’s going to be a fantastic evening of
horse racing and pop music and I’m sure many thousands
of the band’s fans will be with us on July 19,”

said Amy Starkey, regional director of Jockey Club Racecourses

edat.co.uk

Our thanks also go to Colin Hinchley for the heads-up.

[5] – A LOOKBACK AT 2012 – PART 1

As another year draws to a close we take time out to look back at the last 12 months, and chart some of the highs and lows in the world of Madness.

This week we take a fleeting journey from January through to June.

JANUARY

The year began with the news that following rumours in previous issues of the MIS, it was now confirmed that Lee and his Ska Orchestra would be recording a b-side, “Racquel”, for the forthcoming Specials covers album.

Lee wasn’t the only member of the band keeping himself busy in January as Suggs got the PR bandwagon underway in preparation for the start of his UK one man show tour, which was due to kick off on the 21st of January. Along with a number of newspaper and magazine interviews Suggs also appeared on BBC Breakfast show, Something for the Weekend.
If you missed it, you can find the interview here:

Although a few members of the band were clearly working on their own projects the band wasn’t being ignored, as on the 9th of the month we announced (in a newsflash issue) that the band would be travelling to the US, and would be performing at the Coachella Festival on the 13th and 20th of April. This was the first time the band had been back to the US in seven years.

We advised our Stateside readers to keep their eyes and ears peeled as it was likely that other dates would appear as April got ever closer.

UK fans didn’t have to worry about missing out, as on the 15th of January we revealed that the band had been booked to perform at Westonbirt Arboretum on the 24th of June and Doncaster Racecourse on the 30th.

Back to Lee Thompson and his Ska Orchestra, and towards the end of the month Jonathan Young was privileged enough to accompany the band along to their final studio session, where they were busy mixing their debut album.

MIS readers were treated to a behind the scenes report on what went on, and a heads-up on what we had to look forward to over the coming months.

As the month drew to a close we had yet more Madness tour dates to report. The band were now booked to perform at The Indian Festival, Netherlands on the 16th of June, Haydock Racecourse on the 6th of July, and going back to the US, they were also booked to perform in San Diego on the 17th of April.

FEBRUARY

We kicked off February with a special newsflash issue, as we reported that tickets for the second House of Fun Weekender in Minehead, were about to go on sale. The dates for this year’s event were the November 23rd to the 26th.

Back in January we reported that Lee Thompson’s Ska Orchestra were busy working on recording a b-side, “Racquel”, for the forthcoming Specials covers album. Now, we were able to report that “Specialized”
– the charity album of songs by The Specials covered by modern day artists, with every penny going to teenage cancer trust, was almost upon us. The project, conceived and managed by paul Williams from The Specials2.com Specials fan site had an end of February release date pencilled in.

The 7th of Feb saw yet another newsflash issue blasted out across the vast expanse of the internet, as we reported that Madness would be performing at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Concert, and you could apply for one of 10,000 free tickets to the event.

On the 19th of Feb we began issue 667 with some sad news. Since their early days the MIS team had been pushing the North London band MOT whenever we could, and it’d been great to read that many readers of the bulletin had subsequently gone and seen them following our positive reviews and write-ups. So, it came with a heavy heart to report that on the 10th of February, band bassist Lanfranco Gaglione passed away at the age of 26.

Lan’s funeral was held on Saturday 18th February, with a church ceremony at St John Vianney Church, followed by commital and cremation at New Southgate Crematorium.

Lanfranco was a big supporter of charities, so his family asked for charitable donations rather than flowers to be sent in his honour.

The charity selected to receive the donations is CALM. This charity was set up to help and support the young men under the age of 35 who are contemplating taking their own lives.

Towards the end of the month we featured an Evening Post review of Suggs’ final date of his one man show tour. The write up was glowing, and the exciting news was that due to the success of the dates so far the tour was now due to continue in the autumn.

We rounded off February with the news that Madness had been booked to perform at Belfast’s Belsonic Festival on the 17th of August, and Jonathan took time out of his busy schedule to review the two new tracks that featured on the new greatest hits album – covers of Vietnam and In the Hall of the Mountain King.

If that wasn’t enough, we finished February with a newsflash issue, announcing that the band were due to perform at this year’s V Festival on the 18th and 19th of August.

MARCH

March got off the starting blocks with the news that from Monday the 5th of March you’d be able to purchase and download “Specialized”, the album featuring Lee Thompson – Madness (naked mix) and many more alternative covers of songs by and associated with The Specials.

We also revealed that organisers of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival were in talks with Suggs’ management, with the intention of getting our favourite frontman to have a week long slot at the event.
Naturally, we’d have more news on this as soon as it surfaced.

With Madness due to perform in Mexico for the first time on the 25th of March, Mexican Madness fans were making the most of this, and plans were underway for the first ever Mexican Madmeet. The excitement was building, and subscriber Domingo Munoz from the Mexican MIS kept us up-to-date on progress.

It was time for a spring clean at MIS towers, as this month we revealed the brand new MIS Online web site. Sporting a sleek dark look, and swapping the old style layout to a more blog and tweet based format, we hoped that this new setup would enable those visiting to access the latest nutty news quicker than ever before.

To celebrate the forthcoming release of “Madness – Forever Young, The Ska Collection”, Union Square’s Label Manager, Holly Barringer, had kindly donated two advance copies of the album for us to give away as prizes to our MIS readers.

With a simple poser set to our subscribers, entries came in thick and fast, and once the closing date had passed it was time to pick the winners. Those two lucky people were Shaun Kelley and Colin Hinchley.

Towards the end of the month Jonathan Young reported that the band had been busy in the studio recording tracks for the forthcoming new album. New video snippets were uploaded to YouTube, showing the band rehearsing My Girl 2.

We brought this issue to a close with an interview with Chrissy Boy, courtesy of the Mexican MIS team, and news that Madness had been booked to perform at the Jazz Open Festival, Schlossplatz in Germany on Thursday 5th July 2012.

This was turning out to be a busy year for the band!

APRIL

With the first issue of the month landing in mailboxes on the 1st of April, we decided to slip in a completely ludicrous report that the band would be accompanied on stage at the Queen’s Jubilee Concert by non other than her majesty herself, who would perform a duet with them.

If you believed that then there really was no hope for you.

We actually featured a second April Fool’s joke in the first issue of the month, where we announced that you’d be able to download the full version of Madness’ cover of “In The Hall of The Mountain King”. What this actually turned out to be was an MP3 of the beepy soundtrack to the 1983 ZX Spectrum game “Manic Miner”.

On the 10th of April it was time for some history, and it came courtesy of Suggs, who would be presenting a documentary entitled
“Titanic: The Band Played on”, which featured the story of the doomed liner’s band, who, as the title suggests, played on while the ship sank on her maiden voyage.

The 24th of the month saw The Near Jazz Experience, featuring non other than Mark Bedford, perform at Indo, on Whitechapel Rd. The trio of improvisation musicians, lead by the wild saxes of Mr Terry Edwards, held to a firm loud bass line by our own Mark Bedford, and given percussion drum kicks by Simon Charterton was reported on by the one and only Jonathan Young, who took time out of his busy schedule to see the band in action.

April came to an end with a heads-up from Jon, who advised those who had read the “confirmed” title of the next Madness album on Wikipedia that this information was false. Wikipedia had the title down as “Sufficient Attribution”, but after speaking to management they confirmed that this was not one of the titles the band were considering.

MAY

May got off to a cracking start with another one of Jonathan’s behind the scenes reports, where he covered the story of The Ska Orchestra going into the studio to complete two more tracks for their forthcoming debut covers album, and a performance of a sold out gig in the seaside town of Brighton.

We also had the first update regarding the sideshows at this year’s Madness Weekender in Minehead. Details were still thin on the ground, and the initial update really confirmed that much of what had appeared at the first event would be happening again.

The House of Fun Weekender Facebook page also sprung into life this month as they got their Butlins A-Z lowdown underway. G was apparently for Giant Hotdog, with W for Where did our banners go.

May was also the month that Mike Barson tied the knot, and he announced this to fans by posting the following message on his Facebook page;

“Just wanted to inform you’s I got married the other
day to my long time girlfriend/partner/soulmate etc
etc she’s very wonderful and I’m a lucky fellah!”

Many followers of Mike, who recently celebrated his 54th birthday, were quick to wish him well on his page following this announcement.

With the Queen’s Jubilee getting ever closer, interviews with the band, who would be performing at the event started appearing in the UK press.

Suggs commented to BANG Showbiz;

“Her private secretary wrote us a letter, and we were
very happy to do it. Yeah, I like the queen, and I’m
very pleased to be playing at her party.”

Back in February we printed details of how MIS readers could get themselves signed up for the Queen’s Jubilee ticket ballot, of which
10,000 tickets were being made available. This month we discovered that a friend of one MIS reader had been lucky enough to win, and now subscriber Lisa Smith was on the guest list.

On the 22nd we sent out a special announcement issue of the MIS, as the Christmas tour had just been announced, and not only that, tickets were already on sale! In May!

May came to a close with some lovely person using the MIS list server to send out spam emails to all subscribers. Thankfully, the majority of readers realised that the emails were not of our doing, but that didn’t stop one or two contacting us to complain!

JUNE

We kicked off the middle of the year with the news that all being well the hole the spammer had used to post to the MIS list server had now been plugged, and that, fingers crossed, all was now sorted.

We also clarified that no email addresses or passwords had been compromised. The spam was simply sent by a member of the online Madness community with far too much spare time on their hands.

Making the most of the Bank Holiday weekend were the Retro Madness team, who were running some amazing discount offers on a whole mass of their stock. As the previous month’s “Buy 3 Get 4th Free” deal on all of their LPs listed on the LPs page proved so popular, they decided to extend it for a further month until the end of June!

Naturally, with the Jubilee celebrations getting closer by the day Madness continued to appear in more and more newspaper and magazine interviews. This proved to be fantastic PR for the band, but nothing would compare to the publicity their actual performance would give them.

Once the band members had chance to recover from performing on the roof of Buckingham Palace, the MIS team managed to pin down Lee, who kindly gave us an in-depth write-up of just what went on before, during and after their performance.

For Madness fans Lee’s write up proved to be essential reading.
However, it wasn’t just the band’s visit to the palace that people wanted to know about. Oh no. Accompanying the band were some of the most amazing videos projected straight on to the Palace, and it’s these that garnered almost as much publicity as those seven men from North London.

So, did the band’s performance generate record sales? There was only one man with the skills to find out and that was statistician, Paul Rodgers, who, armed with a 1000 word write-up, gave us the full lowdown of chart stats, facts and figures.

June came to an end with the news that the Suggs autobiography, due for release in October, would be titled “That Close”, and a provisional web site for the forthcoming release had now gone online.

Due to other events taking place, the release was eventually pushed back to 2013, but at this point in time we were all hoping to add the book to our Christmas wish lists.

This now brings us halfway through 2012. Next week I’ll take a fleeting look at the final six months of the year, where cover the release of the new album, the Madness Weekender, the arena tour and much, much more.

Rob Hazelby

[6] – VOTE FOR YOUR FAVOURITE SKA/ROCKSTEADY/REGGAE ALBUMS OF 2012

From: http://reggae-steady-ska.com/
Published: 28th December 2012

“Yes, we Ska people can call ourselves lucky to have such a great tradition. A pool of old music that we can listen to again and again.
That’s the foundation. From the first releases of The Skatalites to the legendary 2Tone recordings.

But what’s even better: It doesn’t stop there. The pool becomes bigger every year with bands from all over the world adding their take on Ska, Rocksteady and Early Reggae. Today’s originators need not come from Jamaica or England, they can also live in Denmark, Russia or India. They may be 18 or 58. That’s what is keeping our music alive. While The Skatalites (with new members) are still doing their thing. Wow!

At the end of every year it is time to take a look at how the pool of music has become bigger with the “Album of The Year 2012″ poll. It runs only for a few days, from 28th December 2012 to January 6th 2013.

Throughout 2012 we have regularly updated a list with the new albums in a list post, now it’s your turn to vote for your favourite record of the year.

This poll was taken over from the blog joescholes.com, where the winners were Alaska (from Switzerland) in 2009, Red Soul Community
(Spain) (2010) and Desorden Publico (Venezuela) in 2011”.

Madness’ Oui, Oui, Si, Si, Ja, Ja, Da, Da album is just one of the many albums you can vote for. To view the full list and to place your nomination(s), point your web browser over to:

Vote The Album Of The Year 2012

[7] – MAD DISCOUNTS OVER AT THE MADNESS WEB STORE

You may not be aware, but the official online Madness web store are currently running a new year sale, with 15% off nearly everything ’til the 4th of January!

What’s even better is that you don’t even need to queue!

The items are limited to clothing only, but there are some great savings to be made, and all orders over £30 receive a free 2012 tour programme.

Start shopping here – http://www.madstore.co.uk/

[8] – THAT’S YER LOT

We’re almost done for this issue, and in fact, this year! However, before we go there are a few last minute bits we need to pass in your general direction.

First, and Sharon Staite has given us the heads-up on a YouTube clip taken from the 22nd of December. The footage shows the band performing Night Boat to Cairo, accompanied by the one and only Wilko Johnson.

You can find the clip at:

Next, we’d just like to give another mention to those of you with Facebook accounts of the rather excellent “All Things Madness” group.

The group is extremely active, and currently one of the best places online to chat with other Madness fans and pick up the latest nutty news.

You can find the group by pointing your web browser over to:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/249838181711283/

Moving on, and we’d like to point you to an official link where the band have very kindly made 8 live tracks, recorded during this year’s arena tour, available for download.

The tracks in question are:

My Girl 2
Never Knew Your Name
La Luna
How Can I Tell You
Kitchen Floor
Misery
Leon
Death of a Rude Boy

Simply point your browser at http://tinyurl.com/byjyn57 and start downloading!

Now, remember the award Madness were presented with on the 17th of December at the Polish Embassy? Well, you’ll be pleased to learn that footage of them being awarded with their Medals of Gratitude is now online and ready for viewing.

Simply point your browsers over to:

And finally, we’d just like to bring this issue to a close by saying a very big thank you to everyone who contributed to the content of the MIS over the past 12 months. No matter how big or small your contribution it’s all been extremely appreciated, not just by the MIS editorial team, but by the hundreds of subscribers who receive the bulletins each week.

Please keep sending in the news snippets over the coming year and we’ll make sure that what you fire over to us gets included. Without your help and support each issue of the MIS would be a lot shorter!

All that remains s for us to wish you a very happy new year. We’ll see you next Sunday for the first issue of 2013.

All the very best,

Jon, Rob, Simon, Liz
(With special thanks to Sharon Staite and Colin Hinchley)