We begin this issue of the MIS with a brief round-up of chart news.
On Friday there were two goals to celebrate. First-up, and the new Specials album “Encore” landed the coveted number one slot in the UK album charts, while on a more Madness related note, North London’s finest saw their “Full House, The Very Best of” compilation go silver with a very respectable 60,000 sales.
Our congratulations go to both bands who have had a very good end to last week indeed. Thanks go to Paul Rodgers who was kind enough to send in the Full House news.
On to this week’s issue, and it’s a bit of a lean one. There’s very little to report at the moment, and the only advice we can offer is to get your pre-orders in for the forthcoming Madness book “Before We Was We”, due out in September, and if there’s an announced gig you’ve yet to buy tickets to, to pull your finger our and get those tickets ordered.
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.
24 – 26th – Tunes in the Dunes, Peranporth Beach, Cornwall. (Madness appear on the Sunday.)
June
7th – Market Rasen, Lincolnshire
8th — Chepstow racecourse
9th – Carlisle, Bits Park
15th – Kenworth House, Hampstead. This Massive North London home coming gig for Madness XL features a full scale orchestra with the band.
16th – June – Isle of Wight Festival
21st – New Market Racecourse
22nd – Lingfield Park
28th -Franklin Gardens, Northampton
29th – Newcastle Racecourse plate day
July
5th – Port America, Galicia, Spain
6th – Vida Festival, Barcelona, Spain
12th- Taunton, Vivary Park
20th – Doncaster Racecourse
24th – Sanddown Racecourse
August
17th – Newbury Racecourse
18th – Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh
20th – Belfast Custom Square
23rd – Inverness
24th – Montrose – East Links
26th – Clapham Common, XL South London festival. With “Special” Guests.
30th – Wolverhampton
November
Friday 29th – Monday 2nd December – House of Fun Weekender 2019
Buy It
Before We Was We: The Making of Madness by Madness
The idea is a simple one, that came to us one evening back in July.
Bands as Football Teams, Football Teams as Bands.
We now have over 400 badges, working with friends and guest designers, setting up an exhibition at The National Football Museum in Manchester https://bandsfc.com/”
Bands FC have given a large number of badges to the band to give away on the Sound of Madness tour. So, if you’re buying something before or after one of the gigs don’t forget to pick up your free badge.
New Arrivals at The Madstore
If you missed the House Of Fun or you need another fix get your hands on the event range NOW at The MAD STORE with 20% OFF whilst stocks last!
NEW STOCK JUST LANDED!
2018 Christmas Sweaters, track jackets, polos, fez hats, tea towels, badge sets, dekker hats, beanie hats the list goes on….!
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.
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: 770 – Sunday 9th February to Saturday 15th February 2014
Following our mention of Dr Martin’s Boots and Peter Capaldi’s costume for Doctor Who, which was unveiled last week, we could now mention that the Loakes brand of boot were bought by Mr Capaldi himself. And where from? None other than The British British Boot company in Camden Town
The British Boot Company were formerly Holts Shoe Shop and originally featured in the Complete Madness video album compilation. This was the very place where band watched themselves upstairs on TV, when they appeared on Top of The Pops for the first time.
We were pretty certain the incoming Doctor would surely kick some ass come the new series.
Moving straight into our regular “Showtimes” section, and this week we adde two new July dates to Madness’ 2014 line up; The Normandie au Festival Beauregard on the 5th July and the Theatre Jean Deschampes, Carcassonne on the 29th.
Our MIS feature this week looked at “The Nutty Bar”. While this was one of the many places on Facebook to hang out and talk Madness, the difference here was that this article was about a bar opening this coming spring in Marbella on the Costa Del Sol.
We briefly went off topic and included the dates for the 2014 English Beat UK tour in 2014. While this had nothing to do with Madness we were certain that a number of you may have been interested in the heads-up.
Over in “Sign of the Times” Tony Bugbear pointed us in the direction of an excellent podcast featuring Woody, The Magic Brothers and Specialised on Shoreditch Radio. The greatest reveal from Woody in a fun interview related to his 70’s musical tastes and the news that as his mum worked for the BBC he often looked after Play School’s Big Ted and Little Ted!!!!
10 years ago…
Issue 510 – Sunday 8th February to Saturday 14th February 2009
The weather in the UK may had been pretty darned awful over the past seven days, but in between digging our cars out of the snow and hibernating we’d been busy putting this issue together for you.
This week we found out how Suggs and a host of other stars had been doing their bit for a much needed fundraising cause to help a boy with an inoperable brain tumour to get to America for an experimental procedure that had been showing positive results.
The event was a black tie dinner dance organized to raise £50,000 to fund life-saving treatment. The exclusive event was organsied by parents at the Coldfall Primary Shool, Muswell Hill, and feaured special guests including Bob Hoskins, Les Dennis, Tim Minchin, Suggs and Pink Floyd legend Dave Gilmour.
Elsewhere in the issue we reported that Chrissy Boy had been answering another round of questions over on the Madness Central Forum, the temporary home for his “cupboard” while the official Madness web site was under construction.
Chris brought up the topic of how to handle the forthcoming M Society, and also asked for advice and feedback from the fans on a number of different subjects.
Taking over Dermot O’Leary’s Saturday evening Radio Show while he was off on his holidays was one Zoe Ball. We reported that Zoe had been on the phone to Suggs during the show, and that you could catch up with the episode on the iPlayer should you wish. If you didn’t, we had the full transcript of the call for you to read through.
On to gig news, and we announced that two European dates in Denmark and Sweden that had previously been announced, had now been officially confirmed. Not only that, but tickets had gone on sale to the general public.
We brought this issue to a close by pointing you in the direction of the Madness Central RSS feed. If you wanted to keep up to date on Madness news items you were advised to get this added to your bookmarks.
15 years ago…
Issue 248 – Sunday 8th February to Saturday 14th February 2004
News seemed to be thin on the ground once again, but somehow bits and pieces had been trickling in over the week, and before we knew it we had enough material to make the issue quite a lengthy one.
It’d been a long time coming, but the first update to the MIS site of the year was huge. Back in issue 228 Jonathan had complied and published a huge lowdown of all the current live Madness and Madness related fansites, and it was this list that was finally brought into the MIS site as definitive list of nutty web sites.
Elsewhere in this issue we had part 3 of Jermaine’s `Tour Madness` excerpts from the Christmas 2003 tour. As with the previous two parts, this should have helped to bring back memories of those very eventful evenings.
“Have you met members of the band and were lucky enough to get a photo or two taken with them?”. That was the question we were asking this week as we investigated the possibility of putting together a new section on the MIS web site where fans could upload their nutty shots.
With the lack of news Jonathan decided to type up two cracking articles from issues 13 and 14 of the original MIS Newsletters. Both covered Lee Thompson and The Argonauts, and the recording of Apeman and Under my Thumb.
One of the highlights (for all the wrong reasons) of the issue was a truly terrible review of the ‘Madness Singles Box Set Part 1’ from the NME. Giving it a shocking score of 4 out of 10, and accompanied with a number of glaring errors, it really was a demonstration to us all of just how bad journalism in the NME had become.
We finished off this issue with news in from that loveable toe-rag, Lee Swandale, who had emailed in to let us know of a forthcoming Two Tone do. The event would be held in Camden’s famous `Electric Ballroom` on Thursday 11th March 2004, but that was all the information he had.
Rob Hazelby
Sign of the Times
Five Minutes With Mark Bedford
You’ve been on the edge of your seats, worrying when the next one was going to go live… Ladeez and gennelmen, may I present to you Five Minutes With… Mark Bedford from Madness! Enjoy!
