Hello and a warm welcome to this weeks’ edition of the MIS Online Bulletin.
We begin this issue with a heads-up as at 5:35pm on Saturday 14th November Lee Thompson and Pauline Black will be appearing on BBC1’s quiz show “Pointless”.
Next, and if you’re a member the “Completist Madness” Facebook group as we are you will have spotted this week’s posts from Chris Carter-Pegg who purchased a real haul from a previous Dial a Style employee. Dial a Style produced the official band badges between 1981 and 1984.
For the purchase price of £5,000 Chris acquired 9 of the original Dial a Style dies and cutting tool sets plus approximately 200 prototype badges.
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.
This album was previously available as a pop-up 4 disc gatefold LP priced at around £50. The 4-disc release is now sold out on vinyl.
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, 10, 15 and 20 years ago this week.
5 years ago…
Issue Number 861 – Sunday 8th November to Saturday 14th November 2015
It was nearly time for this years’ House of Fun to take place and the big item of news was that Madness had launched a free House of Fun app to get you primed and ready.
Available for both iOS and Android platforms the app would allow you to view bios and photos for the various acts appearing over the course of the weekend plus timings for all the performances.
If you were rather more oldskool we were kind enough to include all the performance times in this issue of the MIS for you to print off and take with you to the Minehead weekend.
Over in our regular “Buy it” section we reported on a new Madness craft beer set. This gift pack included a mix of two bottles; Gladness Craft Lager and Lovestruck Premium Ale plus a Madness Brewing Co. Pint Glass. With Christmas coming up this we’re certain this would have been opened by many a Madness fan on the big day.
Next, it was on to “Live Intensified” and this week we had a review of Rhoda Dakar’s recent performance at the Camden Jazz Cafe courtesy of subscriber Stav. Stav told us the set weighed in at a very respectable 15 songs
Stav finished off his review by saying;
“There was a very Special guest in attendance in the shape of Lynval Golding from The Specials. What a great suprise that was. He played on the last four songs and there was a very emotional tribute by Lynval to the late great Rico Ridruguez during the song Dreamland which Rhoda mentioned she sang on the track with Rico.
All in all it was a great gig in great company. Really hope Rhoda does more gigs”.
Our very own Jonathan Young followed the review with one of his own which was just as glowing as the one it followed.
Moving on to our MIS Feature and it was news from the one and only Daniel “Woody” Woodgate. Woody told us that he’d released a second single from his “In my Mind” album. Entitled “Something”, the was a remix in the style of a 12” version and was free to download from his web site. What a gent!
We brought this issue of the MIS to a close with the news that the Retro Madness team had listed a load of reduced price CDs to their web site alongside a couple of promo compact discs. If you wanted to expand your collection we were certain you’d find a few items of interest here.
10 years ago…
Issue Number -600 – Sunday 7th November – Saturday 13th November 2010
We kicked off out 600th issue of the MIS by thanking everyone who, over the years, had supported the publication, and also to those who continued to send in material for publication. We wouldn’t have been able to get to this moment without every bit of help and assistance from the Madness fan community.
Moving on, and last week we reported that author John Reed, had offered a signed copy of his recently released Madness book ‘House of Fun: The Story of Madness’.
Rather than simply ask for you to send your email addresses in to be in the running for the prize, as we’ve done in the past, we, this time, asked that along with your address you sent in a question or two for John to answer.
This requirement obviously reduced the number of entries we received, but those of you who did put together some excellent questions would see them sent over to John. We hoped the answers would appear in either issue 601 or 602, depending on how busy he was.
Freebie news next, and we reported that Madness were currently offering a FREE 4-track MP3 download of NW5, It Must be Love, House of Fun and Night Boat to Cairo, which ha been recorded during last year’s tour.
Moving on, and it was over to Declan McDermott, who emailed in to tell us that official recordings of the band’s forthcoming Christmas gigs were looking unlikely…
“I was in touch with Concert Live during the week to ask if they would be recording the up and coming Madness Christmas tour.
Their reply indicated that they would unfortunately be not doing it this time round although they would like to record them again in the future.
I then contacted Simfy Live to ask the same question and they were unsure, but said if they were they would advertise on their website.
It was then I decided to contact Hannah management and I had an email back from Mel Stephenson indicating that she was waiting for some feedback from Madness senior managers as to whether the concerts will be recorded or not”
Elsewhere, and we gave you a head-up on the forthcoming Big 10 gig, which was due to take place the the legendary Hope and Anchor on the 20th of November. The band were due on stage from 9:00pm.
Further on, and Jonathan reported that on Saturday 6th November Suggs hosted BBC Radio 5’s Danny Baker show. The blurb on the BBC web site read;
“Guest host Suggs welcomes comic Dave Gorman and Phil Brown, former Hull boss, stars in Danny’s sausage sandwich game. Callers celebrate the saxophone, homemade inventions and tales of breaking things in other people’s houses while Suggs dreams about Irish cheese in the news”
We brought this issue to a close with news from Jermaine of Tour Madness. Jermaine emailed in to tell us that the number of Madness related entries on the Dutch section of Wikipedia was continuing to grow. While they didn’t compare to the sheer number available on the English language Wikipedia a decent chunk of Nutty information was now available.
15 years ago…
Issue 340 – Sunday 6th November to Saturday 12th November 2005
During a trawling of the net earlier this week we stumbled upon an October interview with Lee and Suggs, which had been uploaded to a French Website.
It was clear, from even a bad translation version we made, that Lee and Suggs were in a typical comic mode when giving the original interview. Suggs seemed to be suggesting that the band “Madness” were parked in his garage or decomposing in his attic while they were out playing as “The Dangermen”, and he managed to sing Duran Duran’s “Wild boys” again when explaining why they had covered Reggae songs and not other bands music. This translation also seemed to state that Lee was at one point talking like Prince Charles about Camilla, and that he had joked about the Dangermen sessions being named after the song “Dangermouse” which the band had recorded but then dropped from the album.
We passed the interview onto JP of the excellent Ska News to display on his French website. We also hoped for a better translation at some point in the not too distant future, as the interview seemed to cover the recording processes used on the new album, some talk about the rise and fall album and a discussion of madness’ popularity in the wider world.
We decided against publishing the whole bad translation in this issue as most of it was rather confusingly phrased. At one point the translator suggested that Suggs currently liked the band “Dog’s Die in a Hot Bus.”
Deciding this was enough of our poor French language skills we moved on to this week’s collection of articles.
With Christmas fast approaching it would come as no surprise to many that Ska veterans Bad Manners had a full-scale Christmas tour planned. Spanning a whopping 17 dates, the tour would see them start in Great Yarmouth and finish in the seaside town of Bournemouth.
Next we passed things over to subscriber Marc Todd who disappointed with V2’s poor promotion of the Shame and Scandal single, wanted to see how keen they were to promote the next single, ‘Girl’.
Here’s what Marc had to say at the time:
“I called through to the department at V2 dedicated to this promotion and explained I was a DJ and could they send me a copy of the new single. The very polite young lady told me she was the person responsible and would get a copy in the post.
That was three weeks ago, and after a further FIVE telephone calls and FOUR Emails I finally received my copy, only after making a complaint to the Virgin Management team.
What a shambles this is and with only one format of the single being produced, no info about The Dangermen on the V2 site, and no posters or marketing material, it seems to me that those lovely people at V2 can’t be bothered”
Moving on, and it seemed as if Toshiba were planning to resurrect their “Hello Tosh” TV advert in a major new marketing push. Breaking on Monday 17 October, the new advertisement featured Toshiba’s memorable Blueprint man speaking the familiar tag line, “ello Tosh”, originally recorded by Ian Dury, and now updated by Madness singer Suggs.
Next it was re-print time as we featured a full transcription of a Madness article from The Seattle Indie Pop Press, which charted a brief history of the band from a slight US standpoint.
Elsewhere, the saga of the Dangermen picture discs continued, with an update from Birchy announcing that the second set of test pressings had passed the Jump Up Records quality control, so were due to be pressed within the next week or so.
A release date had yet to be made, so for all those who had placed their order – the wait continued.
With a number of Madness and Madness related gigs taking place over the next month we decided to give you reminders of when and where they were being staged, as well as giving details of how you could get tickets.
It’d been a few weeks since we’d last updated the MIS web site, and we were sure that you were waiting for more. Well, your patience was about to be rewarded as in this issue we announced an absolutely massive upload of new audio and video files to the site.
We finished off this week’s issue with Fred Boeuf’s lowdown on the recent Madness / Dangermen gig held at the Grand Rex Paris, on Friday 4th of November.
20 years ago…
Issue number 78 – Sunday 5th November to Saturday 11th November 2005
Following the recent news that a new Madness album, entitled `Madness – The Ultimate Collection` was about to start doing the rounds, Simon Mulvaney had been doing some sniffing around, and reported that it is was an American release which should be available in the UK on import. If you needed yet another Madness compilation album, we suggested you’d better yourselves down your local music specialist.
If you fancied meeting up with fellow Madness fans in the warm surroundings of the re-furbished Dublin Castle pub you’d probably be interested to hear that there would be a small meet-up on Saturday 18th November in the DC. The idea was to meet up for a drink and a chat before going to see a band in the evening. If you were interested, we suggested you contacted Jerney so she has some idea of who to expect.
Slightly off-topic, but it would be of interest to many of you out there; The TMML’s Andy Clayden told us that a new Bad Manners best of was due for release in a couple of weeks time. The album would be entitled, “Magnetism”.
Next it was over the ever-informative Wozza now, who reported that;
“I received an email from Terry Edwards the other day with a bit of Butterfield 8 news for anyone interested.
There will be a new album out shortly called “Ontogeny
– No fish is too weird for her aquarium vol II” and it will feature the unreleased Butterfield 8 track, which is a cover of “Thoughtforms”, a song by Lush.
Terry is having trouble with his mailing list, so try and spread the word, and buy the album :o)”
Wozza also told us that the legendary Woody had joined `Terry Edwards and The Scapegoats`.
Onto this issue now, and you could tell that the party season was fast approaching as One Step Behind recently announced their gig line-up running till the end of the year, and this issue we had gig details for Badness, Complete Madness and Los Palmas 6. There was a whole stack of dates for you all to chose from, so you should have been able to get along to at least one of the shows. If you’d not seen any of the Madness tribute bands that were currently doing the rounds, we suggested you did so – you would not be disappointed!
Elsewhere we received a heads-up from Mark Adamson, who reported that George Marshall’s much loved book ‘Total Madness’ was now available for purchase on Amazon.co.uk
There wasn’t much to add. The only thing we could say was that if you didn’t have this, to put your order in as soon as possible.
We finished off this week’s issue by reporting that Ska band Badness had finally got themselves a web site. So, being the nosey toe-rags that we were we gave the full lowdown on the site’s content.
Rob Hazelby
Sign of the Times
Video Killed the Radio Star
“Video Killed the Radio Star” is a Sky Arts channel series looking at the pop videos of bands.
Series 6 episode 9 is currently airing and it takes a half hour look at the videos of Madness.
London DJ Robert Elms is a well chosen pundit, enthusing the charms that the band bring to their nutty pop promos as he explains the depth and cultural impact of the bands’ image, visuals and songs.
Dave Robinson also appears discussing the making of the biggest hits from Baggy Trousers to arguably the biggest hits of House of Fun and Our House, the latter of which is shown in its 2012 ceremonial appearances too.
A nice little watch for cheap TV thrills it can be accessed via Sky Go, for catch up, alongside current channel repeats.
Jonathan Young
Time
We’re almost done for this weeks’ issue, but before we go we’ve got a final snippet from the one and only Nick Woodgate;
“Hello Everyone,
I’m so excited to tell you that last night I was played on BBC 6Music’s BBC Introducing Mixtape with the legend that is Tom Robinson.
