Our self-penned “Overseas Leg” of this year’s Madness tour gets underway tomorrow with a performance at the Ex Theatre in Tokyo, Japan.

Naturally, with such a distance to travel, it’s unlikely that many or any UK-based fans would be travelling all the way from Blighty to the Land of the Rising Sun. Or so we thought.

Yes, we should have known by now that some Madness die-hards will do anything to see their favourite band live, and that goes for MIS reader Vicki Lee. Vicki has decided that she’s NOT missing the band’s performance in Tokyo, and has headed out there a few days early (and by herself!) to be there in time for the concert.

Those of us who are friends with her on Facebook have been treated to a few days of photos as part of her pre-gig sightseeing trek. Hopefully she’ll be able to get some snaps from the gig itself and send in a review once she’s returned home and recovered from the jet-lag.

Moving on, and this week the band confirmed a number of new additions to the House of Common entertainment line-up.  Joining the already announced De Le Soul and David Roddigan are The Skatelies Band, Craig Charles, Dawn Penn, Hackney Colliery Band and Toddla T.

We’ve also been told that more bands will be announced soon!

While we wait to hear who the other acts will be let’s get stuck in to this week’s issue.

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

April 2017 – The Overseas Leg

Monday 3rd – Ex Theatre, Tokyo, Japan

Thursday 6th – Hong Kong, China, Rugby Seven’s Opening Concert.

Monday 10th – Fremantle Arts Centre, Perth, Australia ** Sold Out **

Tuesday 11th – Fremantle Arts Centre, Perth, Australia

Thursday 13th – Festival Hall, Melbourne, Australia

Saturday 15th – Hordern Pavillion, Sydney, Australia

Sunday 16^th – Byron Bay, Australia  http://www.bluesfest.com.au/schedule/detail.aspx?ArtistID=873

 

May 2017 –  Back in the UK 

Friday 19th – Wirral Live, Tranmere Rovers stadium, Birkenhead

http://bit.ly/WirralLive17

 

Sunday 28th – Bearded Theory Spring Gathering, (Pallet stage headline), Derbyshire
http://www.beardedtheory.co.uk/

 

June 2017 – The Cornish Leg

Friday 16th – Eden Sessions, Eden Project, St. Austell, Cornwall ** SOLD OUT **
http://www.edensessions.com/lineup/madness/

 

July 2017

Saturday 29th July, Camp Bestival – Headliners

 

August 2017

Thursday 3rd – Scarborough Open Air Theatre
http://www.scarboroughopenairtheatre.com/
Friday 4th – Falkirk Football Stadium
http://www.falkirkfc.co.uk/madness-in-falkirk/

 

Saturday 5th – Lytham Festival, Lancashire
https://www.lythamfestival.com/events/madness/
Saturday 12th – Kent County Showground
https://www.skiddle.com/whats-on/Maidstone/The-Kent-County-Showground/Madness-in-Kent/12902396/

 

Friday 18th – Hardwick Hall
http://www.hardwicklive.co.uk/madness-live/
Saturday 19th – V Festival, Hylands Park

Sunday 20th – V Festival, Weston Park
Friday 25th – Portsmouth – Victorious Festival Opening Party
https://www.victoriousfestival.co.uk/buy-tickets/
Sunday 27th – The Big Feastival, Alex James’ Farm – Headliners. More info at:
http://uk.thebigfeastival.com
Monday 28^th – House of Common, Clapham ** Tickets now on sale! ** More info here: http://www.madness.co.uk/houseofcommon/

 

September 2017

1st-3rd Electric Picnic, Ireland  ** Sold out Festival**

 

November 2017

17^th – 20^th November – The House of Fun Weekender – Minehead

 

Suggs – My Life Story – Australian Performances

Thursday 20th April – Enmore Theatre, Sydney

Saturday 22nd April – Astor Theatre, Perth

Monday 24th April – Comedy Theatre, Melbourne

 

The Silencerz

Friday 23rd June – Mill Hill Festival

Saturday 22nd July – The 100 Club. Featuring Lee Thompson with support from The Skapones and MIS DJs

 

CLANG

Friday 14th April (Good Friday Bank Holiday) – The Islington, London

 

Near Jazz Experience

June 8th – Kino Teatr, St Leonard’s, East Sussex. Supporting Blurt.
** Rescheduled **

 

Voice of the Beehive

Saturday October 7th, Indie Daze. All Dayer from 1pm.  Kentish Town Forum. NW5 London
http://louderthanwar.com/shop/tickets-2/indie-daze-4-festival/
 

BUY IT

Madness – New Album – You Can’t Touch Us Now 

** Out Now! **

16 Track CD, 12 Track Vinyl

 

Don’t Let Them Catch You Crying – Remixes

Three new dub remixes of the track “Don’t Let Them Catch You Crying”, from the current album, are now available.

Leo Zero, the London based remixer and producer, has created the new mixes. You can buy them from Madness artist pages on iTunes and Amazon, and many other music sites. They can also be streamed through Spotify.

The mixes are the “Leo Zero remix” and his “Tufnel Parkas” mix, available both as a dub and full instrumental versions.

The former samples “Rocksteady beat” from the start of The Prince before riffing on the title song. The latter mixes make atmospheric use of the backing vocal stems and there is much looping of the guitar stabs on the tracks.

It’s perhaps fitting that Leo Zero has previously worked with Bryan Ferry, as this particular Madness track from the Can’t Touch us now LP is the most dance music based track from the latest batch of Madness and so suited to elongated 12″ length instrumental musings. Certainly more so than some others. Even if these remixes won’t dazzle the general fan, they are a nice experiment that highlight in stripped down parts, some of the elements that go towards the finished Madness song on the album.

We feel a dubplate coming on.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B06XPQSD2K/ref=dm_ws_sp_ps_dp

Jonathan Young. Our thanks also go to Mark Doherty for a heads-up.

 

Drip Fed Fred – 7” 

Catalog no.: SALVOSV0000017

Out for Record Store Day – April 22nd

A splendid DOUBLE A-SIDER. On this 7-inch the mightily menacing reggae skank ‘Drip Fed Fred’ (featuring Ian Dury’s last vocal performance before his death!) is backed with the equally catchy ‘Johnny The Horse’. And you also get a free poster. Release only in independent record stores this April, Prices £19.99

The album mix of Drip Fed Fred and the “passed this way” Radio edit of Johnny The Horse, first time on vinyl in a fetching ransom note style 7 inch picture cover.

Check out participating stores by going to: http://recordstoreday.co.uk/participating-stores/

 

 

MIS FEATURE – VOICE OF THE BLUE HIVE

Singer and songwriter from the voice of the Bee Hive, Tracey, has been looking back at track “Adonis Blue” as the forthcoming October reunion gig looms…

“I shouldn’t be bitter about Adonis Blue not being a single.

I just loved it so much and was so disappointed when no one at the record company or management seemed to feel the same way. (That’s the business). It was very “produced” but I don’t think that is always a bad thing. Some songs call for that. Cartoon CIty  should have been an LP track. Stupid Boy, Goodbye Tonight, You and Your Dumb Club. “They” made me feel like I couldn’t write good songs anymore and I believed them. But, looking back on it, they didn’t know what they were doing and we did. I’ll never understand  why a record company signs a band to their label and then tries to change what they loved about them in the first place. It’s was one of the great mysteries of the music business”

When I lived in London, one of my closest friends was Zodiac Mindwarp. We used to night crawl around the city together looking for ideas and ways to get into trouble. I have a degree in English Lit and have always been obsessed with words. Unusual phrases. Words that fit emotions or images perfectly. Zed pretty much shared this passion with me. So, one day, I got a call from an assistant at Food Records. Zodiac was on the same label and that’s how we met. She ran over some quick business with me and before she hung up she said, “Oh yeah. Zodiac just left and told me to tell you ‘Adonis Blue'”. She looked confused and had no idea what the message meant but I knew. It was just a phrase that he knew would get to me and he was right. The song was written within the next few hours. I hadn’t known that it was a type of butterfly and that might have been for the best because I got the vision of a beautiful boy that was terribly sad and just needed my love…..heeheehee.

(Taken from I Love Voice of the BeeHive on Facebook)

TRACEY BELLAND

 

 

SIGN OF THE TIMES

It’s always nice to see our favourite band in the press, so below are just a few of the articles featuring Madness that have appeared over the past few weeks…

AMNPLIFY – Talks to Suggs ahead of Australian Dates. 

http://amnplify.com.au/portfolio-items/interview-with-suggs-of-madness/

Asked about The Young Ones….

It was just such fun you know. I mean it was just such an amazing period of creativity that time. They were being called alternative comedy because up until this point, comedians just tended to be a fat bloke telling slightly sexist jokes and all of a sudden this bunch of kids burst out and they said to us look do you want to come onto our program, do whatever you like. So we said ok, we would like to just smash up a load of police vans and they said yeah that will be fine. There was something surreal about singing Our House while smashing up a load of police vans, it’s something that stays in the memory.

Talking about the new album…

It’s not particularly thematic, I mean we did an album a little while ago called The Liberty of Norton Folgate which was very much a concept album about London. I remember then even our guitarist saying, what do you think the rest of our songs are about? So they are just songs about everyday life. The people we see when we are walking up and down the street. The cant touch us now thing I suppose is a bit tongue in cheek really. We got to the point where we can do what we like, we aren’t really in the confines of the music industry anymore.

You know no one could have seen this coming because right now I am standing out front of this pub where we started nearly 40 years ago and I certainly would not have thought we would still be going at this point so it’s been a miracle in a lot of ways. In the early days of the band we were seen as a bit, not novelty but jokey and of course we were, we always enjoyed a laugh and we have a good sense of humour but we did put a lot of work into the music as well.

 

 

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 673 – Sunday 1st April – Saturday 7th April 2012

Rumours reached us this week suggesting that there might be a surprising collaboration to come out of the Jubilee Concert, organised for June 4th. The collaboration in question was that Her Majesty herself would take part on stage with our boys.

It’s was also possible that “The Queen” in this point was actually a reference to Madness working with either Brian May or Elton John. Only time would tell.

It was on to April Fools jokes next, as we revealed a new Madness version of the classic In The Hall of The Mountain King. What this actually turned out to be was a recording of the music from the 1983 Sinclair Spectrum game Manic Miner. It was a terror to the ears!

Moving on, and we featured a re-print of a short interview with Suggs where he listed his top five videos.

The main article in this issue was a huge, in-depth write up from subscriber Domingo Munoz, who gave us a blow by blow review of Madness in Mexico and the resulting Madmeet. This was the first time the band had played there, and the fans attended in force!

We brought this issue to a close with the latest round-up of bargains from Retro Madness, and reported that Suggs would be appearing on the Yesterday TV channel, with a Titanic based documentary called “Titanic: and the band played on”

10 years ago…

Issue 413, Sunday 1st April – Saturday 7th April 2007

MIS subscriber numbers continued to be on the rise, and during the past week we passed the 1,100 mark.

We celebrated this by welcoming aboard all our new readers, and at the same time thanking those long time subscribers out there for sticking with us.

This week we kicked off with an interview with Oliver Kalkofe, co-writer and star of German movie Der Wixxer. Oliver took time out of his busy schedule to tell MIS readers how and why Madness came to be involved in his new film.

Next, and following last week’s news that director Neil Thompson would soon be releasing “Clubbed”, a movie set around the Coventry 2-Tone scene, it seemed Dave Robinson, always the entrepreneur, had also cashed in on a growing wave of movie world interest in the 1979 UK ska scene.

With a number of production companies now interested in seeking  scripts for adapting new films based in this historic era in uk music, Dave had sold the screen rights to the 1981 Madness Bio-pic “Take it or leave it” to LA company Pirone Pictures for possible future development into a new production.

Moving on, and we reported that NW5 had now been added to the official Madness music player over on MySpace, following such positive feedback from the fans during the December tour.

As this track was available as a single in Germany, subscribers of the official Madness Blog would be able to take part in a competition to win a copy in the next few weeks.

Elsewhere we featured confirmation and an article from the official Guildfest web site, which announced that Madness would be appearing at the event, and we brought the issue to a close with the regular “Five Years Ago This Week” article.

15 years ago…

Issue 151, Sunday 31st March – Saturday 6th April 2002

The subject of Glastonbury was on the tips of the tongues of many a Maddie, as fans waited in anticipation at the prospect of Madness appearing in the line-up. 5 years on, and it’s finally become a reality.

Following our mention in the previous issue of the Stiff Records tribute album, The Stiff Generation, we were pleased to have an exclusive interview with Lisa Mychols, an LA based singer, guitarist and bass player who featured on the album.

Elsewhere in the issue we took another trip down memory lane, courtesy of Tour Madness editor, Jermaine. This week we focused on 1992 when the boys were riding high on the popularity of the recently released greatest hits album, `Divine Madness`.

Further on, and Chris Byrne kindly sat down and transcribed an article which appeared in the Daily Mail. No, for once, the paper wasn’t telling us things like `It’s the end of middle England as we know it`. No, this time they were actually putting something decent in there which featured none other than our lads. The paper continued it’s A-Z of Rock and Pop, with this edition focusing on ‘M’. The ‘Highs’ were listed as:

The successive Top 10 hits between January 1980 and November 1982 – from My Girl to Our House – which were all-time pop classics.

Whilst the low was:

The 1984 departure of pianist and resident musical genius Mike Barson; they were never the same again.

To finish the issue we took a look at the new Ian Dury autobiography, ‘Sex, ‘n Drugs and Rock n Roll: The Life of Ian Dury’. In accordance with Ian’s wishes, 25 pence went towards Cancer Bacup for every book sold. A worthy cause, indeed!

Rob Hazelby

 

 

DANCE CRAZE SCREENINGS

Two exclusive screenings of 2Tone’s legendary film at The London International Ska Festival 2017

13 April  – Prince Charles cinema, Leicester Sq

Screened from film cinematographer Joe Dunton’s own 70mm copy!

16 April – Islington Assembly Hall (gig screening)

+ Rhoda Dakar, Phoenix City All-stars (Dexys set), The Equators and more tba!

Tickets selling fast at www.buytickets.at/hotshotscorcher

 

 

WORLD TOUR COMPETITION WINNERS

Thank you to all the readers who got in touch about yesterday’s issue. We just surpassed 200 emails in response. Those of you still late to reading yesterday’s special timed issue, COMPETITION CLOSED!! OUT OF DATE.

Of course not everyone is impressed by April Fooling, when its been done so many times before, and those with long memories were reminding us of when our Rainbows Remix had them, back in the Folgate era, a joke we fondly remember too. We know yesterday was a last minute, less focussed effort.

So, our apologies IF you entered our competition yesterday in good faith hoping our upside down mugs, kangaroo pouch t-shirts, many pun mixes, like Mumbo Dingo appearing on a floating frictionless CD entitled Can’t touch OZ now, were hopefully true. They weren’t, sorry. In fact some of you told us it was an April Fool jape but you wanted to enter just in case. Now Thats dedication to collecting above and beyond sanity!!

We fooled a large number of you though, as always we are most apologetic to our overseas readers whose dates, time windows, and traditions are less April fool centric than our own moment of when we send out issues.

Dan Fossard added Mr Japples! Somewhat further dodgy remix,

And Duff Kelly told us “yeah right me old China” pun intended.

What was wonderful though was that 99% of reaction was in good spirit and we thank you all for the kind words added.

Elsewhere on fools day, Mr Scurf quit the koast train, Michael cross-field announced Suggs departure from the band via a fake news picture on the Complete Madness facebook group.

Specialized announced a stadium gig at Old Trafford.

Probably better than any of us though was our favourite fooling of the day, Henry Conlon at The Dublin Castle who asked for applications for a mass nude art photograph to taken by a famous photographer inside the legendary pub.  Now that sums up yesterday for everyone!

What a load of bollocks.

Jonathan young

 

 

TIME…

We bring this issue of the MIS to a close with some chart news, courtesy of the one and only Paul Rodgers.

First, it’s over to the UK singles chart, where Madness’ NW5 is currently sitting at a very respectable 39. You can clearly see that ancient tracks are able to chart these days, as one position above the Magnificent Seven are Queen with Bohemian Rhapsody!

And finally, we finish this issue by continuing on an NW5 related note, as Paul also tells us that NW5 currently sits at number 32 in the UK vinyl charts.

Not bad. Not bad at all!

If anything of note happens to NW5’s chart placing we’re certain Paul will be in touch with an update.

Until next week, take care,

Jon Young, Rob Hazelby, Simon Roberts, Paul Williams

(With thanks to Paul Rodgers and all those who entered our “competition”)