Madness Information Service Online Newsletter Issue Number: 889 – Sunday 22nd May to Saturday 28th May 2016
On Thursday lunchtime a double-whammy of Madness news landed in mailboxes across the globe.
“We’ll be touring the UK in December AND we’ll be armed with a brand new album!” stated the message.
Full details of the forthcoming tour, entitled “Can’t Touch Us Now Tour” will be revealed by the band this coming week, but in the meantime you can register for early access to and the best choice tickets by going to:
(Note: The web site does feature background music, so if you’re going to open this up in the office and want to look like you’re still doing work, make sure your speakers are turned down!)
http://www.madness.co.uk/cant-touch-us-now/
Also on the above page you’ll find a button, which if clicked, will take you to a page where you can pre-order the new album on CD.
The band tell us that it’ll be a while before the album becomes available so they’ve added something a bit special for those who pre order. You’ll become an “Untouchable Madhead”, a title that comes with the promise of many exclusive treats as the date of release approaches.
Madness weren’t the only ones announcing new albums this past week, as in a press release The Lee Thompson Ska Orchestra revealed that their next album would be released shortly after Midnight on Thursday August 25th 2016.
“Entitled ‘BITE THE BULLET’ it features a scintillating selection of covers and – more exciting still – some splendid new original songs written by the band.
The quest for some kind of perfection with this project has meant perhaps a frustrating wait for our diehard fans but we hope and pray that the results are well worth it. For those who don’t know about these things let me cite – for instance – the sometimes tricky matter of mixing. This can lead to lengthy discussions that can last for months: ‘Are the maracas loud enough?’; ‘I don’t know – should they perhaps have a little reverb on them?’ . . .
‘I hear no maracas’ says Lee.
And then there are the credits: ‘Who played the maracas?’; ‘Darren – or perhaps that was Mez?’; ‘We could list all the instruments and who played them separately in the booklet’; ‘There – that looks good on the right hand side of the page’. . .
‘I see no maracas’ says Lee.
You get the idea.
We are currently planning more gigs to coincide with the album launch.”
The band will be staging a number of gigs in the run-up to the album launch. Check out our Live Intensified section for more information.
In the meantime the band have issued a non-album track as a present, which you can download here:
http://leethompsonska.com/sit-down-and-wonder/
Now, on with the issue!
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
May
Saturday 28th – Dauwpop Festival, Netherlands (headliners) * Sold Out *
More info at: http://www.dauwpop.nl
June
Weds 8th – 100 Club, Oxford St
Saturday 25th – Glastonbury Festival, Main Stage
July
Saturday 30th – Kendal Calling, Penrith http://www.kendalcalling.co.uk/information/ticket-info/
Sunday 31st – Y Not Festival, Matlock
http://www.ynotfestivals.co.uk
August
Thursday 4th – Edinburgh Corn Exchange * Sold Out *
More info at: http://m.whatsoninedinburgh.co.uk/event/028964-madness/
Friday 5th – Edinburgh Corn Exchange
More info at: http://m.whatsoninedinburgh.co.uk/event/028964-madness/
Saturday 6th –Tartan Heart Festival, Inverness, Scotland (headliners)
More info at www.tartanheartfestival.co.uk
Thursday 11th – Cropredy Festival, Oxfordshire. First day headliner
Saturday 13th – Boom Town Fair – Winchester
Friday 19th – Cyfartha Castle, Merthyr Tydfil
http://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/event/37005067CAE570E4?tpab=-1
Saturday 20th – Titanic Belfast, Belsonic
http://www.ticketmaster.ie/Titanic-Belfast-tickets-Belfast/venue/461375
Monday 29th – House of Common, Clapham Common
More info at: http://www.madness.co.uk/houseofcommon/
September
Sunday 4th September -Jersey Live Festival, Jersey
Friday 30th September – Sweden, Grona Lund Amusement Park
October
Saturday 1st – Norway – Rockefeller Music Hall
Monday 3rd – Germany – Berlin – Tempodrom
Tuesday 4th – Germany – Bochum – Ruhrcongress
November
Friday 18th – Monday 21st – Madness Weekender 6, Minehead
Suggs
July
16th – Henham park Suffolk
Latitude Festival – Late night at sunrise (DJ set alongside Mike Skinner Tonga)
https://www.ents24.com/uk/tour-dates/suggs-1
The Lee Thompson Ska Orchestra
July
Friday 22nd, Hampton Pool Picnic, Supporting The Selecter * Sold Out *
August
Thursday 18th, Newham Free Festival
November
House of Fun Weekender
Rhoda Dakar
June
Saturday 18th – 100 Club London
(Also appearing at The London International Ska festival, Glastonbury, & European festivals this year)
The Silencerz
June
Friday 10th Bull Theatre, Barnet (note, this does not list Lee Thompson as appearing)
The band have also recently set up their own Twitter account. Follow @The_Silencerz
BUY IT
Deluxe edition of The Lone Ranger.
https://www.discogs.com/Suggs-The-Lone-Ranger/release/8172245
A Deluxe Edition release of Suggs’ first solo album “The Lone Ranger”.
Originally released in 1995 this much requested reissue is the most comprehensive collection available of the original album and all the related bonus material.
Other bonus material includes the b/sides – ‘Bedazzled’, ‘Animal’, ‘When You Came’ and ‘I Feel Good’. The CD booklet features the original artwork, a UK Discography, lyrics of the original album tracks all in a 16 page colour booklet.
Out now!
Buy it if you don’t have the original classic album or want those original collected B-sides together or if you want Suggs to consider another solo album in future support this release, but if you want it for all the remixes please stop taking E and consult a doctor. Some were as dreadful as the Macarena.
Dance Crazy – The Best of Specialized Ska Live
A little nod and appreciation as we at Specialized celebrate the 35th birthday in 2016 of the 2Tone movie & soundtrack “Dance Craze”
This album Features original acts & covers bands paying respects to the Dance Craze phenomenon.
All recorded live.
The same song as Dance Craze by new bands 35 years on. (Including live covers of Madness) pre order now £10 (£2.50 p&p)
http://www.specializedproject.co.uk/shop/
SIGN OF THE TIMES
Hastings – Live at the End of the Pier
Life’s a beach, and a traditional seaside show, as Madness kicked off their live shows for the year down the end of the newly restored Hastings Pier.
In a day overcast with clouds and rain (and many fans turning up in rain covers), it didn’t stop a beach party worth of people turning out to add to the couple of thousand sell-out crowd amassed with the band on the long plank into the sea. The down drizzle did let up though for later and doesn’t dampen the spirits too much, though even Thunder threatened to join in the nutty sound.
The pier was brand new but Madness a little rusty, with a few mistakes, a tech failure on Dust Devil and a couple of fans commenting on a lacking atmosphere, but on the whole though it was a great party time and memorable musical fun, with the beach party reported as lively and able to hear great sound free from the distance.
New song Herbert, perhaps now fresh from studio work appeared live in a differing arrangement, and it went down well with new fans hearing it. Listening to this via only a fan’s video I have to say I preferred the punchier original heard at Silverstone first on the Grandslam. Though the new version has a little more menace to it, the flow sounded forced and too slow, while lyrically it was still the same track.
Of last night’s gig, Chris Carter-Pegg commented;
“What a superb gig in Hastings last night, all Madness gigs are great but this one just felt like it was in a league of its own – brilliant location, great mix of fans, perhaps the best artwork for a Madness gig ever, fantastic set list starting with Embarrassment, closing with Night Boat, the return of TJAD and one new track (I reckon a similar set list would work perfectly for Glastonbury and Boomtown etc too)…and of course amazing to meet up with so many great friends …just a shame the pier capacity was 2,500 and not 25,000”
Set list
Embarrassment
The Prince
NW5
My Girl
My Girl II
Take it or Leave it
Herbert
The Sun and the Rain
Dust Devil
Los Palmas Seven
Tomorrow’s Just Another Day
Lovestruck
Bed and breakfast man
Shut up
Girl Why Don’t You
One Step Beyond
House of Fun
Wings of a dove
Baggy Trousers
Our House
It Must Be love
Madness
Night Boat
Check out Herbert here: http://youtu.be/o-wD45XjKZ0
Jonathan Young
MIS FEATURE – COMMONERS AGAINST CANCER
Commoners Against Cancer, with DJ Lee Thompson
An update on our Dublin Castle Event..
Operation MIS are taking over The Dublin Castle Sunday August 28th, the day before Madness stage House Of Common in Clapham. Traveling bank holiday heading Mad fans are meeting over a Gladness beer in the legendary boozer as a warm up to the new mad festival.
This Specia live event is already up to 100 heads from early bird sales donating to Specialized TCT and promises at least 3 bands and 3 Mad DJ’s possibly even more for the days fun.
First up is Mr Lee Kix Thompson Specialized Ambassador Who after we open at High Noon Midday will showcase tracks from his new Ska Orchestra album Bite The Bullet. (Out August 25th) and Spin his choice of other classic music faves alongside Madness DJ Darren Bennett.
Further Band Line up announcements and the remaining 50 wristband on sales for the event will happen early June.
Email for that is…
yeeeeeee haaaaaaa its western standard time.
Jonathan Young / Mark Bryant
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 628 – Sunday 22nd May – Saturday 28th May 2011
Were you one of the people waiting for the new album or further gigs from Madness?
Well, this week we revealed that a Christmas tour was now being mentioned by Suggs in the press, and this week Suggs tweeted “New songs coming along effing brilliant! And no we’re not gonna be opening olympics neither.”
On to our articles, and we began with an article from the Midlands Evening Telegraph, who was interviewing Suggs prior to his Milton Keynes Theatre show on the 22nd of May.
About the show Suggs said: “I had a pretty unusual upbringing. I didn’t know my dad or what happend to him so in the show I’m going to tell stories and explore these adventures and find out what happend to my dad.
It’s less about what happened to me by becoming famous and more about what happened to me as I was growing up that brought me to be in the band”.
Continuing on a Suggs One Man theme we passed proceedings on to our very own Jonathan Young who gave us an in-depth lowdown of his own visit to Mr. McPherson’s One Man Show, as he was lucky enough to get along to the very first night.
Further One Man Show coverage continued with a special “One Man Tweets” section covering a selection of some of Suggs’ more interesting tweets in the run up to his solo stand-up tour.
We brought this issue to a close with the news that the Magic Brothers were hoping to get Mike McEvoy along towards the end of June to provide vocals for this news project. Woody’s wife and daughter were already confirmed as provided vocals.
10 years ago…
Issue 368 – Sunday 21st May to Saturday 27th May 2006
It seemed to us that not a day went by when people weren’t moaning about the cost of the UK TV Licence fee, but to us we felt it was excellent value for money. The Beeb were often amongst the first to push new technologies, or make innovative use of ones we already had.
At the time of typing, and in prototype form was the ‘BBC Programme Catalogue’; an ever growing online database of BBC TV and Radio programmes, dating back over 75 years. At the time of typing, the archive contained 949,181 programmes, and was growing all the time.
Typing ‘Madness’ into the search box unsurprisingly brought back a mass of relevant and completely irrelevant results, but a bit of digging pulled out a number of gems.
For example, on 2nd April 1983 at 6:30pm Radio 1 aired ‘Madness in Concert, at the Dominion Theatre. Whilst on 24th April 1994, at 11:45am Radio 4 aired ‘Sentimental Journey’, with Suggs.
The whole archive held a real wealth of information, and we’d already found ourselves spending an enormous amount of time rummaging around there.
What was online already was very impressive indeed, and we could see this really growing and growing over time, to become an extremely valuable resource.
Unfortunately, the archive is now closed, as the BBC decide how best to display this information. What a waste.
On to the articles, and we kicked things off with an look at the legendary Deaf School, with an article from the Save the Picket web site, which charted the history of the band, and the impact they left on Merseyside.
It was over to The Blockheads next, as we printed details of their forthcoming (2006) tour, which took in a whopping 25 dates! Starting in Darwen Town Centre on the 29th of May, this length string of gigs would come to a close on 23rd December at the Arts Centre, Colchester.
We moved back to Deaf School next, as we re-printed an article from the icliverpool web site, who were reporting on the forthcoming Deaf School gig, which would take place on the 27th of May. With a mere 600 tickets available this was one gig that was sure to sell out quickly.
Next, we were firmly back in the world of Madness, and it was courtesy of the stat-meister, Paul Muscat. Paul had finally gathered up all the info he’d always wanted to share with fellow mad fans. What was he talking about? The UK chart action for the band during their first sting (late 1979 to late 1986).
We had stats, facts, figures and background information for each single. It must have taken Paul hours and hours to put together, but it was and still is an absolutely amazing read.
This issue came to a close with the news that on the 22nd, the Ordinary Boys’ version of My Girl would make an appearance as a b-side to their latest single ‘9 to 5’. Cat number BUN105CD
15 years ago…
Issue 106 – Sunday 20th May to Saturday 26th May 2001
We got the issue underway with news that would have been of interest to those Maddies going along to the Madness Blackpool weekend later in the year. The print-run for T-shirts promoting the weekend would be going ahead, but numbers were needed before any would be produced.
A deadline was fast approaching, and orders needed to be in as soon as possible.
The articles started off with the exciting news that Mayor for London Ken Livingstone had threatened to halt the redevelopment of Camden Town Tube Station.
In a letter to Camden Council planners the GLA said that Livingstone would refuse to allow the space-age redevelopment to go ahead in its present ‘misconceived’ form.
The design included a 14-storey office block, a nine-screen multiplex cinema, a restaurant, 50 flats and retail space. But local residents and business owners were furious that shops, Trinity United Reformed Church, the famous Electric Ballroom music venue and even parts of Camden Market could all be demolished to make way for the scheme.
A spokesperson for London Underground said it would not be withdrawing the application.”
…so it looked like the Electric Ballroom and The British Boot Store (formerly Holts) could well be saved from demolition for the time being – we had to hope!
It was over to ‘The Mimics of The Monster Sound’ next, as we reported on forthcoming gigs for One Step Behind, Utter Madness, and The Los Palmas Six. Madness may have had no gigs planned, but the tribute outfits were certainly looking busy.
With things being a little quiet this week, we took a visit to auction site Ebay, and pulled out a few of the more interesting items of interest currently running on there.
And, on continuing on a trading related note, we reported that MIS and TMML subscriber Mike Hearne had recently set-up a Ska and 2-tone trading group over on Yahoo. It wasn’t just a place for swapping Madness, Ska and 2-tone music, but also a place for trivia and general chit chat.
We rounded off this week’s issue with a mass of forthcoming dates for Madness tribute outfit ‘Badness’. With 11 dates in June alone, this was one band that clearly liked to keep themselves busy!
Rob Hazelby
TIME…
That’s just about it for this issue.
This coming week, all being well, dates for the forthcoming Christmas tour will be announced. If you miss them we’ll be adding them to the Live Intensified section, so don’t panic.
In the meantime, get yourselves signed up to the Can’t Touch us Now tour updates at: http://www.madness.co.uk/cant-touch-us-now/
Until next week, take care,
The Author
