Hello, and a warm welcome to this week’s edition of the MIS Online newsletter.
This week Madness 40th anniversary tour grew yet further with new dates in the form of Bristol Downs, Bristol on the 1st September and AFAS Live, Amsterdam on 12th December.
While March is gig free for Madness, The Near Jazz Experience will be taking part in a one-day Record Day tour on April 13th, while on the same day Maz and the Fezzers will be performing at the Pelton Arms, Greenwich. Check out our “Showtimes” section for full gig details up to the end of 2019.
Now, before you go on, here’s something that may make you smile. It’s the front cover of today’s Scottish Sunday National newspaper, which was sent in to us by subscriber Michael Gleeson.
Michael commented in the email he sent us; “Seems appropriate in the 40th year of their debut album…”
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.
26th – Tunes in the Dunes, Peranporth Beach, Cornwall. (Madness appear on the Sunday.)
31st – Docklands, Limerick, Ireland
June
1st – Dun Laoghaire Harbour, Dublin, Ireland
2nd – Waterford, Day Tripper Festival, Ireland
7th – Market Rasen Racecourse, Lincolnshire
8th – Chepstow racecourse, Monmouthshire
9th – Bitts Park, Carlisle
15th – Kenwood House, Hampstead. This Massive North London home coming gig for Madness XL features a full scale orchestra with the band. ** SOLD OUT **
16th – Isle of Wight Festival
21st – New Market Racecourse, Suffolk
22nd – Lingfield Park Racecourse, Surrey
28th – Franklin Gardens, Northampton, with support from The Lightning Seeds
29th – Newcastle Racecourse, Newcastle
July
4th – Noches del Botanico, Madrid, Spain
5th – Port America, Galicia, Spain
6th – Vida Festival, Barcelona, Spain
12th- Vivary Park, Taunton
19th – Open Air Theatre, Scarborough, with support from The Pigeon Detectives
20th – Doncaster Racecourse, Doncaster
24th – Sanddown Park Racecourse, Esher
August
17th – Newbury Racecourse, Berkshire
18th – Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh, Scotland
20th – Custom House Square, Belfast
23rd – Northern Meeting Park, Inverness
24th – East Links, Montrose
26th – Clapham Common, XL South London festival. With “Special” Guests.
30th – Wolverhampton Racecourse, Wolverhampton
31st – Winter Gardens, Margate
September
1st – The Downs, Bristol, with support from David Rodigan ** new **
November
Friday 29th – Monday 2nd December – House of Fun Weekender 2019
December
12th – AFAS Live, Amsterdam ** new **
Near Jazz Experience
April 13th – Record store day tour ** new **
1pm Vinyl Frontier Grove road Eastbourne
3pm Music’s Not Dead De la Warr pavillion Bexhill
8pm The Railway Hotel southend.
Mez and the Fezzes
April 13th – Pelton Arms, Greenwich ** new **
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: 778 – Sunday 6th April to Saturday 12th April 2014
It’d been one heck of a Nutty week.
Over in Spain, long term fan Harry Wandsworth, had just realised his dream of creating The Nutty Bar. It opened on Thursday Night in Marbella, Spain, with DJ Rhoda Dakar reportedly “Rocking on the decks.” Photographs appeared on Facebook showing the detailed logo work on the white fixtures, along with a video of the staff dancing and enjoying themselves.
Harry reported that the soft opening event went well, and when he was told not to drink too much Harry replied (the next morning!), “Too late Amigos! Suffering today!” He then went on to say;
“Maddie Boys have been very supportive, sending loads of goodies to put on the walls and Lee is doing his bit for official opening next Saturday! Rhoda did a great set last night and had a lot of locals who are Mad for it! Thanks for spreading the word Amigo!”
It was great to see The Nutty bar finally open for The Business!
If all that wasn’t enough new nuts in a week, The Nutty Forum was back. It came with a nice stylish design with crowned M logos on black.
The forum had already been the first place to mention the Belgium festival gig in it’s first few posts, and there was an opening competition to win a 2007 live at the O2 CD which forum runner Adam told us is running for another week.
Moving on to our regular “Life and Intensified” section, and we reported that The Magic Brother’s residency at The Dublin Castle continued to hot up. So much so that they had an electric fan on stage. Thanks to the efforts of Daren West and Jonathan Young, this section was absolutely huge, featuring full track listings and detailed lowdowns of just what went on. If you were unable to catch the event then this was certainly a decent backup!
Next, it was out “MIS Feature” which revealed that Chrissy Boy was mentoring a London based band by the name of Gorgeous George. The best way to describe them would be a modern London band, comparable to acts like The Streets mixed with Dexy’s, Chas and Dave and Gypsy folk elements.
We brought this issue of the MIS to a close by asking you to vote for Lucy Moore in the annual Miss Durham competition. Why? Well, she was a Madness fan and needed our help.
10 years ago…
Issue 518 – Sunday 5th April to Saturday 11th April 2009
With Madness touring Down Under for the first time in over 20 years, it came as little surprise to see that much of this week’s issue was dedicated to the Australian tour. Coverage came in from magazine, newspaper and fan reviews of the gigs, so a wide spectrum of sources were covered.
In just 7 issues time it would be 10 years since the first issue of the MIS went out, and we mentioned that during the month of May we’d be having a number of special celebration articles, one of which would reveal the winner of a special box set price. All you had to do was read through the next 7 issues of the MIS, which would contain an MIS 10 Birthday Bingo. As well as the main prize a number of smaller prizes were also up for grabs.
On to the articles themselves, and we brought news that the much anticipated Madness box set was finally landing on the door mats of Stateside fans, while a couple of other fans had been busy transcribing (and correcting!) the lyrics to the entire compilation. How was that for dedication?
We brought this issue to a close with a mass of YouTube links all containing footage of the Australian tour.
15 years ago…
Issue 256 – Sunday 4th April to Saturday 10th April 2004
Last week, thanks to our mystery printer, we reported that 13,000 copies of the booklet for “The Business” were being printed. Would this lead to a re-issued and re-packaged re-release, or was the print run being made to simply bump up stocks of `The Business` which were now running low? Unfortunately, aside from some reader speculation we were no nearer to an answer.
On to the articles, and Mark Charlesworth reported that the registration plate M40NSS was back on Ebay, and the price had now gone up from £5000 to an eye watering £10000! Well, two days prior to this issue of the MIS going out the plate was back on the auction site, this time with a price of £15000!
Naturally, there were no bids!
Last week we ended the issue with details of how you could download a collection of MP3s taken from Hammersmith Palais gig, from 19th December 1981.
Well, it turned out that this collection of MP3’s had been mis-labeled, and it came down to Jermaine of Tour Madness to correct us, and explain that this gig was from The Hammersmith Odeon from the 23rd December 1980. This was further backed up by Andy Clayden, who also emailed in with the correction.
Whoops!
A number of times in previous years we at MIS Online had run some kind of April Fools joke. This time is was the turn of Madness themselves to have a bit of a laugh, as Stav and Steve Bringe of The Madness Trading Ring pointed out.
The band had claimed that they’d received honours from The Queen, and that the award ceremony would be covered on BBC7 TV on the 31st April 2004!
We brought this issue to a close with news that students of Burnt Mill would be holding an evening of Madness as a tribute to our favourite band. Featuring fantastic live music, dance routines to die for, crazy costumes and lovely lighting, we were told that we’d be mad to miss it.
Finally, just before we finished we urged you to get over to the official Madness web site each band member’s own area, which you could reach by opening a door, had now been updated.
Rob Hazelby
Sign of the Times
Nutty boys Madness preparing for date at Newbury Racecourse
FORGET Our House, the Nutty Boys will soon be singing Our Racecourse after being booked in for a summer showcase at Newbury.
Combining the genres of Ska, Reggae, Motown, Rock ’n’Roll and Classic Pop, Madness have become one of the music industry’s best loved British bands.
And the boys will be performing at Newbury Racecourse at its first Party in the Paddock act after racing ends on Saturday, August 17.
Fronted by the charismatic Suggs, Madness’ ability to write songs that sparkle with the stuff of British life, that find poetry in everyday reality, has lead them to have many hits including Baggy Trousers, It Must Be Love, Driving In My Car, Our House and the 1982 number on song House of Fun.
The full version of the article can be found at the above address.
Madness has been around for forty years this year and they are celebrating that with an anniversary concert in AFAS Live. The British ska band will launch their biggest show ever on Dutch soil on 12 December.
Madness broke through in 1979, forty years ago, with the song One Step Beyond. The band gained fame in the Netherlands in the early 1980s thanks to hits such as Baggy Trousers and Embarassment.
All the big hits of the band pass during the concert. The ticket sale for the gig in Amsterdam’s AFAS Live starts on Friday, April 5.
Our thanks to Frank Beentjes for passing the above in our direction
Live Intensified
Southern Silencerz and Mother Fezzers
Caught a strong set on Saturday from The Silencerz down at The Pelton Arms In Greenwich. A pub with decor so old it’s hard not to fantasise that it’s taking place in some Jonathan Creeky old victorian ghost story. Still everyone is in good spirits. Kelly Driver treating her Mother Alison to the night out and stay over at this gig location. Gary and Maria joining me too, and we mock a guest book filled with reviews far more glowing than the average trip advisor post. A TV so old it’s made of wood sits in the corner threatening to show re runs of watch with Mother. It’s Mother’s day weekend after all.
It’s two sets from The Silencerz, mixing their own tunes and classic Reggae tunes.
A stage too small to fit the whole band with one down in the audience area. No Madness covers or Thompson attendance needed really. More familiar faces mingle and catch up from a wigged out Tom Cat, to Andy “Cap” and Lisa Search at the bar.
We all dance and drink Merry as it’s easy to do when your staying at the end of the night above the pub. Much dancing to be had. Daley the impressive front man, and the band really tight and flowing on these bedded in numbers. Step it up sister remains from previous Thommo band projects but beyond that, every other tune feels like it’s theirs tonight and no one else’s. Jimmy Cliff anthem may be a nice reminder he is joining Madness soon though, and there are a few moans for wishing Hey Bulldog still got an airing.
Oh, what sweet sensation
Lord, what strange emotion
You got love and devotion
And I won’t forget your touch
The Melodians. Is a track the night got me singing. It’s that kind of tune the band play well. The Truth is still being aired from future band project we hope.
All in a free gig that would have easily been worth paying for, but a packed pub south of their own north London circles, shows the band is branching out and packing out pubs elsewhere in the capital now. I hope they play further a field.
Back at HOF for 2019 would also be a wish for these boys.
…
The Fezzez appear Sunday Afternoon at White Swan a little further east acrossLondon and entertain a full seated pub of post Sunday lunching families. Surf’s up in both the music and the shirts they are wearing. A triple bill of pulp fiction tunes from Chuck Berry to instrumentals heavy on Guitar or Phil’s saxophone. Bedders under pinning on bass, and Mez the charismatic drummer and and front man. He explains the music, background between tunes, and adopts the nerd voice to send up the education being given. It’s a wave of polite applause from the crowd for each tune, with one young woman complaining at the back no one is yet up dancing. Nice way to round out the weekend, even though by this point tired drinking and a lack of any phone signal drags me away from the pub to the next job of the weekend. Still a great band to doff the red hat with black tassel to.
Jonathan Young
Time
And finally…
Here’s something to make you smile; another recently found and uploaded gem. This time it’s Madness on the “Freetime” TV show, recorded way back in July 1983.
For those who don’t remember the show here’s a brief reminder courtesy of Wikipedia
Freetime was children’s television programme shown on ITV between 1981 and 1988. Its premiere episode debuted as part of the first Watch It! afternoon on 29 December 1980 and was listed as “Free Time” in the TV Times. But the series did not properly start until later in 1981. Produced by Thames Television, it was a magazine format show devoted to hobbies and interests, and was designed to encourage viewers to get out and about rather than staying at home and watching television. It was hosted by the former Magpie presenter Mick Robertson.
Our thanks to Gary Brownjohn for the heads-up. Enjoy!
