It’s amazing what a group of Madness fans can do if they team up and work together, and last week the members of Madchat did just that at Camden’s Dublin Castle pub.
Much merriment and drinking was had and a massive chunk of cash was successfully raised for charity. Check out this week’s Sign of the Times section for further details and a fantastic slideshow detailing just what went on.
Moving on to our feature, and this week we have an exclusive from former Dance Brigade member Keith Finch. We’re sure you’ll find it of interest.
And finally, before we let you get on with this week’s issue, it was announced this week that the legendary Lightning Seeds are to support Madness at the Franklin’s Gardens gig in Northampton on Friday 28th June. Very nice!
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.
24 – 26th – Tunes in the Dunes, Peranporth Beach, Cornwall. (Madness appear on the Sunday.)
31st – Docklands, Limerick
June
1st – Dublin
2nd – Waterford, Day Tripper Festival
7th – Market Rasen, Lincolnshire
8th — Chepstow racecourse
9th – Carlisle, Bits Park
15th – Kenwood House, Hampstead. This Massive North London home coming gig for Madness XL features a full scale orchestra with the band.
16th – June – Isle of Wight Festival
21st – New Market Racecourse
22nd – Lingfield Park
28th -Franklin Gardens, Northampton, with support from The Lightning Seeds
29th – Newcastle Racecourse plate day
July
4th – Madrid, Noches del Botanico, Spain
5th – Port America, Galicia, Spain
6th – Vida Festival, Barcelona, Spain
12th- Taunton, Vivary Park
19th – Scarborough
20th – Doncaster Racecourse
24th – Sanddown Racecourse
August
17th – Newbury Racecourse
18th – Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh
20th – Belfast Custom Square
23rd – Inverness
24th – Montrose – East Links
26th – Clapham Common, XL South London festival. With “Special” Guests.
Friday 29th – Monday 2nd December – House of Fun Weekender 2019 Miscellaneous
March
Wednesday 27th – Rock ‘n Roll Book Club at The Union – Madness: One Step Beyond, The Union Club, London. Featuring Terry Edwards and Bedders
Buy It
One Step Beyond 40th Anniversary Single
Special release as part of 2019’s Record Store Day
Format: Shaped picture disc single
Label: BMG
Release date: 13th April 2019
More Info: 2019 marks the 40th anniversary of Madness, one of the most successful and best loved British bands of all time. Formed in Camden Town, North London, in 1976 they have gone onto to release dozens of massive hit singles and albums, selling millions of records in a career that spans five decades and is still going strong. To celebrate their “XL” year, the band are reissuing their first Top 10 hit, ‘ One Step Beyond’ .
As well as the original 7″ single and 2009 remastered version of the album track, this release also contains both the Italian and the Spanish version of the song. The single is presented as a very special, limited-edition shaped picture disc with the A side image of the band performing their iconic “Nutty Train” dance.
For more information and to find a participating store go to:
Before We Was We: The Making of Madness by Madness
The band’s first official book.
The story of how they became them. It’s a journey full of luck, skill and charm, as they duck and dive by day and make the name in London’s exploding music scene by night, zipping around the capital in their Morris Minor vans. Their formative years, 1970-79.
This is the riotous coming-of-age tale of seven unique individuals, whose collective graft, energy and talent took them from the sweaty depths of the Hope and Anchor basement to the Top of the Pops studio. In their own words, they each look back on their past and how during those shared adventures, they formed a bond that’s lasted forty years. Before We Was We is irreverent, funny and full of character. Just like them.
You can now buy a range of classic album design T shirts.
Absolutely returns to the official T shirt store since first appearing a decade ago as merchandise. Seven now joins the albums T-shirts range, only previously a promotional shirt. For the first time Rise & Fall (Following last year’s triumphant return of this album’s title track on tour) joins official shirt range.
Best of all, 10 years on from its box set release, The Liberty of Norton Folgate is purchasable. We are having a little bit of that!
Complete Madness. Total Madness hits albums join the range.
This range is also certainly a reaction to the continuing bullshit of bootleggers targeting social media with non licensed product not endorsed by the band and illegal.
Don’t be an idiot and buy from badly photoshopped pictures of Suggs holding a shirt up etc. Those are fake. The Madstore and official band website and gigs merchandise stands are all run by the same company with the band’s legal backing. You will only find a small number of charity shirts or some One Step Beyond shirts outside of buying from the official online store. Don’t give your money to the bootleggers exploiting you.
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: 776 – Sunday 23rd March to Saturday 29th March 2014
We began this issue with the news that Suggs had been speaking to Bang Showbizz, telling them that he’d been working on songs for the next Madness album. In the interview Suggs commented that fans could expect the album to come out near the end of 2014 and Madness would definitely be touring the record in December.
“It will probably be out at the end of the year and regardless of how albums sell these days – and our albums don’t sell too bad we kind of make a bit of money from our albums still – the plan is we’re going to do a big tour around Christmas time. The main thing is you’re doing new stuff, the people know you’re doing new stuff and it keeps the whole thing alive and keeps you alive.”
Additionally, Woody recently told the MIS that his song writing for submission to the album had already taken place at the start of the year and that he’d now moved over to working on the next Magic Brothers album.
Over in our regular Live Intensified section we featured a massive review of a recent Magic Brothers gig courtesy of the one and only Daren West. This time Darren reported on the band’s second of a five night Magic Brother’s residency at The Dublin Castle.
The set list for the night was as follows:
Set List:
Always be with you
Downtown
Friday Night, Sunday Morning
Ami Tumake BhaloBashi
The River
Something
In Your Mind
Tysea Hill
Come To Me
Smile # listed – not played #
Magic Train
We’re All Going To Brighton
They Tell You
Mother
All Aboard The Train
You Don’t Have To Hide Your Love Away
Requested Encore:
Friday Night, Sunday Morning
In Your Mind
We brought this issue to a close with the news that over on the official Madstore, there were a load of T-shirts currently selling for 2 for £20.
10 years ago…
Issue 516 – Sunday 22nd March to Saturday 28th March 2009
With only a few days to go until the Australian Tour kicks-off, we thought that it was time to introduce one Graham Bush to all of those who were geared-up and ready to attend one or more of the appearances down under. “Who?”, we heard you ask. Well, Graham was the latest in a long line of extended band members, and would be replacing Mark, who sadly, wouldn’t be on the tour.
Graham was a more than capable stand-in for Mark, and by our reckoning needed a nickname. “Bushers”, perhaps?
News had also reached us indicating that Lee Thompson had been reported as possibly being a late arrival due to passport problems, but we were assured that he would make it.
Those waiting for the box set to arrive this week would possibly have to wait that bit longer. Although The Box set was due for dispatch Monday (according to record store website), trackable orders were still saying “Pending”, so as such we advised you that deliveries could take a little longer.
Chris’ comments had ranged from “it’s dispatching tomorrow” to “could be a longer wait” or “Ok the album was in fact put together by a team of chimpanzees. They ate all the original box sets and also made tree houses out of the leftovers.”
Whatever, we just knew that it was going to be well worth the wait, and suggested that you might as well smile rather than fret, because that bursting desire wouldn’t make it come any quicker.
Meanwhile, talk of a single continued, with a remix of Forever Young apparently binned, and Dust Devil a likely contender.
Also, perhaps in relation to a Madness film, Suggs was spotted filming on the pier at Southwold on March 11th. It’s was certainly a busy time for our favourite band!
On to the articles, and we began by thanking Jamie over in the Madness official camp for getting us a whizbang incredible prize for the fans, and we had a great competition that would not only help Woody build up the donation box for his London Marathon charity, but it would also give you a chance at winning a pair of signed drumsticks from Woody Woods Woodgate himself. All you had to do was make a donation on his Just Giving Page.
Tech news now, and this was the week that the Madness Central forum got themselves set up on Twitter with their very own account. This would link alongside their website, MySpace, Facebook and Yahoo presences.
Finally, in festival news, the band had been confirmed as being part of the line-up for the forthcoming double festival Rock am Ring & Rock im Park in Germany, bringing their dates in the country to three after we’d recently announced the Berlin gig.
15 years ago…
Issue 254 – Sunday 21st March to Saturday 27th March 2004
We started this issue off with a write-up from Chris Wardell, following his night out in Camden at the ‘London Ska Festival 3′, which took place at The Underworld.
Chris commented that;
“Smoke Like A Fish and The Riffs stole the show, with two scorching sets which saw the 200 + crowd go bananas. King Django also played a cool set of ska, reggae and rap, which seemed to appeal to the youngsters in attendance”.
Next-up was one Dan Fossard, who sent us a text, highlighting a Suggs related article that had recently cropped-up on Teletext.
The article turned out to be quite a lengthy piece relating to Suggs’ latest series of Salvage Squad, and thankfully MIS subscriber Mr. G had saved us a mountain of time by kindly typing up the whole thing for us. What a star!
With the recent Madness Weekender at Butlins, Bognor Regis already becoming a drunken blur, we caught up with attendee, Gary Saunders on MSN, and asked if he’d be kind enough to know up a review of the event. Never the one to let us down, he was more than happy to oblige.
The whole meet centred around the Eighties Weekends that Butlins often stage out of season, and whilst the drinks (in Gary’s words) “cost an arm and a leg”, it seemed as if all present had a fantastic time.
Elsewhere, and we’re sure Chassmash.com were gearing up for a real hammering of their servers, following the uploading of a mass of video clips to the site. Ranging from footage of the 1979 Two Tone Tour, 1984’s South of Watford segment, to the band’s appearance on a 2002 episode of the Des and Mel Show, there was a real selection of footage through the years here.
Rob Hazelby
Sign of the Times
It must be love! Fans party at pub that launched Madness
A CAMDEN Town pub became a “house of fun” on Saturday when scores of Madness devotees arrived for a fundraiser.
Members of Mad Chat, one of the band’s fanclubs, organised a party at the Dublin Castle in Parkway – the legendary venue where Suggs and Co played when they were starting out.
They gave landlady Peggy Conlon, whose family has run the pub for decades, a framed award in recognition of her support for the group.
One fan raised more than £2,000 by having his beard shaved off at the event. Mad Chat has raised £4,500 this year for Make A Wish Foundation.
12 years ago Keith Finch and Lee Thompson were in The Dance Brigade. They continue to collaborate as Keith released under the name JA 13 his produced work. Here is the latest news featuring the late Rico Rodriguez. Over to Keith…
“I finally finished the album I recorded with Rico Rodriguez just before he passed away four years ago!
He was very poorly when we were recording, and not on full steam, so it took me a long time to individually check every note and tune some of it, but it was worth it.
Its taken a lot of time as I moved to Spain just after and it took me a bit of time to set up the studio etc and get down to work.
Plus a visit from Lee T probably set me back rather than helped!!
It is called ‘Order of distinction’ which is the honour given to Jamaicans from the country for services to JA.
Which Rico hasn’t received yet!!
Lee is on it somewhere!
He’s on the ‘Love, honour and delay’ track, which was originally a b.track for The Dance Brigade project [ which I have been working on with a drummer last week!!]
I’ve been a bit more active lately, so I have a lot of things to finish, but this album turned out a bit better than we originally thought.
You’ll recognise a few of the players from the ska orchestra as well in there, Bob Dowell and Chalky White feature a lot.
Its been well received so far, Rodigan, Don Letts etc, and hopefully will be featured on Robert Elms show on BBC Radio London.
Keith.
Check out JA13 collective – Rico – Order of Distinction – Out now.
Time
Just before this issue went to press we spotted that over on Facebook Nick Woodgate had posted the following short, but exciting snippet;
“I’m making an album! It’s not longer going to be just an EP”
Naturally, as soon as we hear anything further we’ll be sure to let you know in a future issue.
