We’re sure you couldn’t have failed to have missed it, but this week dates were announced and tickets went on sale for this year’s Christmas tour. Entitled “The Sound of Madness” , the pre Christmas musical shindig takes in a whopping thirteen venues.
If you’ve been living under a rock for the past seven days we’ve got the full list of dates and ticket booking links in this week’s “Showtimes” section. No dates have sold out as yet, but if you want to ensure you get the venue and ticket type you want we suggest you get booking sooner rather than later,
Moving on, and over the past few weeks we’ve been contacted by several disgruntled fans who’d ordered the Suggs “My Life Story: The Movie” DVD, and yet despite an announced 2nd March 2018 release date were still waiting for it to arrive.
This week, Pledge Music released the following statement to those who’d ordered the DVD;
“To all customers,
We are very aware of the delay to the release of this DVD. We share your frustrations and have been trying to get something to tell you from the team behind it.
We have now been asked to pass on “there will be an announcement in two weeks with the shipping date”.
As ever, any customer not wishing to wait further is entitled to a refund. Please contact Customer Services via your order to do this. Otherwise, we will update you all again as soon as we are provided more information.
Thanks,
PledgeMusic.”
If you’re one of those who’ve ordered the disc and you’re fed up with waiting, you may want to take Pledge Music up on their offer of a refund. If you’ve yet to order a copy we recommend you wait until news of physical copies arriving with those who’ve already ordered before you part with your hard earned cash.
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.
Director Julien Temple (The Great Rock n Roll Swindle, Absolute Beginners) takes a stage show, adds some drama, archive, animation and music, then shakes it all up for MY LIFE STORY where Suggs, takes a hilarious, yet moving, look back at his life in a musical form.
Is it a drama? Is it a comedy? Or a music hall dream? Whatever it is hold on to your seats as Suggs goes on to stumble and plummet through the trap door of failure; then trampoline back up to catch the passing trapeze of show business success.
Important – The release date for this disc was 2nd March 2018, and copies have not yet been shipped. If you’ve yet to place an order we recommend you hold off parting with your money until news of copies arriving with those who’ve already ordered start to surface.
Suggs Tour Merchandise
Tour merchandise has now been added to Suggs’ online store.
£9.95. Limited to 250 copies. A5 paperback photo-zine. 36 pages.
Hanging Around Books’ tenth release (HA010), “Kimono Our House: Madness In Japan 1982” features rare and previously unseen photographs of the Nutty Boys taken by Andre Csillag at various locations during the band’s 1982 tour of Japan.
As Andre writes:
“In May 1982 I was asked by the manager of Madness, the late and sadly missed Matthew Sztumpf, to accompany the band on their first Japanese tour. These shots were taken over a period of a week in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Nagoya and on bullet trains inbetween.”
“It was an intense week of gigging, travelling, promotional work and making history. While in Japan, the band had their first number one on the UK singles chart and were filmed live via satellite from Tokyo introducing the video for that week’s chart topper, “House Of Fun” — a first for the BBC and Top of The Pops.”
“Thanks to Graham “Suggs” McPherson, Cathal Smyth, Lee Thompson, Chris Foreman, Mike Barson, Mark Bedford and Dan “Woody” Woodgate for their time and the enjoyable madness.”
Andre Csillag, February 2018.
MIS Feature
Specialive Reading – MIS Room 2 Takeover This Saturday
Great bands, great music and a great time for a great cause this Saturday at Reading Specialive. Bands include The Skapones, The Launchers, Millie Manders, The Dekkertones and more.
MIS will be there for the second year taking over the DJing in room2 and we have an acoustic set by our launchers spin off band, Dave and Dave, cover some choice Madness tunes.
Saturday 5th May 2018, Band stages times for the main room:
11.30pm – 12.30am The Skapones
10.15pm – 11.15pm Millie Manders and The Shutup
9.15pm – 10pm Erin Bardwell Collective
8.45pm – 9.15pm Raffle (not a band!)
8pm – 8.45pm The DekkerTones
7pm – 7.45pm Rage DC
6pm – 6.45pm The Launchers
5pm – 5.45pm The Corsairs
4pm – 4.45pm The Highwasters
3pm – 3.45pm Red Tape Resistance
1.30pm – 2.45pm Fijah (DJ set) – Jah Lion Movement & Reading Dub Club
Subject to change on the day.
Fundraising for Teenage Cancer Trust, Tonic Music for Mental Health, Youth Music and local charity Daisy’s Dream
Room 2 Times. – MIS Takeover
1.30pm – DJ – Jon Young – 90s Brit Pop (HOF set)
2.30pm – DJ Saunders’ Surprises
3.30pm – DJ Jon Young – Motown Madness
4pm – DJ Mandy Boybandy
5pm – DJ Jon Young – Madness & 80s Mix
6pm – Nick Woodgate’s Album showcase. (Playback)
6.45pm – DJ Saunders on Ska
7.45pm – Dave & Dave . Live Band (Choice Mad covers)
8.10pm – DJs – Madness Top 40 hits show (Find out what are the fan voted all time faves)
11.30pm – Close (12.30 late tunes)
Lots of Madness tunes as you’d expect from the fanboys at the MIS and nutty music asides with Motown, movies, 80s, 90s Brit pop and erm boy bands?? Topped off with our fan voted best of Madness Top 40.
Come listen and join the fun in our Play room. As well as all the tunes, we’ve our Car boot cabaret arcade of pub game amusements for the day…
There’s Jenga, Penalty shoot out, Bar Skittles, Angry Birds, Bannangrams, Crazy Dog, 70s Mastermind, Shot Golf, Egg running, Alco-splat, Buckaroo, and Noel’s House Party.
Also there will be Egg Running, Alco-splats, and we will be placing Little Leah entirely inside a Bubble.
Jonathan Young
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 729 – Sunday 28th April – Saturday 4th May 2013
Issue 729 saw the launch of our new look look. Gone was the 70 column text limit and contents section and in was rich text meaning we could apply formatting and embed web site links much easier.
With the contents section being given the boot we explained that we’d now be featuring regular articles so you’d know exactly what you’d be getting in an issue. “Showtimes”, for example, would always be the first article following the intro, with “Buy it” coming immediately after that.
The thinking behind this revamp was to give you easier access to the information you want, to produce an MIS that’s easier to read on a larger number of devices, and at the same time reduce the amount of work it took to put an issue together.
Aside from the usual, what would become regular features, our MIS Feature this week was the Lee Thompson Ska Orchestra Video Shoot. Jon Young’s lengthy write-up proved to be a fascinating insight into what goes on during a music video recording session, and is still well worth a read.
We brought this issue to a close with a reminder that over on the MIS web site we were asking you to vote for your favourite Oui, Our album track.
And finally, we finished with a small snippet from the one and only Paul Rodgers, who reported that there hadn’t been enough Madness news over the past week to make putting a full report worthwhile. All Paul could tell us was that Our, Our had dropped from its previous placing over number 64 to somewhere outside of the top 100. In the Indie chart it had dropped from 11 to 22.
10 years ago…
Issue 469 – Sunday 27th April to Saturday 3rd May 2008
This issue got off the starting blocks with the news that last week we’d forgotten to announce that on the 21st Mike reached the lofty heights of the big five-o. Those of you who were regular visitors to Wikipedia may have been interested to learn that the reference site had the date out by one month.
Our articles began with a transcript taken from The Southwark News, which featured Threadneedleman Tailors on Walworth Road. Why was this in the MIS? Well, one of its more famous clients happened to be the one and only Suggs.
If you wanted your own bespoke suit we recommended you started saving, as five years ago the starting price was £550!
It was over to cover bands next, as we reported that tribute band Shut Up, were after a drummer. Based in the North East of England, the lads were looking for someone with a passion for Ska, Two Tone and punk.
Next, it was time to get voting as a new campaign had got underway and was asking for you to vote for what you felt was the UK’s most musical city. The winning city would be announced in June, and Suggs was asking that you voted for London as the most musical.
“London is one of earth’s great cultural melting pots: a clash of styles and people resulting in scenes, fashions, looks and sounds. The reason you should vote London the Most Musical City is about more than just bands and artists. We’ve also got orchestras, some of the world’s greatest music venues, a history of musical theatre and everything in-between from garage to grime emerging out of the city’s network of boroughs”
With Suggs currently fronting TV commercials for Birdseye, Independent newspaper reporter Peter York, took a personal lookback over his experiences with frozen food over the years, and how it exploded into supermarkets up and down the country.
“Part of the national memory bank, too, is Madness – particularly Suggs. Less worrying than their Midland Two-Tone contemporaries, more obviously child-friendly, with their funny family songs and funny boysie dance routines. They’re huge again now, buoyed up by old fans in their thirties and forties and their children. Suggs is so universal, a National Treasure in the making – a pleasant-looking dad with a bit of go in him – that he’s an obvious choice to front the new Birds Eye commercial”
We brought this issue to a close with an in-depth history on the rise and fall of Madness web sites gone by, and took a look at two new Madness fansites that had recently appeared, before giving a massive lowdown on all the Madness and Madness related sites we currently knew about.
15 years ago…
Issue 207 – Sunday 27th April to Saturday 3rd May 2003.
We started off this issue with news that Bedders had updated his section over on the official Madness web site. Making no sense to man or beast, his words of wisdom were certainly amusing, and brought to light many things about our favourite bassist that we previously didn’t know. For example, did you know that years ago Mark successfully negotiated with a group of Arab terrorists who had seized a small bakery? Fascinating stuff!
Moving on, and we had news in from Madness Trading Ring subscriber, Birchy, who informed us that Madness were now present on yet another compilation. Entitled ‘Captial Gold British Legends’, our favourite band were on there with ‘It Must Be Love’. Other tracks of interest on the album were:
The Kinks – Waterloo Sunset
Ian Dury & The Blockheads – Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick
Elvis Costello and the Attractions – Oliver’s Army
One of the highlights of the past seven days was on Wednesday 23rd April when Suggs took time out from his current acting stint to take part in a web chat in conjunction with the `This is London` web site.
Steve Bringe gave those of us who missed it the lowdown on what went on.
“Suggs showed up promptly at 1pm and immediately started fielding questions. In fact, the first off the block was a really lame question I sent in. Had I choice in the matter, I would have selected a more anoraky question for him to answer, but instead it was a general question about his thoughts on the success of Our House and how it feels to act on stage.”
Elsewhere in the issue, we were pleased to report that after months and months of waiting the message board over on the official Madness web site was finally up and running. Kicking off proceedings was one Chris Foreman, who answered a mass of Madness fan questions.
2001 played host to the first ever Madness injection weekend, and after its obvious success, one was planned for 2002. However, due to work and other commitments, the organisers were unfortunately unable to devote the time required to organising a second event.
However, news reached us this issue announcing that Juliet and Clive Bulmer would be organising one for the August Bank Holiday weekend. Further details would follow as plans were laid down.
Rob Hazelby
Sign of the Times
Madness Announce Brighton Tour Date
THE BRIGHTON Centre will be turned into the House of Fun when Madness return to the city for the second time in just two years.
It must be love for the legendary Ska band as they plan to return to the city in December.
In 2015 the band bowled over thousands of fans at the County Ground.
