We begin this week’s MIS with the news that line-up details to 2018’s “An Evening With Suggs and Friends”, has now been revealed. The event, taking place in London on 1st November, is being run to raise money for pancreatic cancer research.
The line-up will include Ali Campbell, Astro and keyboard player Mickey Virtue, formerly from the band UB40, along with Suggs himself hosting the evening.
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.
1st – Suggs & Friends – Porchester Hall, London. Annual Charity show for Pancreatic Cancer UK
2nd Kings Lynn, Corn Exchange
3rd Crawley, The Hawk Theatre
4th Bury St Edmunds, Apex
5th Stafford, Gatehouse Theatre
7th Glasgow, Pavillion – rescheduled date
Lee Thompson in Conversation
Sunday November 11th – The Big One 7 – Parkdean Sandford Dorset
“Meet the Legendary Sax man” at this QnA musical career discussion event.
Near Jazz Experience
The NJE on tour supporting The Nightingales (plus Stew Lee. Cambridge, Birmingham and London dates with 15 minutes of 80s comedy material )
September
25th – Soup kitchen – Manchester
26th – stereo cafe – Glasgow
27th – Opium – Edinburgh
28th – Central bar – Gateshead
29th – The lantern – Halifax
30th – Greystones – Sheffield
October
2nd – Hare & Hounds – Birmingham
3rd – Moth club – London
4th – Portland arms – Cambridge
5th – Canalhouse – Nottingham
Deaf School
September
20th – London Bush Hall
21st and 22nd. – Liverpool Everyman Theatre
The Silencerz
Saturday 22nd December, The Dublin Castle, Camden. No Lee, as this is the date of the Brighton Madness gig.
Buy It
Suggs My Life Story DVD
“After a bit of messing about…”, says the new advert for Suggs Movie DVD of his One Man Show, which now has a new release date of November 2018. This opening line is the admission that a delayed March release, a lack of updates before August 10th, and a rejig of both the pledge campaign account and the team behind the release have all taken place.
Now that the Pledge is relaunched though with a new release date of November, and with a fresh launch event to take place at the Pleasance Theatre in London we feel that now is the time to add this back in to our regular “Buy It” section.
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. New Mad store T-shirts & Madshorts
Further New T-shirts are now in stock for the summer. Including Madness Shorts as this hot weather continues to encourage getting your legs out. The recent Stately Holmes tour T-shirt is now in stock on line. A rather fetching Lady Killers poster of the old Ealing comedy about a gang of roguish bank robbers, re done with Madness heads taken from old shut up artwork and repurposed nicely in this fitting parody. A fetching Morris Minor car picture harking back to Driving in My Car video and the Mad 7 number plate, with the paraphrase lyrics from Muswell Hill to Selsey Bill! Check out the Madstore now.
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: 749 – Sunday 15th September to Saturday 21st September 2013
This issue got underway with some non Madness news as we revealed that the legendary Blockheads had just launched their own Kickstarter crowd funding campaign. The goal of the project was to help fund three music videos as part of the band’s forthcoming album and single releases. Backing benefits included a thank you from the band, signed photos, badges, signed albums, guest passes and more.
We continued the non Madness related news as we reviewed the Magic Line by the Magic Brothers in full. This was our main feature, and thanks to the efforts of our very own Jonathan Young, took the form of a track by track album review. It must have taken him hours to put together.
Further on, and we did move back on to more Madness related news as we gave you a shorthand view to what was going on at the forthcoming House of Fun Weekender line-up. The big support came in the form of non other the Lee Thompson Ska Orchestra, and even the humble MIS team weren’t left out as we were in the line-up to host our very own “MIS Presents” events at the weekend.
Over in our semi-regular Tweets of a Dove articles we featured comments from Carl where he wrote about a possible book idea. Stating that he’s had a look at Suggs’ forthcoming book, he mentioned that he also felt it was time to put pen to paper.
We brought this issue to a close with the news that the Gladness beer competition had now closed and that the suggested names of the Gladness beer elephant were now with Mark Bedford to select a final name from. The winner and runners up would soon be notified.
10 years ago…
Issue 489 – Sunday 14th September to Saturday 20th September 2008
We kicked off this week’s issue with an MIS exclusive. On 17th September at London’s 100 Club, a very exciting event was due to take place, for it was the live debut of a group of extremely talented musicians, who together back in the Summer of last year formed a band called The Dance Brigade.
The MIS caught up with singer/songwriter Jennie former lead singer of 80’s all-girl group The Bellestars) to talk about her career so far, her current collaboration with Madness saxophonist Lee Thompson and how she felt about the up and coming live debut of her latest project The Dance Brigade.
Next, and we’d covered its run in London’s West End, Japanese and current UK touring incarnations in much depth, but we now learned that last year an Australian production of the Our House musical had taken place in Perth.
For a three day run, the Entertainment Factory had showcased a version which took place on the 15th, 16th and 17th of March.
From the little detail that existed about this incarnation we understood that it may have been performed as the final workshop theatre project of a group of theatre students as their final exam piece, culminating their studies in a musical theatre qualification of some kind. As such it was probably the most scaled down prop and set version of the show ever to be performed for an audience. But equally was probably performed rather excellently by a group of young people utilising their recently honed skills.
The majority of this issue was packed to the rafters with Paul Muscat’s Madchart, which this year took us from positions 60 all the way down to number 11, with a new entry at 11 of NW5. Impressive stuff.
15 years ago…
Issue Number 227 – Sunday 14th September to Saturday 20th September 2003
With the UK in the midst of a September heatwave, news was unsurprisingly a little thin on the ground.
This issue started off with news of a Madness fansite closure. Normally this sort of thing would only benefit from a passing footnote, but when it was up to the standard of Steve Harris’ madness.info web site, it really was a noteable item of news.
Maintained by long-time Madness fan Steve Harris, `Madness.info` tried and succeeded in doing something different with a Madness fan site. The site was nice to look at, and full of information (as are the majority of other Madness fan sites out there), but where the site stood head and shoulders above the others was its massive video download library.
Steve had encoded and uploaded entire concerts, TV appearances, and even TV adverts that featured Madness or the music of Madness. The site gave people the opportunity to see footage they otherwise may never have had the chance to see.
The message on the web site bluntly read;
“This website has now closed. We have not taken this decision lightly, and know that there will be many disappointed fans who regularly visited the site, but we now feel it is time to move onto other things and the website has run it’s course.
We thank you for your support over the past few years and for your kind comments”.
Moving on, and we had much happier news courtesy of Jonathan Young, who reported that recently released boules related comedy ‘Behind The Blackball’ featured non other than The Return of The Los Palmas 7 as part of it’s soundtrack.
With news still rather thin on the ground we decided to once again take a look at what the Madness tribute bands had lined up for the months of September and October. This time we looked at One Step Behind, Badness, and Los Palmas 6.
This issue closed with a final reminder that the Great Yarmouth Madness Weekender was a mere two weeks away, and that if you wanted to come you needed to get your skates on.
“We’re not the sort of band that would go to cue. The more we discovered it made them look stupid, the more we did it.”
Woody Woodgate of Madness was cited by John Lennon in his final interview 2 days before his passing as an up and coming drummer who impressed. 40 odd years in the industry later and Woody tells us all about creating a 4.5 earthquake on the Richter scale, watching Oasis split from the next door changing room and having to fill in their headline slot at Rock en Seine, how It Must Be Love, Baggy Trousers were recorded, playing the Olympics Closing Ceremony and loads more.
Watford Whispers
Parody website Waterford whispers had a little joke about Madness
That’s just about it for this week’s edition of the MIS.
If you happen to get along to any of the forthcoming Deaf School gigs taking place later this coming week then please do send in a review. We’d love to include it in a future issue.
