Good evening and welcome to this latest issue of the MIS.
Following on from the recent news where we announced that Nick Woodgate’s latest single had finally seen a release, we’re pleased to reveal that his latest album entitled “The Music” will be out this coming Friday (9th August)
Nick tells us that the album will be available on Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud, iTunes and Amazon Music.
All being well, Nick is planing to produce a short run of the album on CD around late August,
You can find Nick on Twitter at @nick_woodgate, so if you like what you hear then please let him know.
On to this week’s issue and we have an update on Suggs’ cheese in our MIS Feature, news of the Prince hitting 40, the latest roundup of forthcoming Madness and Madness related gigs in our Showtimes section, news on the forthcoming album release from The Simmertones and much more besides.
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.
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
The Near Jazz Experience
August 13th, Chat’s Palace, 42-44 Brooksbys Walk, E9 6DF, London The Silencerz
August 10th, Blackheath. Free gig!
Buy It
“The Music”; the new Album From Nick Woodgate ** new **
Following on from the recent news where we announced that Nick Woodgate’s latest single had finally seen a release, we’re pleased to reveal that his latest album entitled “The Music” will be out this coming Friday (9th August)
Nick tells us that the album will be available on Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud, iTunes and Amazon Music.
All being well, Nick is planing to produce a short run of the album on CD around late August,
You can find Nick on Twitter at @nick_woodgate, so if you like what you hear then please let him know.
The Simmertones’ new Album – “Ten Feet Tall” ** New **
As we await the next Madness album (whenever that may be!), we’ve been on the lookout for something to keep us going during this lean period. Thankfully, MIS subscriber and Simmertones bassist, Del Anning kindly sent us a promo copy of the new Simmertones album “Ten Feet Tall”, which comes out this Friday; 9th August.
Featuring a whopping 13 tracks, it’s 46 glorious minutes of Summer on a disc. The album’s so much fun to listen to that you’ll have a massive smile on your face as you go through each track.
The track listing for the forthcoming album is as follows:
We’ve been listening to the album regularly for the past few weeks, and our personal favourite tracks are:
Travelling Man – A bouncy ska/pop track about the joys of being on the road
Stand Firm – Jump-up Ska which bounces its way through a message to anyone who’s been through dark times.
The Place That I Know – A lookback on childhood with a catchy chorus and a cool groove.
Do yourself a favour and get this ordered. You won’t regret it.
If you need further persuading of the band’s musical pedigree…
Between 2016-2018 The Simmertones’ performed at numerous events including The London International Ska Festival, The Looe Music Festival, Bestival, Camp Bestival and Madness’ House of Fun Weekender (twice!!).
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 795 – Sunday 3rd August to Saturday 9th August 2014
The wait was almost over, as this coming Wednesday (Aug 6th) would see the long awaited release of the Specialized Mad Not Cancer album.
To whet your appetite this issue featured a mass of track reviews from the one and only Graham Yates as well as a dash through a selection of tunes on the album from our resident co-editor Jonathan Young.
Over in our regular Live and Intensified section we had a link to the Near Jazz Experience radio programme when the band appeared the previous evening on Resonance 104.4 FM Clear Spot. The interview included discussion about the influence of art school on music.
Also in this section was an excellent write up of the recent Lee Thompson Ska Orchestra appearance at the legendary Wickerman Festival, courtesy of subscriber Stephen Sturrock. Commenting in his review, Stephen wrote;
“Between songs there was a shout for Night Boat and later on One Step Beyond which Lee jokingly said F#*k off a few times and asked for the bloke that shouted it to be removed from the tent.”
Naturally, with the release of the long awaiting Specialized Mad Not Cancer album just around the corner, the majority of the issue was filled with track reviews from Graham Yates and Jonathan Young. Looking back on this write-ups now it’s clear it must have taken the pair many, many hours to put together. There’s much content here.
Next, we gave the Mad Chat community a good plug. The Mad Chat admin were asking you to promote the group. In return you could be in the running for a whole host of prizes including Madness artwork, an Embarrassment T-Shirt, and 10 x Suggs That Close bookmarks.
We brought this week’s edition of the MIS to a close by revealing that Jonathan Young was attending tonight’s Crunch! gig, and that we were certain that next week’s issue would contain a lengthy and detailed lowdown of just what went in. Of course, if you were attending we also asked for you to send in your thoughts on the gig.
10 years ago…
Issue Number 535 – Sunday 2nd August – Saturday 8th August 2009
The issue got underway with the news that the band has recently appeared on ITV’s daytime breakfast show, GMTV for a performance of new single, Sugar and Spice and a brief interview on the GMTV sofa. The band were missing Carl, who was apparently was in Ibiza.
The boys talked about the filming of the video for the new single, which was completed the previous day. They answered questions on the new album, Madstock and their fans and Lee revealed that his two grandchildren appeared in the new video.
Moving on, and digitalspy reported that Suggs’ daughters were close to signing their very own record deal. According to the web site the duo were planning to start their own pop careers.
Suggs commented “They’re on the verge of getting a record deal. They’re starting to take it seriously and are getting some notice. They had a song in the film Adulthood.”
In our big gig review of the issue subscriber Stuart Wright gave us a detailed write-up of the recent Los Palmas 6 gig at the Splash FM Festival, held on the 25th of July.
Stuart finished his review by telling us; “If you’re looking for an instant Madness fix while the real deal are resting, then check out the LP6 gig guide and get yerself down to see em if they’re in your neck of the woods. A truly tasty outfit who give their all.”
Bargain news now, and for those who had yet to splash out on the Liberty of Norton Folgate album, iTunes were selling it for a mere £4.49! It had the 15 tracks from the standard release of the album, plus a bonus of the Radio Edit of Dust Devil and ‘Suggs and Bedders track by track’ weighing in at 13 minutes 45.
On to Blackpool news, and we reported that Madness would be switching the lights on at this year’s Blackpool Illuminations, which this year would take place on Friday 4th September. The gig was open to all, but on a strictly first come, first served basis.
Suggs news now, and this week we learned that our favourite frontman was set to take over Digital Radio station 6 Music for a month of Sundays from the 2nd of August.
Suggs said: “The holidays are upon us and I’m coming to 6 Music to bring listeners the summer that hasn’t really happened yet…”
Following this, we passed the MIS baton over to Paul Rodgers for yet another one of his legendary Chart Lowdowns. This week Paul covered chart info for Norton Folgate, which was still suffering chart-wise, due to the fact that a massive 9 Michael Jackson albums were also riding high in the charts following his recent passing.
We brought this issue to a close with a selection of photo and video links provided by fans who recently attended the Madstock 5 concert.
15 years ago…
Issue number 273 – Sunday 1st August – Saturday 7th August 2004
With the MIS list server still experiencing problems, the only way for the majority of subscribers to get hold of this issue was to download it from the MIS web site.
At the time the MIS list server was located in Canada, and although we’d been trying to contact the server maintainer we were still waiting to hear back.
With the technical info out of the way, we started off the articles with an article from subscriber Andy Thomas, who had been to see tribute band ‘One Step Below’ a week or so back, and had contacted us with a full lowdown of proceedings.
Next-up, we had news in from the official Madness web site revealing that the Our House musical would appear on DVD later in the year, and was now available to purchase from the now defunct Woolworths web site.
Moving on, and co-maintainer Jon Young regaled us with a detailed write-up of his recent visit to The Dublin Castle, and the latest performance of The Dangermen, which saw Jon rush straight from work to get down there in time. So much of a rush, that Jon actually turned up to the gig in his work clothing. Now that’s dedication for you!
The full set list for the night (possibly not in this order!) was:
Dangermen
It Mek
Shame & Scandal
Girl
Keep Me Hanging on
Skylarking
Taller Than You
Lose a Good Thing
Wonderful World Beautiful People
The Prince
So Much Trouble
Israelites
John Jones
Iron Shirt
Dreader Than Dread
Madness
Pappas Got a brand new Pig Bag
The gig may have been over, but Jon still had more rushing around to come;
“Nearing midnight the reality of having to be at work for 8am ( & north of London) hits me. I crash at the Camden Lock Hotel but only for 5 hours.
Then it was the cold light of day and the tube at 5am. Finally making it to work for 9am with yesterday’s paint barely dry on the walls.
Office boredom is no longer a problem though as I still had trumpet sounds happily ringing in my brain”.
Elsewhere in the issue we had news in from Andy Thomas, who reported that a Christmas tour was looking likely. How did he know? It turned out that a friend of his had been booked to work at The Cardiff International Arena on the 18th of December, as Madness would be playing there.
Keen to get Crunch! back together for another live performance, fans Becky Lane and Graham Hewson started to look into a way of getting them on stage for one night only. After working things out, it was decided that they would need 100 fans paying a very reasonable fiver.
Not only would they get Crunch!, but support would come from the one and only MOT.
Before Bex and Graham continued to push this forward they wanted your thoughts and opinions to see if this was worth investigating.
We finished off this week’s issue with a heads-up of MOT’s next gig, which was due to take place at The Underworld, Camden Town, on Friday the 14th of August.
20 years ago…
Issue number 11 – Sunday 1st August – Saturday 7th August 1999
It’d been a fortnight since `Lovestruck` hit the UK music stores, and this week saw Madness fans from further afield pick up their copies (albeit on import) and justifiably praise or criticise the new Madness single. The general opinion seemed to be continuing, that this was one great track which boded well for the forthcoming album which had a pencilled-in release date of October 11th.
Still on the subject of `Lovestruck`, it seemed the expected climb from the previous week’s position of number 10 was not to be. Just before this issue went to press, Simon Roberts of `Not The Madness Mailing List` website reported that the single has dropped to number 20.
This was still a highly commendable chart position, and we felt that the band should be congratulated for making such an impact on today’s largely un-interesting charts.
News in from Madness fan Alan Redpath revealed that his web site had just been updated, and now spanned a staggering 664 pages of Madness related material! (I believe that much of the material from the In Print sections have since been absorbed into the Madness Central web site).
Moving on, and a posting from music365.com announced that Madness had just announced their UK tour dates for December 1999. Announced dates were as follows:
Cardiff International Arena (December 15), Brighton Centre (16), Bournemouth (17), Manchester Evening News Arena (18), Birmingham N.E.C (19), Newcastle Arena (20) and London Wembley Arena (22 & 23).
With the album due for release in October, this tour would be the first place that many people would hear the new songs played live.
We finished off this week’s issue with a post from subscriber Elizabeth Raskin, who had kindly put herself forward to help Stateside Maddies get hold of recordings of VH1’s Madness Day. With 4 hours of PAL to NTSC conversion and two tapes per order, it would set US fans back a very reasonable (considering the work required!) $12, with postage and packing taking it up to $16.
The post from Elizabeth announced the deadline for American Madness fans to get their orders in. Once the deadline was up, the orders would go in.
Rob Hazelby
MIS Feature
The Suggs Cheese
Whey You!
Yes the lead singer of our favourite band is now a dairy product.
Never mind Gladness the beer that Madness made, with hops of fun.
Never mind those lyrics about Eggs, Bacon, Beans and a Fried Slice.
Never even mind the monster sound itself being destincly nutty in flavour.
Topping all those mad tastes comes the new Suggs Cheese.
Graham McPherson is actually Microbotically speaking part of a fermented curd now.
Isn’t that just crackers?
Now If my good friend Vince Carden was writing this feature, and we were in the page’s of the old Madness Unsugged fanzine then I’m sure the next joke would be about how this isn’t the first time Suggs has been Cheesy, after all he presented Night Fever for several years on channel five.
But no, today we are more seriously concerned with a visit to The Victoria and Albert Museum and after visiting that ghost train suit, and Thommo’s red white and blue olympic saxophone in the theatre performance section upstairs that you all already know about, It’s time to head down to the ground floor and pay to enter the exhibition area called “Food: Bigger than the plate”.
“This bold exhibition explores current experiments at every stage of the food system – from compost to table.”
We are wandering in past the toilet designs that bizarrely start the exhibition shouldn’t they be at the end? Especially if the cheese turn out not so palatable!) There is even a toilet made of solid cow manure. Now there is a crap sculpture if ever it needed saying, you see It’s a very experiment exhibition here.
But we are heading to discover the wonderful news that Suggs is a Cheddar.
Good man! That’s England’s most popular cheese type after all. Seem’s he has beaten Alex James of Blur to that cheese type leaving the country house man a Cheshire cheese. Well he does smile a lot that guy.
We find the display, where black and white photographs of each celebrity are displayed, underneath them in sealed glass fronted oven type containers the cheeses themselves are on display. Full, fat, pale and round. Not a nice way to describe our Suggsy, but yes here he is in fermented form in a circular slab of comestible congealed milk. Most specifically it’s bacteria from his ear that has been sampled and used to create the curled Madness we are witnessing.
Exhibition co-curator Catherine Flood told The Guardian in an article linked in a previous MIS…
“Many of the microbes involved in cheesemaking bear a close relationship to those found on human skin,” Ms Flood noted. The similarities between cheese aromas and body odours are no coincidence. Whether we find these odours disgusting or delicious has a great deal to do with context and psychology.”
So would you eat it? Well no one has yet. These cheese have not be offered up for human consumption yet, the scientific jury still out on wether the methoding would pass uk food safety laws.
The debate of the question is surely part of the curiosity, however much disgust reading this brings you. The cheese you normally scoff down of course contains the stomach bacteria of a bovine animal, is the human touch really all that weirder? Haven’t some of you concert goers in intimate gigs already perhaps been in contact with the bands nutty biology through the air that normal human proximity brings?
Sure as hell then any of you, if pushed to choose a taste would surely still choose Suggs ear Cheddar on your plate, over the comte’ cheese here that was created from Heston Bloomentile’s pubes. Of that we surely all agreed.
Because of these few celebrity choices here, to us it’s Suggs that is the big cheese.
Jonathan Young
(With Thanks to Nicky Elkins).
Sign of the Times
The Scottish Post Report on Madness Returning to Edinburgh
It’s never easy to predict the Scottish weather. But Suggs is confident his band’s forthcoming gig at Princes Street Gardens will be warmer than their last visit there.
Madness were part of Edinburgh’s Hogmanay celebrations at the same venue and the frontman has only recently thawed out.
“I’ve never been so cold in my life,” he laughed.
“My abiding memory is being told not to swear, because we were live on the BBC, and it’s the first thing I did when I walked out on stage because it was so freezing.
I remember when we got to our hotel. There was a bagpipe player and all these people staying there who were visiting from around the world to experience New Year in Edinburgh.
It started snowing and it couldn’t have been any more perfect.
We then availed ourselves of the hospitality afterwards.
You can’t beat New Year’s Eve in Scotland”.
Madness are a go-to band for New Year celebrations, but their party sound is also called upon when society needs a pick-me-up. “In times of austerity, that’s when we seem to be on the rise,” he continued.
“I hate the idea, but it is a strange phenomenon.
You look back at 1979 and Thatcher and the ‘no such thing as society’ talk, and then in the 1980s when they were picking on poor people.
We set about trying to cheer people up.
We were pigeon-holed as a happy-go-lucky novelty band, but we wrote songs to help people. We weren’t performing idiots.
It brings you back down to earth when you hear from people who have been helped by your music or that it changed their attitudes to life. We all grew up with nothing, so it’s a great privilege.
We try to write about the struggles of everyday life in a light-hearted way, but the songs, tunes like Embarrassment and My Girl, aren’t a joke.”
Times might be difficult again in Britain, but Suggs remains upbeat.
“This country goes up and down through lots of different times, but I’m optimistic and my kids feel the same,” he said. Suggs – real name Graham McPherson – never thought he would still be on stage singing Madness songs at the age of 58.
I found a photo of us recently with The Specials and The Selecter on a beach in Brighton for our drummer’s 18th birthday,” he continued.
“We were kids and none of us could foresee we would still be doing this 40 years later.
I did an interview with Neil Tennant back when he was a journalist for Smash Hits magazine and I said I wouldn’t be singing Baggy Trousers as a 30-year-old. I was 20 then. Time flies.”
Suggs still fondly remembers a gig the band played along the other end of the M8 during the 1980s.
“We were playing the Barrowland and I had my sheepskin coat stolen from The Saracen Head pub,” he said.
“I remember my mate got a car from somewhere, it had no doors on it, and we drove around Glasgow.
It was pouring with rain and all these kids were standing outside the venue, their T-shirts getting soaked. So we decided to let them in early and do a matinee show for them.
I remember all these special times, of course I do.”
Madness, Summer Sessions, Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh, August 18
Time
The Prince turns 40 this coming weekend. On Aug 10th at 11am Mr Thompson tells us he is appearing at the British Boot Company in Camden (formerly Holts) for a signing event. We believe he will be signing his “One Man’s Madness” DVD for fans. Come get one. NO CAMERAS PLEASE. This has been requested.
Expect to see him at The Silencerz that evening, too. It’s a free gig at The Royal Standard in Blackheath. There are some commemorative Prince 40 stickers to be had if he hasn’t slapped them all on lampposts like a 1979 fly post! See you there.
Much bigger celebrations are to come of course that are suitably well beyond the humble 2Tone beginnings. Keep reading future issues of the MIS for more info.
Whereas, when it comes to bringing back The Prince, we’ll shortly have news of a return to record, which will be available first to our MIS XX competition winners.
XL and 2T. It’s a continually exciting year for us Madheads.
