The big news this week is the return of THE Madness.
The 1988 album has been added to streaming services, Spotify, Napster, Deezer, Rhapsody, Tidal and Apple Music.
It’s also available again as a download from Google Play and iTunes.
Amazon music have it too, with all 14 tracks from the previous CD album edition available at 99p each.
The album copyright is still stated as Virgin Records and as both they and EMI no longer exist, the album is owned by UMG Universal music group, one of the 4 major global music publishers.
There’s no news on any physical format reissue of the album of any kind. Those longing for such an occurrence “Go Stream” and maybe that will show that there’s interest in this most obscure album that hops in and out of the main band’s cannon depending on who is referring to it!
Before we get on with the issue, just a heads up that this week the Near Jazz Experience kick off their 10 date tour which spans this and next month. Beginning in Manchester on the 25th September, the tour winds up in Nottingham on the 5th October. Check out our regular “Showtimes” section for more information, and if you do get along to any of the shows feel free to submit a review.
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.
1st – Suggs & Friends – Porchester Hall, London. Annual Charity show for Pancreatic Cancer UK
2nd Kings Lynn, Corn Exchange
3rd Crawley, The Hawk Theatre
4th Bury St Edmunds, Apex
5th Stafford, Gatehouse Theatre
7th Glasgow, Pavillion – rescheduled date
Lee Thompson in Conversation
Sunday November 11th – The Big One 7 – Parkdean Sandford Dorset “Meet the Legendary Sax man” at this QnA musical career discussion event.
Near Jazz Experience
The NJE on tour supporting The Nightingales (plus Stew Lee. Cambridge, Birmingham and London dates with 15 minutes of 80s comedy material )
September
25th – Soup kitchen – Manchester
26th – stereo cafe – Glasgow
27th – Opium – Edinburgh
28th – Central bar – Gateshead
29th – The lantern – Halifax
30th – Greystones – Sheffield
October
2nd – Hare & Hounds – Birmingham
3rd – Moth club – London
4th – Portland arms – Cambridge
5th – Canalhouse – Nottingham
The Silencerz
Saturday 22nd December, The Dublin Castle, Camden. No Lee, as this is the date of the Brighton Madness gig.
Buy It
Suggs My Life Story DVD
“After a bit of messing about…”, says the new advert for Suggs Movie DVD of his One Man Show, which now has a new release date of November 2018. This opening line is the admission that a delayed March release, a lack of updates before August 10th, and a rejig of both the pledge campaign account and the team behind the release have all taken place.
Now that the Pledge is relaunched though with a new release date of November, and with a fresh launch event to take place at the Pleasance Theatre in London we feel that now is the time to add this back in to our regular “Buy It” section.
Lee ‘Kix’ Thompson is a most unlikely character. Early career choices had him spend a year in Borstal. He still hasn’t found the receipt for his first saxophone. Luckily, he met two other unlikely characters: Mike ‘Barso’ Barson and ‘Chrissy Boy’ Foreman, who shared his interests of graffiti, train hopping and music.
One Man’s Madness, a feature length rocku-docu-mockumentary directed by Jeff Baynes, tells the story of Madness saxophonist Lee Thompson, told by Lee and his fellow Madness band mates, his family, friends and musicologists, who strangely all look a little like him! From meeting Barso and Chrissy Boy, and later Suggs, Chas, Woody and Bedders, to becoming one of Britain’s most iconic and successful bands, this joyous and light-hearted film follows the path of Lee’s life through his lyrics and songs, including such Madness classics as The Prince, Embarrassment, House Of Fun, Lovestruck and NW5.
Two CD set. Original soundtrack to the 2018 documentary about Madness saxophonist Lee Thompson. Includes tracks from Madness, Crunch, ‘Thommosina Leigh’, Ian Dury, and the Lee Thompson Ska Orchestra. Including Hidden Tracks. New Mad store T-shirts & Madshorts
Further New T-shirts are now in stock for the summer. Including Madness Shorts as this hot weather continues to encourage getting your legs out. The recent Stately Holmes tour T-shirt is now in stock on line. A rather fetching Lady Killers poster of the old Ealing comedy about a gang of roguish bank robbers, re done with Madness heads taken from old shut up artwork and repurposed nicely in this fitting parody. A fetching Morris Minor car picture harking back to Driving in My Car video and the Mad 7 number plate, with the paraphrase lyrics from Muswell Hill to Selsey Bill! Check out the Madstore now.
Danceable and delightful, this debut album of the band’s much loved original songs pushes on through, breaking the mould of standard ska cover band. Catchy tunes and powerful brass and rhythm section make this a must-listen. Featuring Lee Thompson.
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: 750 – Sunday 22nd September to Saturday 28th September 2013
The big news this week was that the band were hoping to film an alternative video version of the legendary “Our House”, featuring the band and the fans.
The filming was due to take place at the Ally Pally at 2:00pm on Saturday 28th September. All you needed to do was turn up on time and wear bright colours. Naturally, you’d need to be a ticket holder to the gig and would need to know the words.
The filming was estimated to take approximately 2 hours and the bar at the palace will be opened when finished.
The MIS team would be going along to the filming.
This week, on his return from gigging in France, Mark Bedford sat down and deliberated for us over a list of 15 Elephant Names we had short listed for consideration from a herd of suggestions you readers sent in.
My name is PRINCE TUSKER, Said the proud balancing Elephant on the bottle, announcing the news to the world that he now has a name.
We sent congratulations to Paul Bridges from Glad-Morgan (sort of) in Wales, whose name won from a draw or people who had submitted that choice of name.
Paul won free beer and the Gladness T-shirt signed by Suggs, Chas, Woody and Bedders. Nice!
Elsewhere, and long-time MIS subscriber Jacco Van’t Riet sent in his review of the recent Madness performance at the free Apple pop festival in Tiel. Jacco commented at the time “As the audience was a very mixed and maybe even a not particularly madness audience I had to say that with especially the big hits Madness had in Holland, the roof went OFF, especially OUR HOUSE – gave me goosebumps as so many people sung it out loud”.
Our Tweets of a Dove section was devoted to the one and only Carl, who was giving his (positive) thoughts on the new Magic Brothers debut single, and reporting on the recent Applepop concert.
We brought this issue to a close with a reminder that the Magic Brothers meet kicked off at the Dublin Castle this coming Saturday at 11:30am. This was prior to the Ally Pally meet kicking off at 2:00pm.
10 years ago…
Issue 490 – Sunday 21st September to Saturday 27th September 2008
In this packed issue we listed the final 10 tracks in this year’s Madchart countdown. Being the cruel people we are we split these into three articles, with positions 10 to 6 in one article, 5 and 4 in another, and a final article detailing the top three.
So, what were the final three tracks? In the number 3 slot (previously number 7) was The Sun and The Rain, in the number 2 slot was Baggy Trousers (previously number 3), and in the top spot at number 1 was Embarrassment, which retained it’s previous number 1 spot.
Paul Muscat commented at the time;
“’Embarrassment’, released on November 22, 1980, was the band’s sixth single in a little over 14 months, and made its bow at UK #31, following that up with a run of 12-4-4-6-8-8-9-13-28-38-68, for yet another 11 weeks in the Top 40 out of 12 weeks in the Top 75.”
Non Madchart articles this week included a transcript of an interview with Lee Thompson, which originally appeared in the Butlins magazine. In the interview Lee spoke about other bands he’d been in, how Madness formed, ska music in general, who he was most proud of working with, and much more besides. A really interesting interview.
Next it was over to Lee Hookway and Looby, who reviewed the recent Dance Brigade gig at the 100 Club. The write-up was huge, and for those of us unable to get along to the event it really helped to detail just what we’d missed.
With several video cameras present at the 100 Club gig we also featured a list of video clips from the night that you could view with a simple click on one of the many URLs we presented you with. Not only that, but there were also links to a mass of photos taken during the course of the evening.
We finished this issue on a non Madness related note as we urged you to vote for Remember The Eighties.com in the BT Digital Music Awards in the best unofficial music web site category. Rich, the owner of the site always gave Madness massive promotion as and when he could, so we urged you to help him out by placing your vote.
15 years ago…
Issue 228 – Sunday 21st September to Saturday 27th September 2003
We started putting this issue of the MIS together at the start of the weekend, and after looking at how quiet the various Madness related net forums had been, we didn’t mind admitting that we were worried that this would be one small issue indeed.
However, for one reason or another items started to come in thick and fast. In fact, we’ve received so much material, that some of it had to be kept back until the following week. Naturally, all time sensitive items were posted in this issue, as they just couldn’t wait.
With the Madness Weekender a mere 5 days away, organiser Vince Carden decided it was time for contact details to be sent out to those making the treck to Great Yarmouth. For those suddenly deciding they wanted to join in the fro-licks, it was unfortunately too late to sign-up.
Ok, so it wasn’t Madness, but we know it would be of interest to many subscribers. So, when Chris Wardell contacted us with the lowdown on the latest release from Bad Manners, entitled ‘Stupidity’, we thought it only right that the MIS readership receive a heads-up.
Warrior Clothing is an outlet popular with Maddies, and with their web site receiving a complete revamp over the past week or so, we felt it only right that our readers should know about it.
We finished off this week’s issue with a massive list of all the known official and fan created Madness and Madness related web sites we knew of. How many of those are still going today? Probably very few indeed.
Rob Hazelby
Time
To finish we bring you Madness related News from a ska band formed after the departure of the guitarist from the Lee Thompson Ska Orchestra…
The Tremolites play The Dublin castle on October the 27th..
Song writer Andy Neal tells us…
“Lee rang the other day gutted he was gonna be away. Turns out he thought it was Sept!! He’s made up he can come now! Might have to tug him up for “feel a little better”. It’s gonna be a bit of a social I reckon.”
Andy Stav should be there reporting on the gig for the MIS so we hope to bring you a review in a future issue on that one.
