With Christmas fast approaching, you may find friends and relatives asking you for gift ideas. If you’re having trouble suggesting something then perhaps supermarket Morrison’s can help.
Just released, and what seems to be an exclusive for the chain (and please correct us if we’re wrong!) is the Madness Finest Pale Ale beer and pint tankard, complete in a presentation tin. Priced at a very reasonable £7 (the packaging alone must cost half the price), you can also order the beer online at: https://groceries.morrisons.com/webshop/product/Madness-Tin–Pint-Glass-Set/347492011
Although we’d already spotted this one, we’d like to give a special mention to subscriber Calum Stewart who not only emailed in with a heads-up, but who also included a photo with one in his mitts. Excellent work!
Finally, if you’re one of the many due to attend this year’s Madness Weekender down at Butlins Minhead, you may way to check out tonight’s Live and Intensified section. Why? Well not only do we have set lists from all the recent gigs, but a number of tracks aired are highly likely to be part of the much anticipated “ Jamboree Bag Night”. If you don’t want the surprises of the night ruining then make sure you skip that section.
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.
Hi everyone, thanks so much for your support – it’s great to have finally reached the target and get to 100%. We’re keeping the store open for a few more weeks whilst we get all the production in place, we’ll have another update for you soon with dates for when you can expect your goodies.
Available to Pre Order now from Madness.co.uk & Pledge music.
Welcome to Full House – The Very Best Of Madness, a brand new compilation from the UK’s favourite band.
Encompassing the length and breadth of their stellar career, ‘Full House’ captures the legendary British pop band’s much-loved recorded output to date. Since the release of their last best-of in 2012, Madness’ phenomenal career has continued to go from strength-to-strength with the release of the critically acclaimed, top 5 album ‘Can’t Touch Us Now’ and the top 10 charting, gold selling ‘Oui Oui, Si Si, Ja Ja, Da Da’. Containing hit singles from both of those albums, and unfolding largely in chronological order, ‘Full House’ is a best of and then some, featuring 42 of the songs that have made Madness one of the nation’s best loved bands. Kicking off with 1979’s ‘The Prince’ and wrapping with 2017’s ‘Another Version Of Me’, the album takes in bona-fide classics such as ‘Our House’, ‘Night Boat To Cairo’, ‘It Must Be Love’ and ‘Can’t Touch Us Now’ along the way.
Madness say: ‘‘It’s nearly that time of year but Wot no Madness Xmas tour?! We wouldn’t want you or your loved ones to miss out on your yearly fix so here’s our promise to you -Full House, 42 of our greatest hits to fill those stockings with this festive season.’’
The Nutty Boys’ huge appeal continues to cut across the generations, with new fans discovering their life-affirming back catalogue all the time. ‘House of Common’, their annual family-friendly alternative to Carnival is fast establishing itself as a must on the festival circuit, their legendary ‘House Of Fun’ Weekender (November 17-20th) goes from strength-to-strength and recent knock-out performances everywhere from Glastonbury to Boomtown, V Festival to Bestival reinforce their unrivalled reputation as one of Britain’s greatest and most enduring live acts.
Artwork for ‘Full House’ is by the inimitable Paul Agar, whose cut-and-paste collage style has become synonymous with Madness’ recent work and will be instantly recognisable from his work on ‘Can’t Touch Us Now’ and ‘The Liberty Of Norton Folgate’. The 4LP version also features a special pop-up gatefold mechanism that’s sure to make it a must have for fans and collectors alike.
A comprehensive compilation that perfectly captures the national treasures’ career to date, ‘Full House’ will appeal to fans old and new as Madness prepare to embark on the next stage of a career that has rewritten the rulebook and continually defied all preconceptions.
Full House will be released on November 17.
Please note: Orders are not part shipped so if wish to order catalogue music and you would like it shipped before 17th November we recommend you place separate orders. Unfortunately this item cannot be shipped to North America
1. The Prince
2. One Step Beyond
3. My Girl
4. Bed And Breakfast Man
5. Night Boat To Cairo
6. Madness
7. Baggy Trousers
8. Embarrassment
9. The Return Of The Los Palmas 7
10. Grey Day
11. Shut Up
12. It Must Be Love
13. Cardiac Arrest
14. House Of Fun
15. Driving In My Car
16. Our House
17. Tomorrow’s (Just Another Day)
18. Wings Of A Dove
19. The Sun And The Rain
20. Michael Caine
21. One Better Day
22. Uncle Sam
23. Yesterday’s Men
24. (Waiting For) The Ghost Train
25. Sarah’s Song
26. Lovestruck
27. Johnny The Horse
28. Drip Fed Fred
29. Simple Equation
30. Girl Why Don’t You
31. NW5
32. Dust Devil
33. Forever Young
34. Sugar And Spice
35. My Girl 2
36. Never Knew Your Name
37. How Can I Tell You?
38. Misery
39. La Luna
40. Mr. Apples
41. Can’t Touch Us Now
42. Another Version Of Me
Madness Pale Ale, Tin and Pint Glass Set ** New **
Product description: Ladies and Gentleman, for your drinking pleasure Madness bring you one of the fines beers to ever pass your lips. An idea born in the Dublin Castle (the very pub where we played our first gigs), Madness Beers go one step beyond with flavour and style.
ABV 4.2%, Units 2.1
MIS Feature
Nick Welsh (King Hammond) – The Life and Times of a Ska Man. An Offbeat Trip – Book Review
I received this book little over a week ago and it has been a very comforting read on my hour and a half journey to and from work every day.
Nick Welsh is a former member of Bad Manners, Busters All Stars and The Selecter and also formed the Bands Big 5 (with Jennie Matthias) and Skaville UK.
Nick is also known as King Hammond (who will be joking the Skapones at this years House of Fun Weekender during the MIS Presents show).
The book starts off with Nick telling us about his childhood and what mischief he got up to before telling us how his musical career began at the age of 15 at the spiritual home of UK punk, The Roxy Club in Covent Garden with his band The Dead. He tells wonderful stories of his time with Bad Manners, Busters all Stars and The Selecter. Nick wrote some of Bad Manners most popular hits since their heydays in the early 80s. Songs like Skaville UK, Skinhead Girl and a favourite of mine You Fat Bastard. He also co wrote the Selecter albums The Happy Album and Hairspray. Nick also tells of his time working and touring with artists such as Judge Dread, Prince Buster, Laurel Aitken, Dave Barker (from Dave and Ansell Collins), Susan Cadogan and receiving a Grammy award for his work with Lee Scratch Perry on the Jamaican ET album.
Nick’s style of story telling is very humorous and I have lost count of the amount of times I got funny looks on the tube because I started laughing out loud on some of Nicks humour.
All in all it is a great read which I thoroughly enjoyed.
I have only ever seen Nick perform as part of The Selecter a couple of times. I have never seen a King Hammond show but I am planning to change that starting with his appearance at the House of Fun Weekender 2017. Around 8pm in Reds on the Sunday.
I urge anyone that is a ska fan to buy this book. You won’t be disappointed.
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 704 – Sunday 4th November – Saturday 10th November 2012
The Thursday just gone, Madness appeared on Radio 2 where the station played loads of old interview clips of the band from the BBC archive to tell the band’s story.
This included previously unheard rare snippets of “Shop Around” in rehearsal, and “Michael Caine” synth music. Alongside this there was also a nice acoustic version of “Forever Young” from Irish Radio.
On Saturday, Suggs and Mike were guests on Dermot O’Leary’s BBC Radio 2 show, where they discussed Amsterdam, the New Album, and extra band members over the years, in reference to a rubbish bar chart Wikipedia seemed to be pleased with itself about.
Also this week we learned that Madness.co.uk were listing a number of independent record shops giving away free album stickers. They wanted you to stick them somewhere (YES!) and photograph them, uploading the pictures to facebook and tagging Madness.
The exciting news being that picture might appear in “A DELUXE BOX SET” next year. This was the first we’d heard of this album getting the box set treatment in 2013.
On to the articles, and while we usually closed an issue with him, we decided to kick things off with Paul Rodgers and another of his Madnesss Stats, Facts and Figures articles.
So, how did the new album perform? Well, you’d be very pleased to learn that it reached number 10, not after peaking at number 6 earlier in the week. This gave the band their seventh top 10 studio album. Impressive!
It was over to Woody news next, as we learned that he was taking part in Movember, and would be growing a moustache. Our favourite drummer had even set up a Just Giving page so you could make a donation which would go to a prostate cancer charity.
With the new album released we decided that you needed to know what TV and video promotion had taken place, so, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, we had various YouTube and web site links so you could catch-up on any performance or interview you’d missed.
Next, we moved over to Suggs, who explained to Contact Music that, despite rumours, he had never been a roadie for fascist rock band Screwdriver.
“I was never a roadie for Skrewdriver. I don’t know where that came from, someone put it in a biography of Madness. I knew (singer) Ian Stuart (Donaldson) a bit and the rest of the band, who were like a punk band at the time… so I saw them around.
Then what’s-his-name (Donaldson) became an obergruppenfuhrer (Nazi) and I never spoke to him again.”
A number of album reviews from magazines, newspapers and web sites followed, and then it was over to the NME. The previous week the music paper had given the new album a right roasting, and feeling disgruntled MIS subscriber Tim Ellis decided to email the reviewer.
Tim’s email was constructive and friendly, and amazingly the response back was just as pleasant. Regardless, it would seem that fan and reviewer would have to agree to disagree.
On to Ska Orchestra news next, and the big news was that a 4-track EP was almost ready, in time for the Butlins gig.
The Tracklisting was:
1. Mission Impossible
2. Soon You’ll Be Gone
3. Hot – Rub-a-Dub
4. Many Rivers to Cross (Live Islington Assembly Rooms)
We brought this issue to a close with news of Nick Woodgate’s solo album, rescheduled dates for Suggs’ One Man Show, and a change of date for Suggs autobiography “That Close”, which was now due out on 7th June 2013.
10 years ago…
Issue number 444 – Sunday 4th November to Saturday 10th November 2007
We began this week’s issue with something a little different. It only contained a passing mention to Suggs, and wasn’t really Madness related at all. Regardless, it was a wonderful read and gave a brief insights into the antics of numerous bands in the eighties.
It was a lengthy article, but we felt it was worth a few minutes of your time.
Moving on, and we took a look at Time Out magazine, who had compiled a list of 101 things to do in London. What did this have to do with the band? Well, they’d managed to get Suggs to reveal some of his favourite places in the capital, which included The Dublin Castle, Regents Park, and hatters James Lock and Co, to name but a few.
We hopped over to The Times newspaper next, as they we featured a transcript of an article they’d recently printed about the band. It was a long article, but proved to be a fascinating read indeed.
Following this we went over to Germany, as subscriber Matthias Ratz, reported that south-west German radio station SWR1 had recently organised a chart show, where listeners were allowed to choose their personal top 5 hits out of a range of some 10 000 songs.
Here Matthias;
“I voted for Our House and It Must Be Love (which I considered to be the best known ones in Germany), but both missed the top 1000, which was very disappointing. The highest was Our House on chart position 1015 and the only other Madness title which made it into the top 2007 was One Step Beyond on 1983. So none of them was played on the radio, because only the first 700 titles were aired.
I would have guessed that at least Our House would have made it into the top 700. Well, bad luck!”
We brought this issue to a close with the news that subscriber Jim Lavery, won Suggs’ Workplace of The Day, as part of his Virgin Radio programme.
Jim was now awaiting the delivery of a spanking new DAB Radio, and a Twix hamper. The lucky swine!
15 years ago…
Issue number 182 – Sunday 3rd November to Saturday 9th November 2002
Pre-order mania hit the MIS this week, as both Play.com and Blackstar were listing the anticipated ‘Take it or Leave it’ DVD for pre order. Fans were advised to use the Play web site for their orders, as the disc was priced at a not-to-be-sniffed-at £11.99.
The ‘Our House’ musical bandwagon continued apace, with a certain Suggs featuring in a full 6 minute interview with the BBC Breakfast TV team.
The Tuesday before this issue went to press saw Carl appear as a guest on Chris Moyles Radio One show. Introduced as ‘The co-founder of Madness’, Carl appeared top hatted, And spoke about the hot topic of the opening of the musical the night before. As he put it: “Suggs and myself had been writing a musical in 1999” and Carl’s wife was credited with the idea of “why don’t you use the hits!”
Chris Moyles praised the genuineness of the band as being still fresh in the current pop climate and said of the musical “When I think of musicals and pop bands two words spring to mind “Ben” and “Elton” “the kiss of death”. Carl then mentioned that he had been at the opening night along with Andrew Lloyd Webber and added that there had been a few bad reviews but mainly good reviews.
The also spoke briefly about how Madness got together, Carl mentioning the Aldham Glamour Boys gang and Mike’s idea to form a band as a more productive waste of their time.
Chris mentioned the amount of times Madness have reformed and Carl put him right that the band have only reformed once but joked that now they “..only pop out occasionally when the planets line up for the money and a laugh and to cheer everybody up.”
This week also saw the band (minus Lee, who was in Oz) appear on ITV’s ‘Des and Mel Show’. Whilst the interview was an amusing one, according to MIS readers, fans were left a little puzzled as to why only Suggs was interviewed, and extremely disappointed when the band were made to mime along to ‘House of Fun’. As subscriber Graham Whitfield said at the time:
“No wonder Lee prefers to remain in Australia for these fiascos. As on GMTV, the song, “House of Fun” this time,was fully mimed. Exactly what species of berk expects a band of Madness’ standing (and age) to mime along to a twenty year old song? All credit to the band for playing along with this ordeal – I’m sure they’re not to blame. Even if sound facilities were limited, surely they could have let Suggs sing, at least? I actually felt slightly embarrassed.
Straight after, Mel said something like “they just get better and better don’t they” ?? What, better at miming?”
Further on in the issue, and obviously cheesed-off with the chart position of the ‘Our House’ greatest hits compilation, (which stalled at number 45 in the charts) Vince Foley provided readers with a lowdown of all the Madness ‘greatest hits’ albums that had been issued over the years. Vince summed-up his article with the following words of wisdom;
“I remember Chrissy Boy jokingly say in a 1992 interview that Madness greatest hits should be re-released every 5 or so years (like Disney Classics) for new generation to enjoy….little did we know it would become a bi-annual event.
I was delighted that Divine Madness was released in 1992 as we all know what happened as a result, but what’s to be gained by several more releases since?
I always hope that each one will do well and at least open up a new breed of Maddies but surely now this must cease.”
This issue rounded-off with reviews of the ‘Our House’ musical from Record Collector and Sky News, and details from Simsey of a Madness ringtones download service where instead of charging a whopping £3 he was letting you have them for absolutely nothing.
Rob Hazelby
MIS Feature
Seven Ragged Men – 1984 Now Online
Get over and like the website seven ragged men. Building to be the story of Madness in their own quotes from over the years.
Need a little weekend reading? 1984 is now live – complete with the band’s own story behind the split from Stiff, and how they made 7RM’s favourite Madness song, Michael Caine.
Its full of excellent soundbites, spot on telling the story, well chosen, detailed and insightful without too much repetition with drop down additional content on big releases and events.
DAVE ROBINSON: “What I hadn’t realised was that Madness needed a strong, tough leader. So when Mike left, Carl took his place, which was different, because Carl – although he wrote some hit songs that were very good – wasn’t a musician or player. And Mike was very grounded compared to Carl; when Mike was running things, there was a logic and reality to aspects of it. When Carl was running it, it got a bit flighty, shall we say, because he’s a more flighty character. Carl was a bit more hippie in his music tastes. He felt the music was more serious whereas Mike had a really pragmatic attitude where he knew it had to be successful to keep such a large band together. So it became difficult, somewhat due to Carl’s attitude and his wish to control.
I knew there was going to be trouble because he didn’t have his feet on the ground like Mike. Also, they wanted more money, but the sales were starting to dip. Plus they weren’t writing a lot and they didn’t want to tour Europe – and we’d sold zillions of the first album so they were huge there. But you could only hit major cities then they’d want to go home because they’d all got married or had girlfriends. Not that the extra money would have lasted five minutes if I’d have given them Maserati catalogues and houses in Guildford, especially as I’d sneered about that concept to them over the years.”
Keep Moving was released.
CHRIS: “The artwork was terrible – totally crap. Robbo thought we should have something to reflect the forthcoming Olympics – bonkers. So we ran round a running track and he said if we didn’t like it then we wouldn’t use it as a cover. Hah!
There was also some iffy rumour that a fee of £30,000 was paid by Nike for us to wear the shoes on the cover. I never got to the bottom of that but I did get a pair of trainers which lasted me many a year. Whoopee f*cking do.
The pictures taken in Thommo’s Jag that we used for the Michael Caine single were far better and would have made a far better album cover. But the rest of the band weren’t bothered as per usual; they were a bit disparate on the issue and there was no collective agreement.”
Mike Filmed his last 80’s Madness video moments,
MIKE: “Coming back to make the video was pretty weird. It was like nobody missed me. They were like, ‘You’ve finished, mate’. They were getting on without me. It was a bit strange; I didn’t really have much say in the rest of it really.”
…and Zarjazz began
FEARGAL SHARKEY (speaking in 1984): “We have a lot of mutual friends so, although I didn’t physically meet them ’til about 18 months ago, I was quite aware Madness were well into Feargal Sharkey. We had a lot of respect for one another. It was nice to be asked to do something with them… now they’re a really good bunch of friends.
Lee Thompson’s just a nutter – for the first three hours of the recording session he just messed about making everybody laugh. Then we got down to it and six minutes later he’s done his bit, got his sax under his arm and he’s on his way home. It’s good that people can have a laugh like that but then, when a job is done, it’s done very well.”
Tomorrow’s Dream shows us what a dream set the Butlins Jamboree Bag will be, while it’s now confirmed that the rehearsal video contained “The world is spinning around the world is upside down”, an old reggae number that featured Jimmy Cliff on backing. Bedders confirmed in a message that it’s the old Joe Higgs number they covered, though he said there were a few versions they were looking at when it was being covered. It sounded good and they copied the earliest version they could find.
One Step Beyond
Embarrassment
The Prince
NW5
My Girl
Mr Apples
Herbert
Sun and The Rain
Tomorrows Dream
Blackbird
Wing Of a Dove
Upside Down
Catch you crying
Bed and Breakfast Man
Shut Up
Mumbo Jumbo
House Of Fun
Baggy Trousers
Our House
It Must Be Love
Madness
Night Boat To Cairo
Berlin Set List November 2nd
This gig saw the the John Lennon cover “Oh My Love”, from the Oui, Oui box set aired, which was last played live in 2003 by the band. The band also performed “When Dawn Arrives” from the Seven album. To our knowledge this was last performed way back in 1981!
Madness bring back Cardiac Arrest but avoid other rarities because of the festival crowd
One Step Beyond
Embarrassment
The Prince
NW5
My Girl
Mr Apples
Herbert
Sun and The Rain
Cardiac Arrest
Blackbird
Wing Of a Dove
Iron Shirt
Bed and Breakfast Man
Shut Up
Mumbo Jumbo
House Of Fun
Baggy Trousers
Our House
It Must Be Love
Madness
Night Boat To Cairo
Denmark, November 5th
One Step Beyond
Embarrassment
The Prince
NW5
My Girl
Mr Apples
Herbert
Sun and The Rain
Guns
Blackbird
Wing Of a Dove
Poison ivy
Catch you crying
Bed and Breakfast Man
Shut Up
Mumbo Jumbo
House Of Fun
Baggy Trousers
Our House
It Must Be Love
Madness
Night Boat To Cairo
In celebration of Guns being played live in the set tonight in Denmark here’s a fan cut video to the track on youtube by Dave Dinsdale: https://youtu.be/PUhoh8EtsG4
Time
That’s just about it for this week’s edition of the MIS.
Before we go we have a request from subscriber Jim Lavery;
“I was lucky to be invited to dance onstage at Southsea Victorious festival back in August for Night Boat To Cairo.
Cameras were not allowed on stage (scary man told us!)
I have trawled YouTube but with no success for video evidence.
Just wandered if I could put a request out to see if anyone filmed Night Boat at Victorious in 2017.”
If you’re able to help Jim then please drop him an email at: jimlavery1@sky.com.
And finally, please check out our YouTube channel MISTV, later on this evening, as we’ll have uploaded a fan created video of Madness playing “Guns” from tonight’s gig in Denmark, courtesy of Lisa Search.
