Madness Information Service Online Newsletter Issue Number: 932 – Sunday 19th March to Saturday 25th March 2017
We begin this week’s issue with news of yet another addition to the ever-growing 2017 tour calendar.
Taking place on the 25th to the 27th August, at Alex James’ Farm is the increasingly popular Big Feastival, an event which aims to embrace the joys of food and music into one three day festival.
The exciting news is that Madness have just been added to the line-up, and will be headlining Sunday 27th. For more information go to http://uk.thebigfeastival.com
Moving on, and earlier today the band appeared on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show. For those of you who may not have stumbled upon the programme, it’s a politics show, and this week Madness played “Another Version of me” as the end credits rolled.
It was certainly an “interesting” performance, and you can read what others thought of it before catching it yourself elsewhere in this issue.
This week, we also bring you news of a number of new Madness remixes and feature an exclusive short interview with The Dance Brigade’s Keith Finch.
Along with that little lot we’ve got the latest listing of all forthcoming Madness and Madness related gigs in “Showtimes”, and much more besides.
So, without further ado, let’s get this issue of the starting blocks.
Enjoy the read!
Jon Young, Rob Hazelby, Simon Roberts, Paul Williams
SHOWTIMES
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.
Madness
April 2017 – The Overseas Leg
Monday 3rd – Ex Theatre, Tokyo, Japan
Thursday 6th – Hong Kong, China, Rugby Seven’s Opening Concert.
Monday 10th – Fremantle Arts Centre, Perth, Australia ** Sold Out **
Tuesday 11th – Fremantle Arts Centre, Perth, Australia
Thursday 13th – Festival Hall, Melbourne, Australia
Saturday 15th – Hordern Pavillion, Sydney, Australia
Sunday 16th – Byron Bay, Australia http://www.bluesfest.com.au/schedule/detail.aspx?ArtistID=873
May 2017 – Back in the UK
Friday 19th – Wirral Live, Tranmere Rovers stadium, Birkenhead
Sunday 28th – Bearded Theory Spring Gathering, (Pallet stage headline), Derbyshire
http://www.beardedtheory.co.uk/
June 2017 – The Cornish Leg
Friday 16th – Eden Sessions, Eden Project, St. Austell, Cornwall ** SOLD OUT **
http://www.edensessions.com/lineup/madness/
July 2017
Saturday 29th July, Camp Bestival – Headliners
August 2017
Thursday 3rd – Scarborough Open Air Theatre
http://www.scarboroughopenairtheatre.com/
Friday 4th – Falkirk Football Stadium
http://www.falkirkfc.co.uk/madness-in-falkirk/
Saturday 5th – Lytham Festival, Lancashire
https://www.lythamfestival.com/events/madness/
Saturday 12th – Kent County Showground
https://www.skiddle.com/whats-on/Maidstone/The-Kent-County-Showground/Madness-in-Kent/12902396/
Friday 18th – Hardwick Hall
http://www.hardwicklive.co.uk/madness-live/
Saturday 19th – V Festival, Hylands Park
Sunday 20th – V Festival, Weston Park
Friday 25th – Portsmouth – Victorious Festival Opening Party
https://www.victoriousfestival.co.uk/buy-tickets/
Sunday 27th – The Big Feastival, Alex James’ Farm – Headliners ** New ** More info at: http://uk.thebigfeastival.com
Monday 28th – House of Common, Clapham ** Tickets now on sale! ** More info here: http://www.madness.co.uk/houseofcommon/
November 2017
17th – 20th November – The House of Fun Weekender – Minehead
Suggs – My Life Story – Australian Performances
Thursday 20th April – Enmore Theatre, Sydney
Saturday 22nd April – Astor Theatre, Perth
Monday 24th April – Comedy Theatre, Melbourne
The Silencerz
Saturday 1st April – The Bull Theatre
Friday 23rd June – Mill Hill Festival
Saturday 22nd July – The 100 Club. Featuring Lee Thompson with support from The Skapones and MIS DJs
CLANG
Friday 14th April (Good Friday Bank Holiday) – The Islington, London
Voice of the Beehive
Saturday October 7th, Indie Daze. All Dayer from 1pm. Kentish Town Forum. NW5 London
http://louderthanwar.com/shop/tickets-2/indie-daze-4-festival/
Near Jazz Experience
Tuesday 14th March – The NJE + Support + DJ @The Indo 133 Whitechapel Rd, London E1 1DT – 8.30pm, free entry
BUY IT
Madness – New Album – You Can’t Touch Us Now
** Out Now! **
16 Track CD, 12 Track Vinyl
Don’t Let Them Catch You Crying – Remixes
Three new dub remixes of the track “Don’t Let Them Catch You Crying”, from the current album, are now available.
Leo Zero, the London based remixer and producer, has created the new mixes. You can buy them from Madness artist pages on iTunes and Amazon, and many other music sites. They can also be streamed through Spotify.
The mixes are the “Leo Zero remix” and his “Tufnel Parkas” mix, available both as a dub and full instrumental versions.
The former samples “Rocksteady beat” from the start of The Prince before riffing on the title song. The latter mixes make atmospheric use of the backing vocal stems and there is much looping of the guitar stabs on the tracks.
It’s perhaps fitting that Leo Zero has previously worked with Bryan Ferry, as this particular Madness track from the Can’t Touch us now LP is the most dance music based track from the latest batch of Madness and so suited to elongated 12″ length instrumental musings. Certainly more so than some others. Even if these remixes won’t dazzle the general fan, they are a nice experiment that highlight in stripped down parts, some of the elements that go towards the finished Madness song on the album.
We feel a dubplate coming on.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B06XPQSD2K/ref=dm_ws_sp_ps_dp
Jonathan Young. Our thanks also go to Mark Doherty for a heads-up.
SIGN OF THE TIMES
It’s always nice to see our favourite band in the press, so below are just a few of the articles featuring Madness that have appeared over the past few weeks…
A Marred Performance of “Another Version of me”
The band (minus Chris) appeared on the Andrew Marr show which was aired at 9am this Sunday Morning. Yes, while mostly a politics talk show, he does have musical guests on, and Mr. Marr introduced the band to play out the show, linking the theme of “Another version of Me” to Tony Blair’s attempts to reinvent himself.
Amusingly this early Sunday show will be repeated on the BBC Parliament channel. How’s that for a House of Common plug!
Early mornings clearly don’t agree with our favourite pop stars though, as sunglasses hid the tiredness, (some assume St. Patrick’s weekend hangover), and overall a weird subdued mood through miffed half smiles emanated from the television screens on the main BBC channel. This was punctuated by a mock walk off mid song by Suggs, which was clapped at the end one handedly by a grateful Mr Marr hitting a table in delight.
The song video on twitter:
https://twitter.com/MarrShow/status/843402394218053632
The episode on iPlayer:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08kg6bp
YouTube Footage (thanks to Adam Nichols):
Reaction online to the performance was predominately critical. (Though my dad likes the song!)
Tony Stratton: “I’ve just seen it. I love the studio version but for me it lacked pzazz. Don’t get me wrong the song is great but it just seemed a bit flat.” (All Things Madness facebook group comment)
Tommy Coyne: “Like a bog-awful pub band” (Marr show twitter comment)
Rich: “I don’t think Suggs could hear himself, Unfortunately we all had to. Dismal” (Marr show twitter comment)
Greer grant: “Another Version of Madness more like. Can we have the old one back please?” (Marr Show twitter comment)
Andy Clynch: “Quite possibly the worst live performance I’ve ever seen on British TV. And I’m a Madness fan”
Liz Langton: “Love Madness but oh my god that performance made me cringe.” (Mad Chat facebook group comment)
Clare Marshall “I loved Thommo’s ‘I’d rather be in bed’ face, Lol” (All Things Madness Facebook group comment)
Sam Bartman: “Madness on the Marr show. Re-defining tone deaf.” (Twitter comment)
Sam64: “Blair on Osborne moonlightling at the Evening Standard: ‘he’s a very capable guy, good luck to him’. As out of tune as Madness” (Twitter comment)
Emily Richard: “Rough! Saxophonist looked like he was gonna vom. Suggs looked and sounded off his face.” (Twitter comment)
Bazayer: “When did Suggs turn into Leonard Cohen ?!” (Twitter comment)
Steve Jackson: “Not a good tune anyway, god awful flat performance not good at all” (All things Madness facebook group comment)
Neil Kelly: “Still better than every mimed TOTP performance. I can listen to the record anytime. I like it when they play live.” (All things Madness Facebook group comment)
Jonathan Young (with footage from Adam Nichols)
MIS FEATURE – LEGS 11 A SIDE
This week we bring you news from The Dance Brigade’s one and only Keith Finch. Here he is detailing further work with a certain Lee Thomoson
Here’s Keith …
“I know you think Lee is a’ band tart’ and he’s at it again. I’m living in Moraira/Spain, and last summer Lee came down to visit me as I’m twenty minutes up the coast from Benidorm, and they were filming the TV show down there.
He came for an overnight stay and left a week later. I’ve set up a mobile studio down here, and we finished off this track for the walking football team I play for.
I’m finishing off a few projects including some recordings I made with Rico Rodriguez, shortly before he passed away, and the Dance Brigade [ten years old now, and nearly finished school] amongst others.
This is the video my son shot, featuring the music we put together….
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsqoBkpx6BocD_RMs58FP-Q“
We noticed that it was a new version of a track we know to be called Leg’s 11. That appeared on a Jam down compilation CD/Download previously released by Keith’s record company.
“Very impressed that you spotted that. ‘Legs eleven’ sort of disappeared so we brought it back and Lee added some sax. [Not sure if he remembers!] I’d better send it to him! The track always had a sort of ‘marching/football’ flavour so I thought it would be natural to change the title and track a tad, and give it to my son Charlie when he video’d our WMF team last summer. Shame Lee wasn’t in it really.
Keith Finch”
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 671 – Sunday 18th March – Saturday 24th March 2012
This week we kicked things of with a sizeable article from the Mexican MIS team who were gearing up for their first ever Mad Meet which was due to talk place the following weekend.
Organiser, Sunday Munoz, had pulled together gig info, links and even details of how you could win one of 10 tickets to the festival the band were due to appear at. What a gent!
Moving on, and this week videos on the Mad tube showed the band in the studio working on the song “My Girl II”. We also reported that the producer would be Owen Morris. This man was most famous for producing early Oasis albums. Indeed, the seminal Britpop album “Whats’ the story, Morning Glory” was his first full album in the producer’s role, and he even appeared on the front cover!
He’s also responsible for The Verve’s “A Northern Soul” album. More recently he’d been working with The Kaiser Chiefs and producing new band The Towns.
Elsewhere this issue we reported that Loughborough’s award-winning local drama group, The ESNA Players would be pulling out all the stops to entertain you this coming April when they presented the their take on the Our House stage show.
Our House was due to be performed at Loughborough Town Hall between 17 – 21 April 2012.
It was over to lyrics next as we featured a transcription of the new Madness track “Misery”, which had been aired at recent gigs.
We brought this issue to a close with the news that Big Wheel magazine were currently running a competition for you to win tickets to see Madness at Club Nokia on the 16th April in Los Angeles.
10 years ago…
Issue number 411 – Sunday 18th March to Saturday 24th March 2007
This issue kicked off with the news that after reaching number 23 in the UK single charts with “Sorry”, a new maxi CD would be released in Germany on the 30th of March.
The track-listing was as follows:
- NW5 [I WOULD GIVE YOU EVERYTHING]-RADIO EDIT
- IT MUST BE LOVE [WIXX-MIXX 2007]-ALBUM VERSION
- NW5 [I WOULD GIVE YOU EVERYTHING]-ALBUM VERSION
- NW5 [I WOULD GIVE YOU EVERYTHING] – LIVE @ WEMBLEY 12/06
- IT MUST BE LOVE [2007] CD-ROM VIDEO
- NW5 [I WOULD GIVE YOU EVERYTHING] CD–ROM VIDEO
- MAKING OF NW5 [I WOULD GIVE YOU EVERYTHING] CD-ROM VIDEO
Meanwhile, over in France the 19th March would see Madness appear on no less than three different releases:
– “Nous sommes jeunes, nous sommes fiers” (Sony BMG) with Elvis Presley, The Smiths, The Libertines, Madness with Mummy’s Boy”
– “Top 50” the best hits from the 80’s (3 cd boxset) with UB40, Indochine, Madness “Our House” etc…
– “Printemps de Bourges, sampler for the 30th birthday of the famous French based music Festival. featuring Madness with “Uncle Sam”. (Not a sampler featuring live acts from the festival, but just studio recordings, so no unreleased tracks / versions)
On to the articles, and these began with an interview Suggs gave to the Sun, where he discussed being voted number 1 for the top 5 caners (drinkers).
Suggs commented;
“For me it’s still 1979 and I’m 18-years-old – and I carry on like that”
It was on to more serious matters next, as we reported that watchdogs were investigating Virgin FM, who had told listeners to phoned a seemingly live request show, which was actually recorded.
Virgin admitted it had recorded some of Suggs’s shows but said all requests were used eventually.
Next, we moved on to Bestival. Why? Well, in a number of recent interviews there had been mention of Madness playing at the event, but not official confirmation from the festival organisers.
While we were waiting for official confirmation, we decided to look at the other bands who were already confirmed, as you may have felt it was worth getting tickets for even if Madness didn’t appear.
We rounded off this issue with more coverage surrounding the recent phone scam fiasco, and then reported on what was going on in the world of Madness five years ago this week.
Later in the week we sent out a special one off edition of the MIS as it had just been announced that Madness had been booked to play at Newmarket Racecourse on Friday 20th July. Tickets were now on sale, and prices ranged from £12 to £32 per person.
15 years ago…
Issue number 149 – Sunday 17th March to Saturday 23rd March 2002
Our first article this week came in from Brendan Phipps of Madness tribute outfit, One Step Behind. Brendan kindly emailed the MIS, and revealed how back in 1998 they were billed (without their knowledge) by the gig promoter as ‘Madness’.
The whole event turned very nasty, and the band ended up retiring from the stage after 4 songs due to fears for their own safety.
Brendan finished the article off with;
“We are possibly booked to appear on Sat 28th Sept in Hardenberg – if you get offered tickets, we are definitely NOT MADNESS!!”
Elsewhere in the issue, and following the article in last week’s MIS Online concerning a proposal by John Thorpe who was considering putting together a new and up-to-date book featuring the lads, John got back in touch.
In an effort to gauge the demand for this possible forthcoming publication John asked MIS subscribers to email him with messages stating support if they’d like the book to appear or lack of support if they thought the book should be knocked on the head.
With the launch of the BBC’s new radio station, 6Music, Suggs was brought in to stage a regular Saturday lunchtime slot, entitled ‘Lunch With Suggs’.
From the 6Music website, the show was billed as follows:
“The original and definitive nutty boy brings a pile of tasty ska and reggae tunes to 6 Music every Saturday lunchtime; but this is your show – Email us with what you want to hear – ska or otherwise. Each week Suggs features a CLASSIC LABEL putting the likes of Trojan, Go-Discs and Blue-Beat under the spotlight. And in TEENAGE KICKS you can pick 3 rebellious songs from any musical era.”
In the 1st show the classic label was Stiff records, with Ian Dury, Wreckless Eric and Elvis Costello getting a play.
Continuing with the Stiff theme MIS subscriber, Konrad, contacted us with details of a forthcoming Stiff Records compilation that was nearing completion.
Weighing in at a not-to-be-sniffed-at 25 tracks, the album featured covers of such classics as Baggy Trousers, One Step Beyond, and Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick.
Rob Hazelby
DANCE CRAZE SCREENINGS
Two exclusive screenings of 2Tone’s legendary film at The London International Ska Festival 2017
13 April – Prince Charles cinema, Leicester Sq
Screened from film cinematographer Joe Dunton’s own 70mm copy!
16 April – Islington Assembly Hall (gig screening)
+ Rhoda Dakar, Phoenix City All-stars (Dexys set), The Equators and more tba!
Tickets selling fast at www.buytickets.at/hotshotscorcher
THAT FACEBOOOK / TWEETS OF A DOVE
Mark Bedford @I_be_MarkB
“Jazz Ah Um. My playlist from my mxlr radio sessions.
https://open.spotify.com/user/fredbroad/playlist/6NQDx1HWi1E8Y2OO8tquOk”
TIME…
That’s almost it for this week, but before we go we’d like to point you in the direction of the French MIS web site as the team across the Channel have featured a recent interview with a certain Mike Barson.
Check it out by going to: http://newsdufrenchmis.blogspot.co.uk/
Moving on, and if you’re a regular user of the BBC Radio iPlayer you may be interested to learn that the last in the current series of David Rodigan’s Ska, Rocksteady and Reggae show aired last Monday.
It’s a favourite of ours in the MIS office, combining a selection of great tunes with snippets of trivia sprinkled throughout.
A number of previously aired episodes can still be found at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012rw60/episodes/player
David tells us that a new series will commence in the summer.
Finally, if you like great music then please check out the following two shows from the one and only Craig Charles. His regular House Party, combining seven decades of funk and soul tunes can be found at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b076bt50, while his ever popular Funk and Soul Show can be found at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0072ky7
Get listening!
Until next week, take care,
Jon Young, Rob Hazelby, Simon Roberts, Paul Williams
(With thanks to Mark Doherty, Adam Nichols and Keith Finch)
The Author
