It seems to have been a quiet one in the world of Madness as this week next to no news has landed in the old MIS mailbox. This is despite the band performing three gigs in Spain; Madrid on the 4th July, Galicia on the 5th and Barcelona on the 6th.
If you did manage to get along to any or all of these three gigs then please send in a review and let the rest of us know what we missed.
With a few days off to recover, the 40 years of Madness tour gets underway once again on the 12th when the band perform at Vivary Park, Taunton with two amazing support acts; The Lighting Seeds and the one and only Chris Difford of Squeeze. This should be one heck of a gig.
On to this week’s issue, and with the lack of Madness news over the past seven days, it’s a bit of a lean one, unfortunately. That said, we do have a small MIS Feature for you where yet another pillar of the Madness community is celebrating a landmark birthday.
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.
12th- Vivary Park, Taunton (Suppt: The Lightning Seeds and Chris Difford)
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
Suggs
Saturday 3rd August – DJ set at Dreamland, Margate with Max Romeo and Trojan Sound System. More info at: https://www.dreamland.co.uk ** new **
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, 10, 15 and 20 years ago this week.
5 years ago…
Issue Number: 791 – Sunday 6th July to Saturday 12th July 2014
This week we began with news of a message from Lee Thompson, ahead of the Ska Orchestra’s next concert. In the video our favourite saxophonist talked during a recent trip to Ronnie Scott’s jazz club, and ahead of the Brixton Jamm event.
The video was just over a minute in length, but beautifully shot and looked extremely professional.
New gigs added to our “Showtimes” section this week were for the Near Jazz Experience on July 29th at Indo, London and for The Magic Brothers at The Big One 3 in Sandford, Dorset on the 14th November.
Next, it was over to “Sign of the Times” and it was here you could win tickets to see Madness in Nottingham. All you had to do to enter was to answer “How many members make up Madness”. A tough one!
Also in this section Suggs was interviewed by the Daily Express where he revealed what his favourite photo was one showing him and Anne on their wedding day in December 1981. The wedding was held at St Luke’s Church in Kentish Town, north London.
Our next section was “Live and Intensified” where we had a full review of the recent Lee Thompson Ska Orchestra performance at Glastonbury plus review and set list of Madness’ performance at Tivoli, Holland.
Further on we updated you on our “Mad Header” tournament where fans voted on their favourite Madness album. The winner would be hailed as the best Madness album of all time. This was our last semi final round and the big news was that Absolutely was out! Yes, the previous holder of the best ever Madness album was gone!
We brought this issue to a close with the news that this week the planned Madness gig in Vienna had to be cancelled and rescheduled. A minor illness meant that one of the band members was unable to travel at the last minute.
A new date for Vienna was due to be announced soon. When it was made available we promised to publish the details in a subsequent issue of the MIS.
10 years ago…
Issue Number 531 – Sunday 5th July – Saturday 11th July 2009
It was less than two weeks to go until Madstock 5, and in an effort to make the event where fellow fans could meet up with others, Jon Young posted up his mobile number for you to use on the day to assist with finding fellow Maddies.
If you didn’t fancy calling you just had to look out for the blue Madness banner with yellow lettering amongst the crowd.
Those who were in London prior to the event were also given the heads-up on a Mad Meet at the Dublin Castle, which was due to take place the day before Madstock 5. Well, if you were in town it would have been rude not to, right?
Moving on, and this weekend saw the launch of yet another fantastic internet based service for Madness fans, to compliment the numerous other resources already available on the web. Located at www.retro-madness.co.uk this new website provided fans with the opportunity to get hold of hundreds of different official Madness collectables from the past 30 years, all under one roof.
The brain child of Madness fans Emma Southerby and Chris CP, this new venture has come about following their realisation that having been together for nearly 10 years, retaining two comprehensive Madness collections was excessive! Consequently, Emma’s collection was to be gradually sold off via this ‘Retro’ Madness Shop, thus enabling other fans to pick up items that were deleted and disappeared without trace many years ago.
With Madness’ Glastonbury performance televised, it was only a matter of time before the more tech-savvy out there ripped and uploaded the footage to the net, and we were pleased to say that we were not disappointed. Links appeared on TheBox, Dimeadozen and ISOHunt, all accompanied by an MIS disclaimer to point out that the uploads were nothing to do with us.
Axecam news now, and first was the axecam, then came the random rehearsal footage. Now things had taken a turn for the weird, as Chrissy Boy had started to use his camera for short, 5 to 10 second meet and greet the stars clips.
Footage included artists such as Damon, Graham and Alex from Blur, Jools Holland, Lynval Golding, and many more. Yes, they were odd, but they were also rather amusing.
On to gig news, and it was revealed that Madness were one of the bands booked to play the Isle of Wight Festival. Not only that, but they’d be headlining the event.
Elsewhere, and while many of you had been enjoying a lazy Sunday, Paul Rodgers had once again been compiling the latest batch of Madness stats, facts and figures. In this week’s update Paul revealed that Folgate had fallen from 5 to 7 in the Indie album chart, and that Complete Madness had climbed from 14 to 11 in the same one.
In the main album charts Folgate fared better, climbing from 75 to 59. Perhaps the Glastonbury Coverage was starting to pay off.
15 years ago…
Issue Number 269 – Sunday 4th July – Saturday 10th July 2004
This past week seemed to have played host to a small `blip` in Madness related news, as we were pleased to announce that for the first time in a number of weeks our intro actually featured some items of news!
Those of you hadn’t been over to the official Madness web site in a few weeks probably wouldn’t have been aware that a certain Mark Bedford had updated his section of the site with a wonderful tribute to the legendary Pathway Studios. It’s was a fantastic article, and one that you’ve been mad to miss.
Also on the site, but this time on the news page, were hints that further Dangermen gigs may yet take place. Here’s that message in full:
“DANGER MEN ARE GONE!
A SPECIAL THANKS TO ALL OUR VIEWERS.
WE ‘LL BE BACK SOON”.
Moving on, and …
Just before the issue was due to go out news reached us revealing that work on the next Madness Weekender had just begun. Here’s what co-organiser, Vince Carden had to say;
“People have been asking about the timing of the next weekender and having spoken to Cheryl, we have a come to an agreement that early next year (February or March) we shall do one. It will be in a different format from the previous one and when the plans get going we will let all fans know through the MIS”.
It’d been all quiet in the One Step Behind camp for a couple of months, but that came to an end when the band’s Brendan Phipps contacted us with a mass of news – the two most exciting pieces being the band being filmed in Holland at The Ahoy Hall for a big tribute concert, and the other that the band would be appearing on a CD covermount for the Daily Star, with their Market Trader single.
With the Move Festival taking place this Thursday, we decided to give those going a quick information burst consisting of band links, transport information, and even pricing details for those still thinking about getting tickets to the open air concert, which was due to take place at the Lancashire County Cricket Club.
The original Young Gifted and Black album had proven to be a favourite amongst the Madness fanbase, so when news of a sequel album reached us we went off to find more information. Imaginatively entitled Young Gifted and Black 2, this double album featured classic after classic, and even now, some ten years on, is still well worth adding to your collection.
20 years ago…
Issue Number 7 – Sunday 4th July – Saturday 10th July 1999
We started off this issue with the news that the final episode of Chris Evan’s chat show TFI Friday had featured Madness not once, but twice, with live versions of ‘Lovestruck’ and ‘Nightboat to Cairo’.
What a great way to finish off the run of a TV show.
Earlier guests on that evening’s show had complained about the lack of air conditioning in the studio, and this was plain to see with Suggs and Cathal sweating buckets on stage. A certain Mr. Thompson obviously had more brains as he was keeping fairly still and cool with a pair of designer shades and (get this!) a sombrero.
Chris Evans continued the Madness love-in on his Virgin Radio show, where he’d been plugging `Lovestruck`, and had declared it his CD of the Week.
We’d had `Nut Inc` and it’s excellent (but slightly irregular) issue releases from Stuart Wright, and we’d had the recently released `Mad Not Mad` `zine from Ian Taylor up in Bolton. Well, now it was time to announce another `zine in the form of `Ska-Mad`. We had no idea what the fanzine was like, but gave readers the details of where they could go to order it for a mere £2.00.
Onto the articles, and we started off with Andrew Langmead’s transcription of the Lovestruck lyrics. “I’ve had a go a deciphering the lyrics to Lovestruck”, commented Andrew. “Anyone wanting to offer any corrections is more than welcome, some of the words are a bit strange”.
Looking back at his transcription fifteen years on, we have to say that he did a fantastic job!
Elsewhere this issue we featured an article from the Evening Times of Glasgow, where they ran a story about Madness going back into the studio to record their next album. Unfortunately, unlike the fans, the paper declared that the name of the album was as yet unknown.
Next-up, and after many, many repeats of old and used footage for the regular VH1 Madness Days, it looked as if we’d be getting something new.
On Thursday 12th July, VH1 would be hosting yet another Madness Day, but this time it would include never before seen footage!!
Madness were in the VH1 studio on Thursday 24th June to record a set and some other surprises!
We finished off this week’s issue with a promise to subscribers that the MIS web site would be fully up and running by the time the next issue landed in their mailboxes.
Rob Hazelby
MIS Feature
10 Years of Retro Madness
This weekend is the 10th anniversary of ‘Retro-Madness’ the full internet store of 3500+ official items of Madness memorabilia from the past 40 years is open until midnight Monday, we will then be operating just a slim line version of the store until November. All items purchased will be posted by 5.30pm on Wednesday.
2019 is not only the 40th year of Madness, the 20th year of MIS Online, but it’s also the 10th year of Retro-Madness! The name ‘Retro-Madness’ came into being just ten years ago with our internet store opening for the very first time on 7th July 2009.
We’ve been open 24/7 ever since, without even a single hour of downtime! These days for a quite a few months each year we run a slimmed down version of the store to stop it from taking over our lives completely, but being our birthday weekend, for this weekend only, the website is fully up and running with approx 3500 different official Madness items for sale of which over 1000 items are also on Ebay (remember everything we have on ebay can also be found on our website and our website prices are always slightly cheaper than our ebay prices).
After this weekend we will be operating just the slim line store again until November. The full internet store will be open until midnight this Monday (8th July) and all orders will be posted by 5.30pm on Wednesday (10th July).
As always, we ask that if you attend any of the 40th anniversary tour gigs you knock up a review and send it in. We’d be more than happy to include your thoughts in a future issue.
