This time tomorrow this year’s House of Common one-day festival will be drawing to a close.
In the latest official email ahead of the big Bank Holiday bash the band commented;
“The weather forecast is looking good at the moment, we’ve got some great surprises lined up, it’s going to be a day to remember!”
We’ve heard it will be a unique set list, with a guest or two joining the band for a song surprise or such, and not necessarily just from the other great line up of acts already on the bill. This is similar to last year when Toots joined the band for The Prince etc. Perhaps something a little more than that with of course all the great hits and new album smashers we have been enjoying recently thrilling the crowd.
We’ll leave the intrigue there for tomorrow and promise you it’s a day not to miss if you haven’t yet grabbed a ticket.
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.
Lee Thompson DJ Set – Door 12 noon Afternoon event. – The Social. 5 little Portland street London, W1W 7JD
Lee Thompson – One Man’s Madness Film
October 1st – Matinee – Camden Dingwalls
October 1st – Evening – Camden Dingwalls
An advanced test screening version of the new Mockumentary comedy and life story film, hosted by Lee with A Q&A after the film and a special performance.
September 5th – Indo – Whitechapel Road, London ** New **
Album launch – Afloat
Afloat – the debut album from The NJE is launched at the band’s spiritual home in the East End. It’s already garnering rave reviews from Jazz In Europe, Evening Standard, Louder Than War etc and receiving great airplay on BBC 6Music!! Support and DJ set as usual.
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.
Lee Thompson DJ Set – Door 12 noon Afternoon event. – The Social. 5 little Portland street London, W1W 7JD
Lee Thompson – One Man’s Madness Film
October 1st – Matinee – Camden Dingwalls
October 1st – Evening – Camden Dingwalls
An advanced test screening version of the new Mockumentary comedy and life story film, hosted by Lee with A Q&A after the film and a special performance.
Afloat – the debut album from The NJE is launched at the band’s spiritual home in the East End. It’s already garnering rave reviews from Jazz In Europe, Evening Standard, Louder Than War etc and receiving great airplay on BBC 6Music!! Support and DJ set as usual.
The Clang Group
Thursday 12th October – The Dublin Castle ** New **
Buy It
Lee Thompson Needs you to Pledge and Share Now
As we recently mentioned, Thommo’s film project “One Man’s Madness, A RockuMockuDocumentary”, is now live on Pledge Music
Lee Thompson’s comedy life story film, featuring multiple mad Lee performances, and starring all of Madness and many more well known voices, is nearly complete and coming out this year. All that remains to make this possible if for your to pledge and help complete the project as planned.
** NEW EXCLUSIVE ITEMS **
Exclusive Baggy Trousers video prints available now
Unearthed from the archives are four never before seen prints from the video shoot for the iconic Madness Baggy Trousers video, featuring Lee Thompson flying above the fields of Islip Street School.
Numbered and signed by Lee, these hand printed photographs are limited to a run of only 2…
11. Oranges And Lemons Again – Jools Holland & Suggs
12. No More Alcohol
13. Blue Day (feat. The Chelsea Team) [Stamford Bridge Mix] – Suggs And Co
14. I Feel Good
15. Alright
It collects all 8 of his top 40 singles, adding to that the original “Alcohol” and what was arguably the most like second single, if three pyramids had reached that stage, in “So Tired”
Adding 3 b-sides, the obscure “Same again” to two covers, “I feel good” (James Brown) and “Alright” by Supergrass, to no doubt try and encourage the casual music fan to buy this budget priced release.
Finally, it pulls the two tracks from Jools Holland and Friends albums. The near single “Oranges and Lemon’s Again” and the more forgotten bouncy “Jack of the Green.”
This new CD is out now and has started shipping to fans. The sleeve features a new cover design, based on a photo taken recently for Suggs Live show.
Fans have reported that “The Tune” is the instrumental version from the Cecillia CD Single, rather than the vocal album mix.
** Update ** MIS subscriber Paul McWatt reports that Asda are currently selling the album for a mere £3!
Jonathan Young
Cant Touch Us Now – Limited Double Vinyl Edition.
2xLP
All 16 tracks. A new half speed master in gatefold.
180 Gram Audiophile Vinyl
Limited & Numbered of 2,000
The inner sleeves inside the gatefold outer cover features “Hong Kong” and “Australian” versions of the albums cover art, no doubt used in some function on the recent tour. So, we’re treated to Hong Kong’s Tian Tan Buddha statue and Sydney Opera House replacing St. Paul’s, for example. There are also a number of other country references mixed in. We noticed Dame Edna! on the front of the Australian one.
Nick Godwin returns to the pages of the MIS with an update, and part 6 of our series about songs he has written for The Silencerz. This time the song is so fresh it hasn’t been sung by Daley or Lee live with the band yet, so this is a preview for their next gig…
“Hi to MIS Readers
Next gig for The Silencerz is at The Bull Theatre, Barnet on Sat 23rd Sept – it will not feature Mr Lee Thompson (as far as I know) but it WILL feature 2 brand new songs never before played live. Here is the lyrics to the first of them…
Last Bus – by Nick Godwin
Well I thought about today, like any other day
I heard about the news and I didn’t know what to do
All the dreams I had and the books I never read
To savour something of, and to give it out with love
I cannot explain how everything has changed
I can’t live everyday like another holiday
The bus is coming soon, coming right into this room
It stops for everyone, and it won’t miss anyone
Turn the clock back, I’m not ready, you’re not ready too
Turn the clock back, we’re not ready to
Take the Last Bus home
——————————————————
Hope you are all very well in the MIS household.
best Nick”
Thanks Nick, and we will bring you part 7 of this series nearer to the time of the next Silencerz gig.
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 694 – Sunday 26th August – Saturday 1st September 2012
If you’d spent any time watching commercial television over the previous week then you couldn’t have failed to have noticed that the re-release of Total Madness had been pushed as part of a massive TV advertising campaign.
The Butlins Madness weekender was still many months off, but this week we finally learned that the fancy dress theme for the event was Circus Freaks.
We were told that we needed to wear anything Nutty Freaky, from Victorian travelling shows through to modern rock alternative style dress or a little side show fangoria fits the bill for the Butlins Big Top. From bearded ladies, moustachioed strong men, deranged ring masters, scary clowns, animal tamers, tapezze ballerinas, to stop and stare roll up for oddities.
Moving on, and while in Edinburgh Suggs joined The Horne Section comedy variety show, the band in the show features Joe from the violin monkeys. Of the appearance, the Huffington Post commented;
“The Horne Section: Live At The Grand! Alex Horne and his intrepid band of jazzers once again provided an utterly delightful mix of songs and silliness – culminating in all the audience members with beards standing on stage. Tuesday night’s guests were a pretty special bunch, too – Simon Amstell performed an epic medley of Enrique Iglesias’s Hero, Seal’s Kiss From A Rose, Vanessa Carlton’s A Thousand Miles and Circle of Life from The Lion King (no, really). And just when you thought that couldn’t be topped, Suggs turned up to lead the audience in a singalong of It Must Be Love.”
While in Scotland, Suggs appeared on Fred MacAulay’s radio programme, talking about his One Man Show.
Suggs talked about adapting his One Man Show for Edinburgh. He also said his book is still being written, so it would be interesting to see if the deadline of October for the book is met. “Possibly next year”, Suggs said.
Next, and the Clacton and Frinton Gazette web site reported that;
“A YOUTH theatre group from Tendring took their place in the record books after putting together a performance in 22 hours.
Youth Theatre Performerz group were handed a script for musical Our House at 9.30pm on March 31.
They had to put together an entire production, including rehearsing the scenes and making the costumes and scenery, before performing in front of nearly 200 people at 7.30pm the next day.”
Elsewhere, and it was over to the one and only Paul Rodgers for the latest in a long line of his Madness Chart Stats, Facts and Figures articles.
The big news was that during the past week Madness registered on various charts with three singles and five albums. Paul thought that this was another first for them.
“Onto the official chart released earlier this evening (dated 1 September 2012) and Total Madness stays true to the midweek charts by appearing at number 20. It drops to a respectable 4 on the indie chart where Complete Madness drops from 14 to 15, Ultimate Madness drops from 19 to 21. Meanwhile Forever Young climbs from 39 to 37. A Guided Tour Of Madness drops out of the indie top 40.
This suggests that Madness will have three albums in the top 200 main chart. If so this week will see Madness bring up 52 album chart weeks for the year.”
We brought this issue to a close with the news that www.avclub.com were currently running an article covering 12 songs about shoplifting. Madness were listed with “Deceives The Eye”, and The Blockheads were there with the classic “Razzle in my Pocket”.
10 years ago…
Issue 434 – Sunday 26th August to Saturday 1st September 2007
Vince Carden got this issue underway with details of a huge addition he’d arranged for the forthcoming Madness Blackpool Weekender line up:
“Dave Robinson, the man who signed them up and was responsible for It Must Be Love and Los Palmas 6 being hit singles in an exclusive rare interview live by phone on the Saturday afternoon.
On Saturday 29th September, the co – founder of the legendary Stiff Records will, by live phone link up, face the questions of Madness fans in what is a great scoop for everybody attending the House Of Fun 2007 weekend and for anybody who realises just what he did for Madness. Between 1979 – 1985, Langer and Winstanley produced six albums for the Magnificent 7″
We look forward to everybody joining us on the Saturday of Blackpool for this live interview. But it’s your weekend and for those of you attending I welcome any questions you would like to ask Dave Robinson. You can even do the asking on the day if it makes your weekend more memorable”.
Next, we moved over to the September edition of Uncut magazine where The Madness Trading Ring’s “Faker” was kind enough to have transcribed an interview with Carl, where he talks about The Jam’s second number one single, “Start”.
“There was no competition between The Jam and us then, there was a sense of unity between the Mod and skinhead bands, because 2-Tone and The Jam were both retro, but the energy was contemporary. We both tipped a wink to the Small Faces”.
Lee Hookway picked up the baton and continued the articles with a heads up on the next MOT gig, which was scheduled to take place at The Irish Centre, Tottenham on Friday 7th September.
“Its regular drinking turf for some of the MOT barons out there! We plan to put on a stonking 90min set… (shit, we better start rehearsing!) and there’s gonna be a couple of other bands playing with us, maybe a DJ and maybe a special guest. Who knows. We want it to be one huge party to remember”
It was back to 1981 next, as we transcribed a retro article, written by the legendary Adrian Thrills at the time of the filming of Take it or Leave it.
We brought this issue to a close with a transcription of a massive article from a 1984 issue of the NME, which covered the band as they toured Poland.
15 years ago…
Issue 172 – Sunday 25th August to Saturday 31st August 2002
Continuing on from the previous week, and we were still down to half power, as co-editor, Jonathan Young spent yet another week away from his keyboard. Rob also spent a few days away, and hastily compiled the MIS upon his return.
Why the absence? You’ll be pleased to read that it was all in the name of research. Rob had journeyed up to London to catch MOT at the legendary Hope and Anchor pub. After hearing so many good things about the band, Rob decided that he ‘had’ to go and find out they were as good as people were saying. Thankfully, Rob was not disappointed, and upon his return, posted a rave review of the evening’s antics.
Panic set in with one MIS subscriber, who contacted us, terrified that the 5 tickets he’d ordered for the forthcoming Christmas tour had failed to arrive. A quick email back from ourselves reassured the reader that as the gig wasn’t due to take place for another three and a half months, there was no need to panic… yet.
Exciting news for the collectors reached us this week, when it was revealed that a new Suggs single had been penciled-in for a release date of September the 2nd. The tune would be non other than Oranges and Lemons Again. Performed by Suggs, with backing from Jools Holland and his Rhythm and Blues Orchestra, the track was a catchy and upbeat affair.
Before Chris Carter-Pegg bought his stock and continued to keep the nutty merchandise flag flying, PLR Madmail, run by Paul Rodgers, was THE place to go for if you wanted to bag some discontinued Madness merchandise. This week Paul wrote in with details of a whole host of new additions to the stock list. So much, that we could only list a brief lowdown in the issue, and interested parties were advised to pop over to the PLR Madmail site to browse through the full inventory.
Not only was Rob able to catch MOT whilst he was up in London, but he managed to get two minutes with Crunch fanzine editors, Jerney and Bex. A number of MIS subscribers had been asking for an update on the status of ‘Saints and Sinners, so Rob attempted to get to the bottom of the mystery. It turned out that a mixture of work commitments, and the fact that very little was going on in the band had meant that putting out another issue was proving difficult. In fact, the two of them were considering closing the fanzine, and returning monies owed to the subscribed readership base.
Ever the professionals, Madness even made reference to the late Sir Bruce Forsyth, with frontman Suggs shouting to crowds; “Nice to see you, to see you nice!”
Suggs looked the part, dressed in all-black, as he sang before thousands of fans on the main stage as the sun shined over festival he declared ‘it never rains for Madness, the sun shines on the righteous’.
Madness also treated fans to an upbeat, brass-filled rendition of reggae legend Lee Scratch Perry’s Chase The Devil.
Suggs looked like he’d raided the wardrobe of the late Laurel and Hardy as he took to the stage to perform with his band Madness at V Festival.
The 56-year-old singer-songwriter wore a black bowler hat and black rain mac over a navy blue suit, clearly prepared for the unpredictable British weather.
Sax player Lee Thompson was a true highlight; his playing being absolutely faultless throughout. The star even donned a red pez hat for part of the set.
Fans sat on each other’s shoulders to see the legends, as they graced the audience with songs such as The Prince, Mumbo Jumbo and Mr Apples.
“It’s incredible that we’re all still alive I tell you that. Said Suggs
“Well I was very sorry to hear it was raining yesterday. But it’s an actual fact it never rains when Madness plays. The sun shines on the righteous.
“For those of you in the crowd here to see Busted, I’m really sorry – because we are Madness.”
Madness frontman Suggs is preparing to perform with the iconic Camden band at Clapham Common on Monday.
IT seems fitting that when we caught up with Suggs, he was hanging out in a Camden institution.
For a change, it’s not the Dublin Castle, the pub most associated with Madness’s explosion onto the music scene. Instead, it’s Ferreira’s, the Portuguese deli around the corner on Delancey Street.
“I’m in the Portuguese Café, one – they do very special coffee,” he says as he grabs a cup to keep him going before he ventures off to work.
“I did a one-man show a couple of years ago and I’m in the process of trying to write another one. So I’m off to meet my mate in Embankment.”
Suggs – aka Graham McPherson – is a busy man. Not only is he working on this second solo show, but he and the band are preparing for their second festival south of the river – at Clapham Common on Bank Holiday Monday (August 28). The family-friendly line-up, headlined by Madness, features a whole bunch of friends of the band and some newer faces, including Slaves, De La Soul, Soul II Soul, The Skatalites, The Aces ft Delroy Williams, Dawn Penn, David Rodigan – who is curating one marquee – Toddla T, Hackney Colliery Band, Craig Charles, Norman Jay, General Levy, Nadia Rose, Dennis Bovell, Sherwood & Pinch, Mungo’s HiFi, Venum Sound and Andy Holdstock.
The full article can be found at the above address.
As the sun set over the grounds of Hardwick Hall, the sounds of Madness’ brass instruments filled the air. Hardwick Live kicked off with a fun-filled concert that had the audience dancing well into Friday night.
All the favourites were there, but the best – and most well-known – tracks were saved until the finale.
Thousands poured into the grounds showing just how popular the Ska group still is, despite recently celebrating its 40th year in the business.
Suggs and his bandmates occupied the stage from the get-go and the crowd was fully invested in the performance the whole 90-minute set.
It was lively, fun and had everybody moving.
There was plenty of interaction with the crowd as well, and showed the band really appreciates its loyal North-east fans.
But it was a great night suitable for youngsters too. The diversity of the crowd showed how Madness appeals to all ages.
The group took it in turns to have their moment and interact with the crowd, never tiring from bouncing around the stage, clearly pumped up by their fans.
And looking across the crowd, a sea of fez hats could be seen – a nod to Madness’ signature style.
Although thousands turned up to watch, there was still plenty of space to dance. I think everyone at some point was grabbed by a stranger to dance along to their best-known songs.
Time
And finally…
At this year’s V Festival Suggs joined Rudimental (we have no idea, either!) on stage. We’ve also learned that he’s also recorded a song with them called “Going out” which we’ll be reviewing in a later issue.
Our thanks to Declan McDermot who sent us this track from an airing on Soho FM recently, when a sloshed sounding Suggs turned up to tell it like it is to the local radio presenter an old mate of his.
