The US leg of Madness’ touring stint may be some months off, but that doesn’t mean fan preparations are’t already underway.
If you’re planning to see Madness while they’re Stateside then you’ll want to check out the MIS Feature in this very issue. It’s a long awaited tour, and several members of the US fanbase have stepped forward to make sure the rest of you attending the gigs have all the information you need as the dates get closer.
Also this week, Madness announced yet another UK date. The band are now due to appear at Tramlines, Sheffield on Sunday 2nd August. Support comes in the form of The Hives, The Fratellis, Sister Sledge and many more. Our thanks go to subscriber Paul McWatt for the heads-up.
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.
16th – The Courtyard, Herefordshire’s Centre for the Arts
17th – Bristol, Royal Redgrave Theatre
19th – Exeter, Corn Exchange
20th – Westlands, Yeovil
21st – Aldershot, Princes Hall
22nd – Hertford Theatre
23rd – Forum Theatre (Malvern Theatres)
24th – Warrington, Pyramind and Parr Hall
25th – Lythan St. Annes, Lowther Pavilion
27th – Hexham, Queens Hall Arts Centre
28th – Dundee Rep Theatrre
29th – Aberdeen Music Hall
30th – Edinburgh, The Queen’s Hall
Buy It
New Single by the JoJo Man Band
The band’s single ‘plastic’ is out now. Nick Woodgate and the rest of the group would dearly love as many people as possible to follow and stream the band on Spotify. If you’re not on Spotify they’re on every other digital platform.
Tim Maple, Accy Yeats and Nick appear on the recording.
The JoJo Man Band has had a great response on social media and are on Twitter, FB page, Instagram. You can find the links on the JoJo Man Band website. Please follow.
Roundhouse Merch now in Stock at the Official Madness Store
A very nice T-Shirt and Roundhouse poster could be yours if you pop over to the official Madness online store and place your order. While you’re there, check out the Electric Ballroom poster, too!
This week, MIS co-editor Rob Hazelby goes back in time to report on what was going on in the world of Madness 5, 10, 15 and 20 years ago this week.
5 years ago…
Issue Number 822 – Sunday 8th February to Saturday 14th February 2015
Full details of the much discussed Grandslam were nearly ready to roll out, with Madness this week posting a lovely picture of an Air Fix style model kit. It depicted a horse race track next to Fort Knox (the “Operation Grandslam” phrase coming from Goldfinger), with a big Madness M on the building, a sports car on the drive way, next to some cricketers on the boundaries who were taking over part of a large rugby playing field, with some deck chaired fans looking on.
With recent online rumours champing at the bit from Haydock, Chelmsford, Newmarket or Epsom and more horse fun venues, it looked like there would be plenty of race meet action this summer, and more gigs further afield than that, too.
On to this week’s issue, and you would have noticed that it took us up to Saturday 14th and Valentines day. On that day we were holding a mad meet across two London Venues. From 1pm we’d be at The Legendary Dublin Castle, Camden, where we’d be lending a hand to the reunion of John Hasler & The Skiff Skats. We urged you to join us for the lowdown hoe down.
Following that, from about 6pm, we were planning to start heading down the Northern Line, to Colindale and to The Chandos arms for The Silencerz. The fun would start from 8pm. Jonathan & Daren West from MIS would be there, along with Crunch man Swanny. Alan, Maria and Clare from the All Things Madness Facebook page would also be around.
Over in Sign of the Times Lee spoke to The Barnet and Hendon times where he revealed his top five love songs as well as talking a bit about Valentine’s Day. His favourite was Wake Up (& Make Love To Me) by Ian Dury and The Blockheads.
We brought this issue to a close by wishing everyone a good week and for those attending next Saturday’s Mad Meets, we’d see them on the Saturday.
10 years ago…
Issue Number 562 – Sunday 7th February – Saturday 13th February 2010
With news being rather thin on the ground this week we kicked things off with an apology for sending out such a lean issue.
On to the articles, and we reported that Retro Madness had managed to obtain a limited supply of the paperback edition of the “Suggs and The City” book – 5 months before it was due to be published!
The hardback edition was now out of print and no longer available at any stores of Waterstones up and down the UK. The paperback edition was due to hit store shelves around mid June.
The paperback edition was due to be priced by retailers at £14.99, and Retro Madness would be making it available at that price or the next two weeks.
Further in to this issue we passed on the news from worldscreen.com, who reported that Suggs and comedian Brian Pern were working on a cover of Ah-Ha’s 1987 hit “The Living Daylights”, which was due to be released in April.
We weren’t 100% convinced this report was totally accurate or true, but we promised to report back should be hear anything further.
On to gig news, and Jonathan passed on news detailing a possible performance by Madness at the B1 Maximum Arena, Russia, on the 28th April. Jonathan advised readers to be a little cautious on this one, as there was currently no mention of it on the official Madness web site.
15 years ago…
Issue number 300 – Sunday 6th February to Saturday 12th February 2005
This week we celebrated our achievement at reaching issue number 300. Those of you subscribed for any length of time would probably have been aware that it was actually issue 299, as due to a numbering problem way, way back, an issue number was accidentally skipped.
More exciting news followed, with the announcement that after many months the new all-singing, all-dancing MIS web site was now up and running. MIS webmaster, Simon Roberts, had performed a fantastic job, meaning the wait was certainly worthwhile.
On to the articles, and this issue we started-off with a lowdown on the new and improved MIS web site, where we explained what was new, what had been enhanced, and what had been removed. The biggest addition to the site was the massive file archive where you could download or stream a huge selection of non commercial Madness videos and TV appearances.
Moving on, and the next article gave the heads-up that four new songs had been added to the Smash Jukebox over on the Chas Smash.com web site.
The four new songs were:
– Viva Londinium
– Hoodle La La
– Why be Brutal
– The Wizard
All songs were given the in-depth treatment by the one and only Jonathan Young.
This issue Jonathan Young also took a look at gnod.net, gnoosic.com and music-map.com – three web sites set up with the aim of finding you music of a similar genre to that of what you already listen to.
Most of the music that the sites selected seemed fairly obvious, but we’re still baffled at music-map’s suggestion that we might like Sophie Ellis-Bextor following our keying-in of Madness.
We finished-off this issue with a reminder that on Sunday 13th Feb Mr. Chas Smash, along with Jerry Dammers, Mark Lammar, Ian Broudie and Chris Rowley would be attending a benefit gig at Cargo, in aid of the Tsunami disaster.
20 years ago…
Issue number 38 – Sunday 6th February to Saturday 12th February 2000
The biggest news this week had to be that Virgin were planning to re-release an updated version of the 1992 singles album, `Divine Madness` featuring digitally re-mastered tracks and new sleeve artwork. We felt that whilst it would be nice to have these re-mastered tracks, we couldn’t help thinking that Virgin would have been better off spending their money elsewhere rather than regurgitating old material in an effort to squeeze more money out of the die-hard fans who would buy any new release just to add it to their collection.
How about putting together `Divine Madness` on DVD with digitally re-mastered video and sound? Make use of that extra storage space with interviews, lyrics, and out-takes. Perhaps if Virgin were feeling particularly generous, they could have actually helped the lads out and have given them some promotion for their forthcoming single. Had no one at Virgin realised that the reason `Johnny The Horse` and `Wonderful` did so poorly was because only the online Madness community knew they were released!!
With the prospect of a new Madness single being released, fans were expecting a promo to be doing the rounds a few weeks before the official single release of ‘Drip Fed Fred’. The fanbase would not be disappointed, as Nuttyboys.com reported that a test pressing and promo single were now doing the rounds.
As the release of the next single was now just around the corner, the band were cranking up the promotional bandwagon, and had the following appearances booked in for the rest of month:
February 9 Madrid – Musica Si TV (Johnny The Horse)
February 10 Madrid TVE 1 JTH Live Midnight
February 11th BBC Radio 3 @ 7pm (?) 30 mins live, 4 new songs, 2 old
February 18th TFI Friday Drip Fed Fred
February 19th CD:UK (to be confirmed)
February 25th Suggs – A Question Of Pop
And finally, the release date for `Drip Fed Fred` had been altered by Virgin Records. If all went to plan, DFF should see the light of day on Monday 28th February. Apparently the delay was due to Virgin deciding to actually promote this single. Our fingers were crossed in the hope that it would get the chart position it deserved.
Onto this weeks’ edition of the bulletin and we had a brief review of Nutty Sounds 1 and 2 from Nahuel Foppoli, details from Virgin regarding the re-vamped release of `Divine Madness` due to hit the record stores sometime in March, fanzine information from Juliet `Ska-Mad`, Suggs chatting about Ian Dury and The Blockheads, details of the current stock of Madness goodies for sale on the Music Capital website, and a review of the recent `events` that took place during the airing of `Drip Fed Fred` on the BBC’s `National Lottery Show`.
Rob Hazelby
MIS Feature
Stateside Madness
Hello American Fans. There is now a new online service just for you!
Stateside Madness has launched, run by and for North American Madness Fans.
Joining the family of sites, that includes the UK based MIS and equally long running French and Mexican based co-partners, now comes a new cousin or should that be our uncle, Sam.
The new Stateside service is run by Poly Collins, Laurie Alfaro, Donald Trull & Bobby Rubin, with input from John Thrippelton and Joe Schipsi. All are based in various locations within The United States. Between them they have the experience of previous working on fandom projects such as The Lard Biscuit, The English Beat fandom, Mad Chat, as well as longer term previous contributions to MIS UK Projects.
SSM’s fresh new perspective can be found on their blog website here… Curated by Donald
“The SSM blog website at statesidemadness.com will present an American perspective on Madness fandom. Blog editor D. Trull will offer his personal memories and experiences in more detail than a tweet of Facebook status permits, and he’ll be curating various articles and curiosities regarding the band’s visits to and interactions with the Yanks.
We’ll present a special series from Jon Young on Madness’s biggest US hit, and a feature from Seven Ragged Men on their unlikely 1979 US tour.
All American Madness fans will have an open invitation to guest-blog or send in ideas. Plus we’ll have SSM survey pieces about misunderstood lyrics and British slang lost in translation, and asking why on earth so many UK fans fly across the pond to see US shows.
This will be a fun blog, so please check it out!” D.Trull
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The service runs interactive under a set of smart logos across social media managed by the rest of the team here…
“We’ve set up Stateside Madness in association with MIS to celebrate the return of our favourite band to the US later this year. We hope to provide a forum for Madness fans to share thoughts, stories and all things Madness in an upbeat and inclusive environment. The excitement around the announcement of the US shows is shared by the Stateside Madness team and all of the new Mad friends we’ve made with this new project. Check out the site, page and group. Ask to join. Stay posted. Many great things to come.” Poly Collins
The facebook group is only for US based fans, aside from a few MIS contributors. This is because basically with Mad Chat, All Things Madness, The Invaders, The unofficial Madness Fan Club, Madness, Absolute Madness, Complete Madness, The Madness, Individual bands members, Bootlegs and French and Dutch groups etc, there is never any shortage of places to chat about Madness with global or diverse reaches. So tell your American friends to give it a look.
There will be exclusive event based news, following a US targeted Madness album and a series of live US dates already announced.
Jonathan Young
Time
That’s almost it for this week’s issue of the MIS. Before we go we just wanted to pass on the following from subscriber Beverley Kinsella.
Beverley tells us that there will be a run of Our House the Musical performances at the Athenaeum Theatre in Plymouth from the 19th to 21st March. She also says that her son is playing Reecey in the production.
And finally, it would seem that work is progressing well on the forthcoming Lee Thompson autobiography. Here’s Ian Snowball’s latest Facebook update by…
“Doing an edit on the Lee Thompson autobiography prior to submitting it to Omnibus publishers ( due out Sept), and must say it really is an enjoyable read. Lee’s certainly had an interesting life and is a colourful character.
Loads of London history, youth cults, music and of course the history of the formation of Madness. You’d be nutty not to grab yourself a copy”.
Naturally, should further news surface regarding the release of the book we’ll be sure to let you know.
