Madness Information Service Online Newsletter Issue Number: 834 – Sunday 3rd May to Saturday 9th May 2015
Hello, and a warm welcome to this wet and windy English Bank Holiday issue of the MIS.
This week the band returned to the recording studio to work on the next set of tunes, with Woody posting;
“Looking forward to another day in the studio with Madness. Writing some cracking songs. I’m really enjoying it. More please.”
Surely that’s the greatest bit of pre-Grandslam news we could possibly hear, as the multi-month tour is almost upon us.
On to this week’s issue, and as well as all the usual roundup of forthcoming gigs, recent articles and the like, we bring you not one, but two prize-winning competitions! Yes, you could be the proud owner of a Lovestruck test pressing or a free copy of the Lovestruck 7” that was available as part of the recent Record Store Day.
Read on and find out how to take part.
Enjoy the read,
Jon Young, Rob Hazelby, Simon Roberts, Paul Williams
SHOWTIMES
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
2015
March 12th – The Emirates Stadium – This week “The Gig Company” has announced Madness appearing at Suggs & Friends charity event in the line up (see below).
GRANDSLAM
“Sporting theatres jumping with joy is the goal. Grandslam Madness – the greatest open air tour in the history of Rock & Roll…”
May
29 – Lincoln City Football Club
30 – Gloucester Rugby Club
June
3 Chelmsford City Racecourse
6 – Portsmouth, Fratton Park *** General tickets sold out ***
26 – Newmarket Racecourses
27 – Doncaster Racecourse
28 – Hove, Sussex County Cricket Club
July
2 – Silverstone Circuit
3 – St Helens, Haydock Park Racecourse
4 – Carlisle Racecourse
5 – Montrose, East Links, Scotland
9 – Epsom Downs Racecourse
10 – Chepstow Racecourse
11 – Rhyll Outdoor Events Arena
September
11 – Canterbury, Kent County Cricket Club
12 – Bristol, Gloucester County Cricket Club
13 – London, On Blackheath
18 – Leeds, Yorkshire County Cricket Club
25 – Wolverhampton
26 – Chester-le-Street, Durham County Cricket Club
November 2015
November 20th – 23rd 2014 – Minehead – The House Of Fun Weekender Five
Early bird tickets on sale now
Near Jazz Experience
May
19th – NEAR JAZZ EXPERIENCE + Support + DJ Indo 133 Whitechapel Rd, London E1 1DT *Free*
June
* New * 16th – NEAR JAZZ EXPERIENCE + Bad Cats Blues + DJ Set
Indo 133 Whitechapel Rd, London E1 1DT *Free* 8.30pm BST
Visit: https://www.facebook.com/NearJazzExperience
The Silencerz ft. Lee Thompson
May
9th The Junction, Cambridge, Support Terry Hall (DJ set)
The Lee Thompson Ska Orchestra
July
24th Llangollen Town Hall, Denbrighshire, Wales (Fringe Festival Event)
August
1st The Garage Highbury, London
Cathal Smyth
May
* New * 11th Fopp Record shop Covent Garden 6pm – ALBUM SIGNING EVENT NOT A CONCERT
13th Boogaloo Soho – TALK EVENT NOT A CONCERT.
14th Shepard’s Bush Hall London. W12.
Clang Group
Thursday 23 April – Surya, Kings Cross, London
Deaf School
June
5th – The Garage, Highbury, London
BUY IT
The Grandslam Tour T-Shirt
It’s 4 weeks until the Grandslam begins. You can get the latest official Madness T-shirt here…
http://madness.sandbaghq.com/home/charcoal-grandslam-t-shirt-online-exclusive.html
The charcoal grey T-shirt (available in small or large sizes) costs £20 and is exclusive to the Madshop. It’s also available in advance of the tour, which is nice
New Accessories
Brand new Madness vinyl stickers.
Cover your pencil case, fridge, exercise book, vinyl boxes, hamster cage, wallet, picture frame, tooth brush holder, local lamppost, envelopes, passing double decker busses, birthday cards, mobile phone case or other, with new Madness stickers. In 6 piece sets of classic M’s or a union jack worded M.
Also now available – Madness Brewing Company. Bottle Opener.
http://madness.sandbaghq.com/left-menu-madness/accessories.html/
A Comfortable Man – Cathal Smyth solo album. Signed Packages Now Available.
Remaining limited LP’s, CD and download. Album available May 11th.
Signed Super Deluxe Bundles are now available, containing the Limited LP, CD and download editions. The preview track and single download instantly, and you also get a pack of 10 art postcards. The album is available in a Digipack CD with 8 page booklet.
More info at: http://cathalsmyth.tmstor.es/ Price – £28.99
If you attended the Wilton’s music hall gig and already have the LP, or if you are only interested in certain items there are a range of other buy options available. Signed CD’s separately. Etc.
In Your Mind – Woody Woodgate solo album.
Pre-Order Now on Amazon.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00TZEMCMQ
OR IF YOU WOULD LIKE A SIGNED ALBUM INSTEAD http://www.propermusic.com/product-details/Woody-Woodgate-In-Your-Mind-Ltd-Autographed-Edition-188454
Album released June 1st. 13 tracks with new band line up and vocalist Dan Shears.
SIGN OF THE TIMES
Durham Durham, No it’s Madness heading north for Grandslam.
http://www.durhamtimes.co.uk/lifestyle/12896480.A_touch_of_Madness/
I did wake up with a greyhound in my bed once. We had been to a charity auction at Walthamstow dog track and there was an auction for the greyhound and we won. I came home with a greyhound, which my wife was quite thrilled about. He did all right actually – we called him Nutty Boy and he went on to win quite a few races.
“That was quite a nice time and the nearest I ever got to be an Alex Fergusonesque racehorse owner.”
Suggs reckons that some racecourses can even make him feel like royalty. “At Newmarket, I think we even had the Queen’s box or something. Our dressing room was actually where the Queen hangs out when she’s watching the races. Very charming,” he says.
Suggs links visits to cricket grounds with easy access to a pub pint. “I’m not a connoisseur, but I’m fond of a nice bit of architecture and one of the nice things about travelling around is being introduced to some nice buildings. The Good Pub Guide is a very good book to have at hand when driving through the backstreets of Great Britain, there are lots of lovely pubs. Playing Leeds is nice. Yorkshire has been very good to us – a strong audience. And Durham – the North-East is another strong area for us. They know how to party up there and we close the tour there. What a night that promises to be.”
MIS FEATURE – LOVESTRUCK PUNCH AND JUDY FUN AUCTION & COMPETITION
Two weeks ago Madness and Salvo released a 7 inch record; Lovestruck backed with Grand Pantalon. Having obtained a copy we really do think it’s a thing of beauty. Although the original price of £15.99 might seem steep for a one off 7 inch, we think it’s in keeping with the idea behind record store day; that something special was created and most of that money went to independent record stores.
It’s a lovely plush strong card sleeve with a rich red and yellow colours design, and it wonderfully weaves the classic slapstick puppet characters into the narrative of the A side song. Love “Struck” over the head with a bottle of beer, a savage edge yet comedic distance is exactly the mood the music’s lyrics have always conjured up. The track sounds great re-mastered and the pop up theatre pull out insert makes the whole package feel like Sergeant Pepper in its tangible design constructed by Pollocks Toy shop, gives it an old worldly feel fitting with Madness heritage.
“They just end up on Ebay at stupid money” Moaned a small number fans about the release. And yes it’s true – a couple were sat £50 mark on the very day of release. But overall ebay, in the first two weeks of release, has housed less than 3% of the 1,000 copies, showing that in fact the majority went to collectors.
“Lovestruck has been released before” pointed out some collectors. Yes, but a jukebox single hardly hit the masses publically and this track is beloved again now since the beer brought it back to people’s memories. Indeed it scored 5th best ever Madness song in last year’s Mad Chart polling.
We queued at Sister Ray Soho for about 2 hours to get the last copy and enjoyed the Young Knives, who were playing a street concert their to mark the day. The feeling of occasion made the queuing fun. The event must have made a lot of money for the one shop we witnessed the day take place at. Though we aren’t so sure it encouraged record store browsing as such.
We’ve seen reports that you can still get the record via Amazon sellers or ebay, and it’s value is around the £30 mark.
Strict rules of record store day on releases, means the record label can only sell it to independents, and only for the day up to the level ordered. (Which was fixed at about 10 per store we think). We heard there were orders for 1040 in total made to Salvo, so they got the pressing of 1,000 limited just about right.
OWN THE TOY THEATRE
If you would like to own the fold out Madness Lovestruck Punch and Judy Theatre separately, go to;
http://www.pollocks-coventgarden.co.uk/index.php/toy-theatres/punch-judy-lovestruck-diorama.html
The Toy company “Pollocks”, in Covent Garden are now selling the insert as it’s own item. (Our thanks go to Ian Beatty, who also emailed in to tell us about this)
SPECIALIZED AUCTION – OWN THE TEST PRESSING
There were 1,000 lovestruck records produced. But also first 5 white label vinyl test pressings of the record were made.
We have one of them. It could be yours.
We are running a blind auction which is now open for bids. Send your bid to.
The highest bid of an undisclosed amount, will be revealed at The House Of Fun Weekender later in this year as the winner.
So you have until November 1st to enter.
The winner will receive the unique white label pressing of which there are only 5 in existence, and it has the purchase order sticker that authenticates it on it’s sleeve. It was kindly sent to us by Salvo.
Then, the winner will pay the money direct to Specialized Teenage Cancer Trust, on a just giving page. Given the record at the weekender or if not present it will be posted secure post. There will be an additional charge if this is outside the UK.
WIN A 7 INCH – HOUSE OF FUN – LOVESTRUCK – PUNCH AND JUDY COMPETITION.
If you would like to win a free copy of the Lovestruck Punch and Judy 7 Inch that was available for Record Store Day we have one to give away. You could also win Lovestruck Beer if you are the runner up. It’s all in our competition.
Details of the competition will be revealed nearer to the date of The House of Fun Weekender, but you can register now. You must be in it to win it. You must be a couple to enter, and attending the house of fun weekender event together, where the final part of the competition will take place. You must be game for a laugh.
Email Jonsmad@Hotmail.com to register your participation in the competition. And all candidates for the competition will be kept up to date with the competition.
Jonathan Young
LIVE AND INTENSIFIED
Review of The Skammers gig Friday 24th April.
My first ever visit to The Fiddler’s Elbow is for The Skammers “Armchair Revolution” album launch. Approaching the venue and Lee Thompson is heading away from it. “Are you jumping up on stage later Lee?” I inquire, “Daley’s supposed to be, but you never know” is his response.
The Skammers take to the stage after a young support band “Southbound” have completed their set and launch into numbers from their excellent new album, which is on sale as a special limited edition for £5 stamped with The Fiddler’s Elbow logo. There’s covers of Louie Louie & Green Onions along with original material of which Thursday & Mr Parsimonious along with Armchair Revolution are stand outs in my opinion. The other tracks on the album include Toy Piano, Tipsy Tina, Do What You Like & Furry Lisa.
Lee has made his way back and Daley is in attendance as is Debbie so it is only a matter of time before father and son make their way on stage, Lee plays Spencer’s sax whilst Daley belts out The Prince, this is followed by One Step Beyond before Lee takes the vocals for Lola and Spencer is back on sax. A great night with some excellent tunes spun by Pete Lacey’s Ska N Mash.
Cheers
Mark Bryant
Check out the band at: http://youtu.be/J0K-pzo2h9g
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 574 – Sunday 2nd May – Saturday 8th May 2010
Following last week’s London Marathon, Woody had updated his sponsorship page, announcing that he completed the run in 3 hours and 37 minutes, which beat his previous year’s time by 5 minutes.
Woody chosen charity was Cancer Research UK, and as he quite rightly said on his sponsor page;
“It’s not too late to donate, and any money raised here will be added to the £7,589 raised last December on the Madness British Tour.
Thanks again to everyone who has sponsored me so far”.
On to the articles, and it was straight over to Retro Madness with their offer of the week. The online merchandise outlet had managed to track down a couple of copies of the Stiff Records book “Stiff: The Story of a Record Label”, published in 1983 and personally signed by the author, Bert Muirhead. Out of print for years, this book was highly sought after, and could be yours for a mere £19.99!
Suggs news next, and the Madness Central Blog reported that our favourite frontman would be performing in Birmingham on the 20th of May in aid of the Solihull branch of the Chernobyl Children’s Project.
Performing live in the Leinster Suite, we were told that Suggs would be treating the audience to a selection of his hits as well as a live on-stage interview following the set.
Doors would open at 7pm, and tickets were a mere £10! What a bargain.
Next it was on to clothing news as we reported that Warrior Clothing had now got themselves on Facebook, and not only that they were giving its visitors a sneak preview of their forthcoming steel blue Harrington jacket, which was due to be released around June of this year.
It was over to Chris and Emma next who gave us the lowdown on all currently running and planned performances of the Our House Musical that were taking or due to take place over the coming months.
Incredibly 10 different amateur theatre groups across the UK had performed the show in the 6 months since December 2009 and there were already 8 more theatres planning shows for the summer.
We brought this issue of the MIS to a close with the news that an ever growing number of Facebook users had joined a “Bring Back Bedders” Facebook group. We were more than a little surprised as we didn’t know that he’d actually left the band. Most odd!
10 years ago…
Issue number 312 – Sunday 1st May to Saturday 7th May 2005
We started off this issue with news from Dan Burdett of `Like Father, Like Son`, off-shoot, `JAG`, revealing that the boys would be playing their next gig on Tuesday 3rd May at The Metro Club, and would be on stage at 8:45pm. Dan also told us that the band had been offered a couple of big nutty supports this summer. Could this mean that JAG would be providing support for Madness? It certainly sounded like a possibility, but perhaps we were getting the wrong end of the stick. Whatever the outcome, we promised to let you know.
This week’s collection of articles kicked-off with Lee Hooky’s review of MOT’s recent gig at Middlesex University. Even before the music started, Lee was enjoying himself – as you do, when the drink is a mere £1.20 a pint! Lee finished off his review by saying;
“Despite a small turn-out I still left with a buzz (and more than a £1.20 a drink buzz ).
Every time this Band plays I think to myself it’s only a matter of time ’til they make it, and I’m not alone in thinking that”.
Next-up was news of Warrior Clothing’s special “Bank Holiday Blitz”, where for 4 days, from the 29th of April to the 2nd of May they’d be running a special sale on all Warrior, One Step, Go and Northern Soul merchandise ordered online.
For those of you who wanted to replace your tired wardrobe with some brand new clothes at very reasonable prices, this was how to do it.
Moving on, and we took a look at Suggs and his first step into serious drama. The “It’s Electric” web site caught up with him on the set of “Talk”, a new new short from first-time Director Michael Mueller, to talk about why film and why now.
On to gig news, and this week we learned that the one and only Crunch! were booked to support the Stranglers at Brockwell Park Festival, on the 12th of June. Other bands on the bill included Stiff Little Fingers, The Beat, Neville Stape, The Big and The Supertones.
We finished off this issue by thanking Birchy for giving us the heads-up on Suggs’ new film role. This was the first we’d hear of this, so it was a real surprise to us when the news turned-up.
15 years ago…
Issue number 50 – Sunday 30th April to Saturday 6th May 2000
News had yet again been thin on the ground, but there was no need to panic at the moment. We were hoping, as we were sure you all were, that things would pick up soon.
In the meantime, we decided to get this edition of the MIS underway with a short snippet from Chris Carter-Pegg;
“Madness were the highest climbers in Record Collector magazine’s annual poll of the most collectable recording artists, voted for by the readers. They rose from a position of No. 212 to No. 73. Admittedly whilst this still doesn’t sound particularly high (i.e. they ought to be in the Top 20 in my opinion!), in comparison to other notable bands it is a very good placing. Blur for instance have fallen this year from No. 64 down to No. 130”.
All you kind people out there who logged on to the Cancer Bacup web site to make a donation would, if they hadn’t already, find something coming through their door. A week or so back we’d received a card from the charity, thanking us for our donation in remembrance of Ian Dury.
It didn’t matter how small your donation was. The charity could do with all the help it could get.
Onto this week’s edition of the MIS now and although we’d been moaning about the lack of Madness news and gossip currently doing the rounds, there was more than enough info here to keep you going for the next seven days.
Thanks to Claire Keegan, we had the latest gig list for Madness tribute band, `Complete Madness`, whilst further on you could find a blow by blow (quite literally at one point!) of the weekend’s proceedings from the near-legendary `McMadmeet 2`.
A recent E-mail from `Mad Not Mad` editor, Ian Taylor brought us bang up to date with the progress of the forthcoming issue. Rather than keep the news to ourselves, Ian had given the all clear to let everyone know why the next issue had been delayed a little. Do not fret, it would be released shortly!
And finally, we knew how many of you out there loved going along to record fairs in the hope of tracking down some Madness rarity for a bargain price. Well, thanks to the assistance of Rob Lythall at VIP Events we had the lowdown of all the major record fairs taking place over the next few months.
Rob Hazelby
TWEETS OF A DOVE / THAT FACEBOOK
Cathal Smyth – Facebook.
“Dear All, If you have some time to kill and fancy a pleasant moment in my company then please do come along to the Fopp signing, your presence will be greatly appreciated. I shall be scribbling my moniker on cd’s and vinyl (there are’t many of those left!) and explaining in person how you say my name correctly. The person who give’s the best example will be rewarded with a special gift from me. until then be well and go gently x with love and in light Cathal x”
“A Comfortable Man signed vinyl has risen in the recordstore.co.uk preorder Top 10, now at No.3!
Thank you x
Also. Do you believe in love. Your not alone. Are now on Spotify.”
Woody – Facebook.
“Ah poor Suggs.”, reacted Woody this week, as a photograph of him wearing an Arsenal Scarf circulated social media, the main man having lost a bet with members of the band Man like Me, the forfeit of which involved donning the item. Woody a fellow Chelsea support commiserated the sight.
Woody – Twitter
Woody Woodgate @woodymadness
“Another great @MadnessNews rehearsal. Like fine wine & smelly cheese, we get better with age.”
“Job done. If that was a boring season, can’t wait for our next. Come on you Blues.”
TIME…
And finally…
BeBefore we bring this week’s issue of the MIS to a close we’d just like to remind you that at 8:00pm this very evening Madness will be appearing on ITV’s “Saturday Night at The Palladium” show.
The blurb for this reads as follows;
“The classic family entertainment show returns for a second series. The first show is hosted by Bradley Walsh and features music performances from Olly Murs and Madness who perform their greatest hits. Alfie Boe sings a song from The Who’s rock opera Quadrophenia, there is a 10th-anniversary performance from the cast of Billy Elliot the Musical and the incredible acrobatic dog act from the USA, Olate Dogs. Comedy comes from Jo Brand and slapstick comedy duo Men in Coats.”
And with that, we’re done!
Enjoy the rest of your weekend. We’ll be back next Sunday for the round-up of all the latest Madness and Madness related news.
Have a good week!
The Author
