We trust you’re all stuffed from eating far too much chocolate, and are now relaxing with very full stomachs.
The exciting news this week is that following the success of this year’s Record Store Day, One Step Beyond charted at number 3 in the vinyl singles chart! This is despite many fans reporting that they’d queued for hours in line to get hold of a copy only to find them sold out before they’d got to the front.
Now, if any of you have tickets to the forthcoming Kenwood event you may be interested in the following snippet.
Several members of the Madchat Facebook group have arranged for discounted return coach travel from Hertfordshire to the venue for the bargain price of £12.60! If you’d like to take the organisers up on this offer register at https://zeelo.co/interest/16097
If you do manage to get a space on the coach you can be sure that the concert festivities will begin will before you get to the venue.
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
15th – Kenwood House, Hampstead. This Massive North London home coming gig for Madness XL features a full scale orchestra with the band. ** SOLD OUT ** If you’re planning to travel from Hertfordshire check out this link for coach travel info: https://zeelo.co/interest/16097
16th – Isle of Wight Festival
21st – New Market Racecourse, Suffolk
22nd – Lingfield Park Racecourse, Surrey
28th – Franklin Gardens, Northampton (Suppt: 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 (Suppt: The Pigeon Detectives)
20th – Doncaster Racecourse, Doncaster
21st – Bitts Park, Carlisle (Suppt: Bootleg Beatles & Chris Difford) Orig date 9/6/19
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, (Suppt: David Rodigan)
November
Friday 29th – Monday 2nd December – House of Fun Weekender 2019
December
12th – AFAS Live, Amsterdam
Buy It
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: 780 – Sunday 20th April to Saturday 26th April 2014
Record Store Day began in 2007 when over 700 independent stores in the United States came together to help celebrate their distinctive culture. The UK soon followed suit, and on Saturday 19th April was saw the seventh celebration of the UK’s independent music retail sector.
To celebrate Record Store Day, Cooking Vinyl were auctioning off white label test pressings of some of their recent output, including this little gem, a double vinyl 12 inch test pressing of Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da.
At the time of us putting this issues’ intro text together the auction was currently at £62.00, but it was all for a very worthy charity, The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity.
Over in our “Buy it” section the date of the Lee Thompson Ska Orchestra single “Bangarang”, had been put back again. This time the new release date was May 26th where it would be available on iTunes and Amazon for download.
Also this week, we revealed that the Madstore were currently running a Madstore Easter sale. We suggested you popped over to the web site to take a look.
Next, and with the Leicester Square screening of Take it or Leave it been and gone, our resident Jonathan Young detailed just what went on. Jonathan commented at the time;
“The film still pulls in audience laughs, mostly on knowing character moments like the band arguments, or comedic fails, like the plastering, van driving and packed lunch eating. There was the occasional sing a long and also there was a round of applause over the credits. Rightly so.”
We brought this issue to a close with the news of the first Two Tone record release in 21 years. Yes, you’d read that right. It was out this week, in time for that year’s Record Day, and featured two previously unreleased Dub mixes from The Specials.
10 years ago…
Issue 520 – Sunday 19th April to Saturday 25th April 2009
It’d been a while since we were last treated to a new Madness video, but this week, those of us who purchased the Madness box set (and were then given access to ‘M’) were given access to their latest production – the video to the single of ‘Dust Devil’.
Naturally, views and opinions of the vid had been bouncing around the net since it was uploaded to ‘M’, and you could read a selection of them in this very issue.
Clearly not tiring of an already hectic recording, PR and live performance schedule, the band continued to add yet more gigs to this already packed year.
The day before this issue went out tickets went on sale for Ireland’s “Electric Picnic” – a three day festival that was due to take place over September 4th to the 6th. Madness were booked to appear alongside bands such as Orbital, Echo and the Bunnymen, Billy Bragg, MGMT, Basement Jaxx, Billy Bragg, The Flaming Lips, and many more.
At present only full weekend tickets are available, so if Madness were the only band you were interested in seeing then it was probably not worth your while in spending the pennies.
In this week’s selection of articles we reported on the Sun newspaper’s coverage of the cast of the new Dust Devil single, news of Suggs’ appearance on Australian TV channel ABC, and presented live coverage from the premiere of The Liberty of Norton Folgate film.
We brought this issue to a close with the news that Woody’s Just Giving Page had so far raised £2,437 prior to has taking part in the London Marathon where he was raising funds for the Macmillan Cancer charity. You were urged to donate, and be in with the chance of winning a set of signed Woody drumsticks
15 years ago…
Issue 258 – Sunday 18th April to Saturday 24th April 2004
So, Madness and Morrissey were to appear on the same bill for the first time in 12 years! OK, so admittedly Madness would appear on the Thursday of the Move Festival, and it wouldn’t be until Sunday that Morrissey was due to take to the stage. Perhaps memories of the original Madstock meant that different dates were chosen. We could only speculate.
In last week’s edition of the MIS we reported that The Specials would be playing a gig in the Bristol area. We obtained this information in good faith from the Bristol Evening Post’s `Entertainment` section.
Since then M.O.T drummer and MIS subscriber Dan Fossard had made further enquiries and it turned out that it was only Neville Staples who would be performing.
Regular readers will no doubt be aware that we’d been charting the life of the `M40NSS` number plate Ebay auction. Well, it seemed that like The Terminator the seller “Absolutely would not stop” putting the auction up until someone bought it. With a `buy now` of £15,750, we thought the seller would have a long wait.
Articles in this week’s issue covered the discovery that Jack Dee was a Madness fan, as he took over that week’s edition of Top of The Pops 2 and played “One Step Beyond”, and the heads-up that Suggs’ appearance on The Danny Baker radio show some months back had now been converted into MP3 format and was available for download.
Elsewhere we reported that a new book, “The Chequred Past of 2Tone”, had been released, and featured an intro penned by none other than Mr. Mark Bedford himelf. With a Record Collector magazine review of 5 out of 5, this was one piece of literature you were advised to add to the collection.
This issue rounded-off with links to two video tracks taken at the previous years’ Christmas tour. What was special about these was how unusual it was for the band to perform them. The tracks in question? March of The Gherkins and Wonderful World, Beautiful People.
Rob Hazelby
Sign of the Times
Wilko Johnson and Glenn Tilbrook on stage in Cambridge next week
From the Cambridge Independent web site
Famously rescued from an imminent demise a few years ago, Canvey Island’s finest, Wilko Johnson, is back on the road and will hit The Junction with Glenn Tilbrook.
Not many people can say they’ve survived pancreatic cancer but musical icon and former Dr Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson, known for his distinctive ‘chopping’ playing style and thousand-yard stare, is one of them.
Given the heartbreaking diagnosis in 2012, the then 67-year-old was initially given 10 months to live after rejecting chemotherapy.
He went on a ‘farewell tour’ in 2013 and made a very successful album – Going Back Home – with Roger Daltrey of The Who.
But then, after doctors had expressed surprise that he was still alive, he underwent radical surgery to remove the 3kg tumour in 2014.
“The thing I have to keep reminding myself is that not so long ago, I was written off,” says the down-to-earth star, speaking to the Cambridge Independent from his home in his beloved Southend (“I have to be within spitting distance of the Thames Estuary or who knows what I might evolve into?”).
“I’d written myself off – there was no hope for me, and that was that. And now here I am admiring this wonderful day.
“Miraculous is not too strong a word – here I am when I should have been gone five years ago.”
If you have money burning a hole in your pocket you may be interested to learn that the Big London VIP Record Fair will be taking place on Saturday 27th April.
Held at the Horticultural Halls, 80 Vincent Square, Victoria, London, SW1P 2PE, this is the first big record fair of the spring.
