Hello, and a very warm welcome to this week’s edition of the MIS Online newsletter.

Following on from last week’s news where it was revealed that the legendary Blockheads had teamed up with the Dark Star Brewery to release their own Blockhead Ale, Rob has been in touch with his local pub to ask if they can get it in.

His local promptly responded, and have confirmed that it’s now on order. All being well he should be able to give you his thoughts on this recently released brew in time for next week’s issue.

If you get chance to try the ale for yourself please send us a review in and we’ll ensure it gets printed.

Now, enough of the beer related chat, let’s get this issue underway.

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

2015

GRANDSLAM

“Sporting theatres jumping with joy is the goal. Grandslam Madness – the greatest open air tour in the history of Rock & Roll…”

The Grandslam is now parked-up and enjoying a well-earned Summer break. The tour resumes in early September.

September

6 – Gibraltar Festival
11 – Canterbury, Kent County Cricket Club
12 – Bristol, Gloucester County Cricket Club
13 – London, On Blackheath
18 – Leeds, Yorkshire County Cricket Club
19th  Newbury Racecourse.
25 – Wolverhampton
26 – Chester-le-Street, Durham County Cricket Club

 

November 2015

November 20^th – 23rd 2014 – Minehead – The House Of Fun Weekender Five

The Weekender also features sets by Woody Woodgate, Crunch!, Clang and much, much more….

 

Suggs At The Nutty Bar

September The 8th – Marbella Spain.

 

The Lee Thompson Ska Orchestra

January 15th – Jazz Cafe – Camden Town London

 

Deaf School

September

5th – Bingley Music Festival (Headlining Stage 2)
6th – Norwich – Waterfront

December

9^th Liverpool – Kazimier
10^th Liverpool – Kasimier ** SOLD OUT **

 

The Clang

11th September London – St Moritz Club

 

The Silencerz

29th August –  Live Stock Festival, Forty Hall, Enfield

(Note: Lee Thompson is not billed to feature at this gig, or at a number of other upcoming gigs. The rest of the band line-up continues)

 

 

BUY IT

Madstock – CD / DVD Edition

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Madstock-CD-DVD-Madness/dp/B013P0C9KK/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1439655285&sr=8-3&keywords=madstock

Out on October the 9^th. Just over 23 years after the famous comeback gigs, and just a month before the live album’s 23rd anniversary of release, Madstock is back.

Last available on DVD in the guided tour boxset only, and last on CD via a crappy on demand print service option many years ago. For around £12 you can now get both together.

The CD contains Razor Blade Alley as a bonus track for the first time on CD from the weekend’s concerts, and collects tracks previously only available from the concerts upon the CD single of The Harder They Come. These 4 bonus tracks have been included at the end of the album, Chrissy Boy has pointed out they aren’t part of the Live Album’s original mixing by Clive Langer being sourced elsewhere and masters are impossible to find nearly 25 years on, so appear as the final bonus tracks on the album.

The album features a new montage of photographs from the weekend as it’s cover, much like the recent CD/DVD edition of Take It Or Leave it.

 

Punch and Judy Madness Toy Theatre

A pop-up miniature theatre, in card form, featuring Punch & Judy. The collage by artist Peter Quinnell was commissioned by British band ‘Madness’ to celebrate their single ‘Lovestruck’ – it features characters from Music Hall, Punch & Judy and Madness videos. Folds down neatly to the size of a 7 inch single, it can be sent as a card. £8.95

http://www.pollocks-coventgarden.co.uk/index.php/toy-theatres/punch-judy-lovestruck-diorama.html

 

Dr Martin’s: A History of Rebelious Self Expression.

New Book. Features a poem by Lee Thompson.

In Dr. Martens: A History of Rebellious Self-Expression, best-selling author Martin Roach has written an exhaustive chronicle of one of Britain’s most enduring, diverse and influential brands. The narrative is told through in-depth research, dozens of interviews with high profile musicians, subcultural individuals and creative personalities. This meticulous and comprehensive brand history is complemented by over 220 photographs (many previously unpublished), as well as rare memorabilia. This book is the definitive work on one of modern culture’s most unique, complex and authentic brands. There will always be Dr. Martens as long as rebellious self-expression continues to exist. This book is that remarkable story.

 

 

SIGN OF THE TIMES

News and info from online and offline media sources.

4 reasons to look forward to OnBlackheath

Suggs and the gang are playing just one London show this year, and it’s headlining the Sunday at OnBlackheath. Pull on your baggy trousers and get ready for a good old nutty dance. It’d be madness to miss it.

Grub is a massive part of the festival, which is sponsored by John Lewish. The Chef’s Club is running throughout the weekend with the likes of Jamie Oliver’s mentor Gennaro Contaldo and the bestselling authors of The Art of Eating Wellm, Hemsley and Hemsley.

OnBlackheath is one of the more family-friendly festivals and kids under 12 can go free all weekend. For the little ones, there’s stars from TV’s Milkshake.

In between the music and the food, there’ll be all kinds of roaming performers with street theatre, skills and installations.

Newsshopper.co.uk

 

Win Tickets To On Black Heath

Guy Garvey is the lead singer of Elbow. That’s the Answer to the competition question, fill in your details at Absolute radios website.

You might win tickets to the festival which includes Madness on the Sunday.

http://absoluteradio.co.uk/competitions/win-tickets-onblackheath-festival-2015.html

 

Still Time To Win A Meet And Greet At Heddingly Cricket Ground

http://yorkshireccc.com/news/view/3514/win-meet-madness-before-their-headingley-show

Just answer the question at the above link and enter your email address. Winners will be notified in September.

 

Madness Lovestruck at the Imperial

Madness tried their hand at pulling pints at a London pub as they introduced their two new ales to the drinks menu at the Imperial.

Late last year Suggs and the band headed to the Imperial pub, one of only a few UK pubs to currently offer the brews, to pour the first few pints of Lovestruck, a hoppy amber Ale, and Night Boat, a London porter style beer.

The Imperial on Leicester Square, which is part of the Taylor Walker pub group, welcomed local drinkers to taste the band’s ales, which were brewed at Portobello Brewery and launched earlier this year. Lovestruck is an ale filled with floral and berry hop character that tickles the nose followed by coffee and hazelnut aromas. The Night Boat is packed to the rafters with cappuccino, chocolate, hazelnut and dark fruit aromas.

The night also supported Great Ormond Street Hospital with a raffle and top prizes up for grabs including two tickets to see Madness at the 02. Mark Murphy, general manager at the Imperial said: “We’re delighted to support a great British band rooting for quality tasting ale in British pubs. We’re the first Taylor Walker pub to offer the ale, before it rolls out to others in the city in the New Year, which is a great treat for our regulars.

“The night was a huge success and everyone has enjoyed meeting the band and having a drink with them. We’ve had many events to raise money for Great Ormond Street Hospital and the raffle has helped our total reach £10,000!”

http://www.hospitalityandcateringnews.com/2014/11/madness-lovestruck-imperial/

 

 

LIVE INTENSIFIED – OUR HOUSE AT UNION THEATRE

I was a bit skeptical about seeing this production of the Madness Musical, as the last time I saw Our House it was an amateur company and I was really disappointed with it as it was cast all wrong. Also the fact that the Union Theatre is about a 50 seater theatre.

As we walked in the seats are situated around the ‘stage’. Again this made me have doubts, but once the show started it was really good.

The cast were doing a brilliant job in a limited space. It is the same format as the musical tour. The costume changes are not as inconspicuous as the original 2002 west end production or the 2008 professional touring incarnation of the show stage by Birmingham rep, but they are still good all the same.

I won’t go into details about the show as in sure you all know the story and songs. All in all it was really put together well and the cast all seemed to be enjoying it. I would recommend going to see it if you can. It was good to be up close and personal to the cast.

Our House runs until September 12th the stage their last performances at the venue.

http://www.uniontheatre.biz/our-house/4590085368

Tickets are £20 plus booking.

Andy Stav Davarias

 

 

MIS FEATURE – A CENSORED HOLE IN BAGGY TROUSERS

“Hi there – just a quick e mail in relation to the Baggy Trousers video shown on Top Of The Pops last week as mentioned in MIS number 846. (BBC Four are repeating 1980 shows, and Baggy Trousers Video aired.)

Did anyone else notice an edit in the lyrics? The word ‘fight’ in the line “gone to fight with next door’s school” had been edited out and replaced with what sounds like ‘knock’ but could be an unintelligible syllable from elsewhere in the song. In their wisdom Top Of The Pops must have asked Stiff to censor it, perhaps because they were worried it would promote inter-school fighting or something…

(It put me in mind of the different (wrong) version of the song used on the 2000 Virgin remaster of Absolutely. Good old Virgin, eh).

Regards

Alex Davidson”

MIS investigated Alex’s claim, which has also recently been spotted by Paul Rodgers. Here is what we found on listening.

“Wow well spotted Alex. We think the edit is “not” taken from the line  “how to bend NOT break the rules” and pasted over where “fight” would have been.

So it’s now the slightly jarring line “gone to NOT with next door’s school”

Hilariously incomprehensible, yet slightly sounds like being told off for a micro second.

I would add that, as you say “inter school fighting” was frowned upon by the BBC and fixed with such an edit, but the poor old teacher getting a plastic cup to the head passes ok as does the in vision scrap in the video, over the words “pulling hair and eatin’ dirt” which pass as ok in the song.

“Does no f**ker at the bbc care about the snails?” remarks Gordy Davidson for the last line of the song.

 

 

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 590 – Sunday 22^nd August – Saturday 28^th August 2010

It’d been a little quiet in the World of Madness this week. News items had almost all dried-up, and where only a few issues ago we had masses to report we were now digging around for things to pass in your general direction.

We kicked off our articles by publishing an article which originally appeared on the NME web site. Clearly not impressed with Calvin Harris, Suggs and Lee allegedly told the crowd at the recent Bestival event;

“I would like to make a public announcement and make an apology for something that happened at Camp Bestival,” saxophonist Lee added: “I would like to apologise to that pr*ck Calvin Klein, sorry Calvin Harris. Anyway that’s enough of that.”

Next, it was over to The Specials, who revealed that the forthcoming Specials album would include songs about racism and the Afghan war.

Back in March, vocalist/co-songwriter Terry Hall told the Guardian that the same issues they raised 30 years ago are still relevant and still weigh on their minds today. “For example, racism in the UK, it’s sort of swerved a little,” Hall stated. “It’s heavily against eastern Europeans, whereas in the 70s, when we formed, a lot of the racism was directed against Asian people. But it still exists. It still affects us every day.”

Moving on, and although it wasn’t due for release until the 6^th of September, the lovely people at Union Square Music had kindly given us a copy of the re-mastered Wonderful album to give away to one lucky person.

Continuing in the footsteps of earlier re-mastered Madness albums, this came on two discs, and contained a whopping 28 tracks, which were as follows:

Disc: 1

1. Lovestruck
2. Johnny The Horse
3. Communicator, The
4. A.M.
5. Wizard, The
6. Drip Fed Fred
7. Going To The Top
8. Elysium
9. Saturday Night Sunday Morning
10. If I Didn’t Care
11. No Money
12. Lovestruck
13. Johnny The Horse
14. Drip Fed Fred

 

Disc: 2

1. You’re Wonderful
2. Round And Round
3. We Are Love
4. Johnny The Horse
5. I Was The One
6. Dreaming Man
7. Light Of The Way
8. We Want Freddie
9. Drip Fed Fred
10. Maddley
11. Simple Equation
12. Sarah’s Song
13. It Must Be Love
14. My Old Man

To enter, you just had to answer the following question:

What year was ‘Wonderful’ originally released in the UK?

Further on we moved on to Madshop news, and the big announcement this week was that the store was selling a 5 CD bundle with free shipping;

“Back in stock now the Madstore bring you the complete 30 year celebration, Madness Remastered collectors CDs to give you an even nuttier sound than ever before.

Each of these 5 Double CDs has been lovingly remastered and repackaged together with a hat full of Bonus tracks and promotional Videos.

Topped off with a 24 page full colour booklet full of facts about Primrose Hills favourite popsters!

All CDs are available at £7.49 or why not take advantage of our Limited 5CD Suggstastic bundle and grab them all in one go and we’ll throw in free delivery as a special thanks for buying them all!”

We brought this issue to a close with news in from Jean-Pierre Boutellier, who reported that Ben Sherman were currently selling a range of Madness branded merchandise .

10 years ago…

Issue number 328 – Sunday 21st August to Saturday 27th August 2005

It’s not often that US readers had something to get excited about in the world of Madness, but now they had their reasons to give the rest of us a cheeky grin, as Madness had been booked to play gigs in California and Oregon this coming September.

News in from Kevin Tizzard revealed that the band were lined-up to play the KRROQ Inland Invasion, California, and McMenamins Crystal Ballroom, Portland, Oregon, while Steve Bringe revealed that the band had also been booked to play The Troubadour, Hollywood.

Next-up was some news for UK based Madness fans, as it had just been announced that on Saturday 12th of November, Lee Thompson and The Camden Cowboys would be performing a selection of songs in aid of the Sudan appeal. We were promised that the set would consist of songs that had an inspiration to Lee’s own music since he’d entered into the business.

The line-up would be as follows:

Mark Bedford (Bedders): bass

Daniel Woodgate (Woody): drums

Nick Judd: keyboard

Kevin Burdett: guitar

On to the MIS web site next, where we were pleased to reveal that after our recent site outage, the much-loved downloads section had made a welcome return.

The issue had arisen as the downloads were proving so popular that we were using 500 gigabytes of bandwidth per month, and so we had to look for another solution and service provider. Regulars to the site would be pleased to learn that a solution had been found.

With the downloads section now back up and running, we also had a mass of new additions for you to watch and listen to. All downloads were made available for free, but we suggested that if you liked what we were doing, you may think about giving a few pennies to the very worthy Cancer Bacup charity.

15 years ago…

Issue number 67 – Sunday 20th August to Saturday 26th August 2000

We started off this week’s issue by advising UK-based fans to get the blank videotapes at the ready once more, as this coming Monday would see ITV showing the “Roots of Rock” documentary. Why would this be of interest? Well, a number of people apparently in the know were reporting that Lee says something in the programme that signified the end of Madness! Obviously, this was something you couldn’t afford to miss.

Moving on, and we took another look at chassmash.co.uk, and recommended that Carl got his skates on, as at present the site only featured a photo archive. Containing pictures of the band from years gone by, and of Carl when he was a small boy, we still suggested you take a look.

Next, we asked you to contact Scatty with suggestions for a 2001 Mad Meet. It was still undecided where and when this should take place, which is why they were after as much feedback as possible.

Since the major overhaul of the Dublin Castle was announced during the Ian Dury Tribute weekend some months back, Camden’s most sacred of pubs had been closed whilst the workmen have been busy beavering away inside.

Well, last weekend saw the grand re-opening of our most favourite drinking hole, and long time MIS and TMML subscriber, Simon Roberts went along.

Simon reported that not much had changed really. A few less seats, no TV, and new flooring, seating and tables. Contrary to recent rumours, Simon wouldn’t be hosting the next series of the BBC’s “Changing Rooms”.

Were you in the Manchester area and looking to join a band? If so, Dominic Kearney may have been the man you needed to speak to, as he was also looking to form a group. The idea would to not form a Madness covers band, but Dom felt that if everyone was a fan of the band, they’d at least all be coming from the same direction.

This week’s issue of the MIS finished with an in-depth review of the recently released issue 16 of Nut Inc fanzine. As always, issue 16, like those before it, arrived late, but it was certainly worth it. For those subscribed and awaiting their copy, they’d be in for a real treat. For those not subscribed, now was the time to sign up.

Rob Hazelby

 

 

TIME…

We’re almost done for this week, but in true MIS style we’ve got a few last minute bits to pass in your direction.

First-up, and it’s some Rhoda Dakar news. The launch party/gig for Rhoda Dakar’s new album “Rhoda Dakar sings The Bodysnatchers” takes place at Camden Town’s legendary Jazz Cafe on Halloween, Saturday 31 Oct 2015.

Moving on, and Dubwiser are currently working on cooking something up in the studio. Find out more here: https://youtu.be/y-Yu-SePFg8

And finally, a small tidbit of information we found out this week is, that Hong Kong Dave is due back on keyboards for the next Crunch! gig. This makes the band even more like the classic pictured line up than previous recent gigs. It’s great news that he’s hopped aboard the magic carpet once again.

And with that, we’re done.

Until next week, have a good one!

Jon Young, Rob Hazelby, Simon Roberts, Paul Williams

(With thanks to Andy Stav Davarias, Alex Davidson)