We begin this week’s edition of the MIS Online newsletter with news of a certain Lee Thompson.
On Sunday 29th March at 3pm the Rio Cinema in London will be presenting “A Voyage Round Lee Thompson”.
According to the advertising blurb, the event promises to be; “An afternoon with Lee Thompson with a Q&A presenting his songs and videos starting with The Prince, Madness’s first single and chart topper and following that with some of his catalogue such as House of Fun, Embarrassment, Uncle Sam, Lovestruck, Drip Fed Fred and NW5 – also some of the music he made with Chrissy Boy and Crunch along with a couple of new creations.
We will also be showing One Man’s Madness the feature length mocu/documentary that charts Lee’s progress from a misspent youth to a misspent adulthood.
Other than his last performance with his Madness mucker’s at Butlin’s this year, this will be the last Q&A for One Mans Madness”.
Tickets can be ordered online at www.riocinema.org.uk, over the phone (020 7241 9415) or in person from the cinema at 107 Kingsland High Street, London, E8 2PB.
If you do manage to get along then please write up a review and send it in!
Continuing on a Lee related note, and we’re pleased to learn that Sky Arts UK and Ireland have leased the film. Naturally, we’ll let you know of screening dates as soon as they’re announced.
Back to Madness, and yet another gig was announced this week. On 20th August the band will be performing at Penthalaz, Switzerland.
And, will the band be performing in Mexico this year? Check out our MIS Feature to find out why there’s much confusion.
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.
19th – York Festival, York (support – Lightning Seeds)
20th – Thetford Forest, Brandon, Suffolk
26th – Plaza De Toros, Murcia, Spain
27th – Valencia, Spain
28th – Festival Jardins de Pedralbes, Barcelona, Spain
July 2020
5th – Hi-Tide Festival, Margate
8th – Henley Festival, Henley on Thames
August 2020
2nd – Tramlines, Hillsborough Park, Sheffield
20th – Penthalaz, Switzerland ** new **
21st – 22nd (date TBC) – Cabaret Vert Festival, Ardennes, France
23rd – E-Werk, Koln, Germany
25th – Tempodrom, Berlin, Germany
November 2020
20th – 23rd – The 10th House of Fun Weekender. The Final Curtain. More info at www.bigweekends.com Tickets on sale now
Lee Thompson
March
29th – A Voyage Round Lee Thompson. The Last Q&A for One Man’s Madness. Held at The Rio Cinema, 107 Kingsland High Street, London, E8 2PB, 020 7241 9415
16th – The Courtyard, Herefordshire’s Centre for the Arts
17th – Bristol, Royal Redgrave Theatre
19th – Exeter, Corn Exchange
20th – Westlands, Yeovil
21st – Aldershot, Princes Hall
22nd – Hertford Theatre
23rd – Forum Theatre (Malvern Theatres)
24th – Warrington, Pyramind and Parr Hall
25th – Lythan St. Annes, Lowther Pavilion
27th – Hexham, Queens Hall Arts Centre
28th – Dundee Rep Theatrre
29th – Aberdeen Music Hall
30th – Edinburgh, The Queen’s Hall
Buy It
New Single by the JoJo Man Band
The band’s single ‘plastic’ is out now. Nick Woodgate and the rest of the group would dearly love as many people as possible to follow and stream the band on Spotify. If you’re not on Spotify they’re on every other digital platform.
Tim Maple, Accy Yeats and Nick appear on the recording.
The JoJo Man Band has had a great response on social media and are on Twitter, FB page, Instagram. You can find the links on the JoJo Man Band website. Please follow.
Roundhouse Merch now in Stock at the Official Madness Store
A very nice T-Shirt and Roundhouse poster could be yours if you pop over to the official Madness online store and place your order. While you’re there, check out the Electric Ballroom poster, too!
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 823 – Sunday 15th February to Saturday 21st February 2015
Earlier this week Union Square Music called the much anticipated Grandslam “The UK’s biggest ever Madness outside tour”.
To ensure that you were in pole position for the full and correct details of The Grandslam we urged you to sign up to the official Grandslam Madness web site as soon as you could.
It wasn’t just Madness who were ramping up their activity as this week we announced new gigs from Deaf School, The Near Jazz Experience and The Silencerz. There was also a benefit going by the name of Henry’s Heroes, who would be appearing at the Half Moon in Putney on the 17th March. The event consisted of Paul Carrack, Nick Lowe, Andy Fairweather – Low, Tim Hinkley, Carol Grimes, Tony O’Malley, Suggs, Graham Parker.
Moving on, and in our MIS Feature we were pleased to reveal the track listing for the forthcoming Woody Woodgate album “In Your Mind”. The 13-track album had an ETA for April 2015.
Next, we reported that the following week would see the launch of the The Clang Group’s new EP on Domino Records. Fronted by the one and only Clive Langer, the launch coincided with a gig at The Islington in North London on the 19th February.
Further on in this issue and we had a second MIS Feature. This piece came courtesy of subscriber Kevin Golby, who reported that he’d become the proud owner of a mixing desk that was previously owned by Madness. Whether it had actually been used by the band he couldn’t say. He asked readers if they could help quantify the information included in his article, and confirmed that the unit had since been cleaned up and looked in great nick. Had the desk ever been used by the band? If you knew we asked you email in with the details.
Elsewhere, and in “Tweets of a Dove” we featured a short tweet from Carl, who posted the following;
“Hope that you are all enjoying 2015 so far, it’s been incredibly busy over the last couple of months, but news is imminent…so come visit www.cathalsmyth.co.uk, and the Cathal Smyth page next week when all will be revealed!
Chas x”
Our outro text continued on a Carl related note as we commented that during the past week Carl Smyth had been in London, taking part in radio interviews. We promised to have more information detailing these in future issues.
10 years ago…
Issue Number 563 – Sunday 14th February – Saturday 20th February 2010
Following last week’s lean news issue we were hopeful that things would be a little different this issue, but it wasn’t to be. We were still scrabbling around for anything newsworthy to report.
Jonathan Young made a return (albeit a temporary one) to the MIS to report on the MIS Radio Players’ Fan Club Cassette release, which he declared as being the silliest Madness album ever.
“Coming from the original fan club, in a cartoon old time radio pose sleeve designed by Suggs, the recording was mainly an attempt at a comedy album, something akin to Monty Python’s 70’s output on The Charisma label, but it had it’s musical moments too.
It was presented as being a cultural recording of light entertainment radio. A parody of dusty Radio 2,3 & 4’s output perhaps at a time when the band were the cool kings of Radio 1 in the pop world.”
Next, it was over to Retro Madness and their latest deal. This week they’d added a selection of 12 different chrome and enamel 2Tone related hard metal badges to their inventory. The badges, were all priced at a very reasonable £2.50 each or less. Bargain!
Following on from Jonathan’s MIS Radio Players’ article he was kind enough to provide us with the lyrics to some of the songs he’d dug out. If you had the desire to sing along to them karaoke style, now was your chance.
Moving on, and we passed the writing duties over to Emma Southerby, who’d kindly sent in a detailed review of the Our House Musical which she’d caught in Ilford only the night before.
Emma rounded off her review by saying;
“All in all a fantastic production and to my mind the modest budget nature of it placed it far closer to the Madness charm portrayed by their early 80s videos, than perhaps the major official productions achieved. The only sad fact is that such an enormous amount of work was done for a show that ultimately was only put on for 4 performances, so I do hope they have plans to take the show to other theatres. The show was a near sell out for every performance (better than even the official UK tour achieved) and so I’m really glad for everyone involved with it, that it was such a massive success.”
We brought this issue to a close with brief details of a Madness European vacation planned by a few fans. Running from the 13th to the 16th of May the tour would take in Paris and Amsterdam, and other interested Maddies were invited to join them.
15 years ago…
Issue number 301 – Sunday 13th February to Saturday 19th February 2005
If the emails we’d received from a number of you were anything to go by, it looked like the MIS Online site revamp was well worth waiting for.
The downloads section was (perhaps not surprisingly) proving to be very popular indeed, as were the archives, where past issues of the bulletins could be downloaded.
It was also nice to see people starting to use the forums, too.
Already there had been some very interesting posts, and the `meets` folder seemed to be proving popular.
MIS Online web site webmaster, Simon Roberts said at that time that he hoped to upload something new to the downloads section every week, in an effort to keep things `interesting`. This weeks new addition to the downloads section was footage of an early `Invaders` gig. There was no sound, but it was wonderful stuff.
A few months back BBC Radio 6 aired a show presented by Pauline Black of The Selecter, entitled ‘The Two Tone Movement’. For those of you who’d missed it, the BBC had kindly made the series available for streaming from their web site. Being the helpful people were are, we saved you the trouble of searching for the footage by listing the relevant links.
Elsewhere in the issue it was time to check the bank balances to see if you’d be able to make it to the Butlins Madness 80’s Weekend, which was to be held on the 25th – 28th February, in Sunny Bognor Regis. At the time of typing, Maddies booked in to go were Richard, Emma & John Spate, Gary Saunders, Clive Bulmer, Thomo (Andy Thomas) and Thomo’s mate Paul.
Moving on to Madness offshoot, Crunch, and we were pleased to announce the support bands for their next gig at The 100 Club on the 1st of April. The band would be supported by Jag and Stiff Naked Fools.
Always out in the field and happy to travel many a mile to review a performance from one of the many Madness tribute outfits was one Jonathan Young. Jon had recently returned from seeing shut Up perform at The Marsden Rattler on the 5th of February, and after having a week or so to recover, was able to give us a detailed lowdown of the evening’s proceedings. Jonathan returned later in the same issue for a review of another Shut Up gig – this time at the Head of Steam in Newcastle City Centre. This boy sure got around!
20 years ago…
Issue number 39 – Sunday 13th February to Saturday 19th February 2000
Wednesday 16th February 2000 would have been an exciting day for Madness fans as the lads had organised a rally to promote the forthcoming single (due out on the 28th of the month). As this was a Madness related event, it was obvious that whatever was planned would be as wild and as wacky as possible. And as such, they had enlisted the help of a red double decker bus, a tank, placards, posters and some bizarre ideas.
All that was missing was the fans. And so, Madness were inviting Maddies from far and wide to come and join them on this exciting day out across London. The only rules for attendees were that everyone had to come wearing black suits, trilbies, black glasses, so that they’d really look the part for Fred’s heavies. Phil Jupitus, GLR and even Capital and Virgin Radio stations were all taking part. To make things more exciting, the BBC were also invited and would be filming the day’s events.
The plans for the day were:
A procession at Speakers Corner, Hyde Park at 1.30pm before moving on to Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square, Gold Square & Marylebone.
Being the generous people we know Madness to be, 40 places were up for grabs on the bus. All you had to do was get in touch with Adele Hargreaves of the TMML and she’d try and get you a place on board.
Things were obviously well underway in the planning stages and the online Madness community were, as you would expect, darn excited.
A few days later, with things out of the band’s and Virgin’s hands the lads had to update their site with a small bulletin:
“Due to unforeseen circumstances the ‘The Vote For Fred’ rally day on Wednesday 23rd February has been cancelled. Thanks for your loyal support… do not fear though, soon coming to the site we have the new Madness video as well as some goodies up to the release of the next single ‘Drip Fed Fred’ due out on the February 28th.”
Adele Hargreaves of the TMML reported back with further information..
“Sadly, due to several unforeseen circumstances, the rally on the 16th February has had to be called off. The councils involved were rather off the idea & now there’s the possibility of a march in the area, as this usually brings traffic to a halt, the police were understandably worried about the havoc that a cortege including a tank & bus & scooter club would cause.
The band are absolutely gutted by this & the girls at Virgin had really poured their hearts into it. Everyone is truly choked by it. But the day will not be a complete loss & I know there are a lot of you still coming, & I have told the band that you are still coming just to help them out, please know that its truly appreciated. I will mail each of those still coming to let you know what we’ll be doing instead.”
So, things all being well, it looks like something would still happen!
Having decided that his local US radio station just weren’t playing enough Madness and supporting the lads during their comeback, subscriber James Clauser decided to do something about it and donate one of his `Johnny The Horse` CDs to the station, with the idea of getting the Magnificent Seven some well-deserved airplay Stateside.
It was too early to get any reactions from the listeners, but if we heard anything we promised to let you know what they thought.
It was time to get those video recorders set-up once again as this coming Friday (February 18th) would see Madness again playing on Channel Four’s `TFI Friday` show. Rumours were also going around suggesting that the almighty Ian Dury would also be making a welcome appearance with the boys to promote the new single, `Drip Fed Fred`.
Unfortunately for our non UK-based Maddies, seeing the boys on their terrestrial TV was almost nigh-on impossible. However, on Tuesday 10th February, the Spanish Maddies were treated to a rare television airing of The Magnificent Seven. Monica Palacin of the Total Madness Mailing List reported that;
“They made two live performances: “Johnny The Horse” and “It must be love”. The first (“JTH”) was good, but they played it very quickly, and I think it could be better. But “It must be love”… PERFECT!,
It’s one of the best live performance that I’ve ever seen.”
Going further afield now, and Ashley Moore told us that;
“Suggs is getting sent by Virgin Radio to Hong Kong to do a roving report on all the goings on in the former British now Chinese run country. Regular reports will be broadcast from Suggs with the majority during Chris Evans`s breakfast show. As far as I know it kicks off Monday 14th till the end of the week.”
On to the articles and we had a number of short articles from Eden Online supplied by Mike Hearne and Complete and Utter Madness. Further on in, and the ever-active `Wozza` had competition details surrounding the sleeve-art for the never-released Suggs single `So Tired`. We had a wonderful story painstakingly typed up by Jerney telling us all how she met Lee Thompson and the rest of the band at one of this year’s Christmas shows. And if all that wasn’t enough, the almighty Vince Foley was back with further words of wisdom in his review of the excellent `Nutty Sounds 3`.
Rob Hazelby
MIS Feature
MIS Mexico – Latest News
Hi and happy Sunday from far away lands!
Here in Mexico we are living a revamp of the Mexican Nuttiness and let me tell you it is quite wonderful! Why? Well Mexican nutty fans are getting ready to attend to their second visit ever from the Camden Cowboys.
We´ve had a strong rumor going on lately as every year ever since they came in for the first time back in 2012. But 3 years in a row from now people has shown they are more than ready and eager to have Madness back to our country.
Following the confirmed tour dates over the USA this year the fans had been dreaming with the idea of having them playing live on a more intimate gig for the Mexican audience or at least to have them playing live in any way as possible. Last week social media got Nuts with that idea indeed. It wasn’t just so many people asking if we as the Mexican MIS knew anything about it but also so many people sharing a Festival Line Up that included Madness on it and the Images containing it seem to be very accurate with bands who had made some hints to be playing the festival for real. Even with the festival organizers haven’t share any details over the bands playing on.
So many Facebook users had assumed at least 3 bands to be playing the at least since one of them being local talent apparently said it in advance to the press and festival itself had put up an add with music of another band from Argentina who is very popular in Mexico a couple of band members of that Argentinian band even shared the “Unofficial line up” on their social media saying fact was they were going to play it. The other band of course was Madness, so people got very excited about it.
The Festival name is Pulso GNP and it is held in Queretaro city a town 3 hours away from Mexico City. The town is very nice with beautiful landscapes and great to have a walk in out at nights at downtown. Everything was very warm already and Wednesday early in the morning (Mexican time) we woke up with the news that the official Madness site had updated the Live Section with that rumored one festival name indeed. So that’s when the Nuts started on I myself got so many messages over my phone and news had been spread already as much as the Mexican MIS media was taken over by fans celebrating the news! It did not take long for us to sum up to spread up the big news indeed. My friend did a videoclip to aim the people and celebrate it and I did myself venture to write a little note to alert fans and keep and aye to the festival ticket purchases since the very early bird tickets of the festival had already gone the very first day they went on sale.
It all went like a bomb with Mexican nutty fans who are very excited about it and within hours from yesterday on to this very noon I’m writing to you. Those lot of Mexican Nutters had passed from excitement to concern since We had just found out the live section date over the Official Website shows no Mexico gig anymore.
I’m worried as hell as everyone else indeed but with the faith that it would be just a matter of days to take that it would be announced again, and we could all be as happy as we were early mid-week. 4 days had passed ever since and not that we had so many followers indeed at the Mexican MIS Facebook thing which I’m not familiar with anymore since I left facebook some years ago but fact is some way or another (I assume people had shared it from page to page) more than 60,000 sights of the news about Madness coming back had taken it for real and a lot of people is now talking about Madness over it again. I can’t even remember when the last time was I had so many visits over the Mexican MIS media probably not even during the first time they played for the 80,000 plus kids at Vive Latino Festival as Suggs has mentioned proudly himself.
Last time they came it was mostly people in their 20´s coming along but 8 years later even it would be a very young generation of Mexican Mad fans attending also to admit most of them coming from their love to the Ska roots of the early days of the band since We are living a revamp of all Ska waves in our country and it had become really popular these days.
I really hope the dream can become true again for us Mexican Madness fans and have The boys back in Mexico for at least the Festival gig. Of course I would love to have them playing live on an more intimate gig but let’s pray and hope that they put down the date on the live section only to update it later once again perhaps at the same time festival tix go on sale again? Let’s hope so.
Cheers “El Sunday”
Sign of the Times
Is That All There is, by Suggs. Inspired by Peggy Lee’s Song
“Is that all there is” by Suggs inspired by Peggy Lee’s Song.
Dimensions: 8×8 inch canvases inside 30x30cm frames.
Painting on canvas
ART IN A BOX II – PAINT YOUR TORCH SONG is a charity art project featuring original artwork by famous names from the worlds of music, comedy and TV. The participating artists each received a bespoke art box containing all the materials needed to create the painting. The theme for the paintings was ‘Torch Songs’ – inspirational songs that we turn to when times are tough and that help guide us out of the dark.
Suggs’ work has been inspired by the song “Is that all there is” by Peggy Lee.
National treasure, Suggs (aka Graham McPherson) is one of British music’s most well-known personalities.
Loved for his role as the lead singer of Madness, his many hats include presenting on radio and television, acting in films, and recording and performing as a solo artist.
Over a varied and eclectic career, standout moments have included performing live with Madness on the roof of Buckingham Palace for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and playing at the closing ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics.
As a patron of Children in Need, Suggs has frequently appeared on the charity’s annual fundraising TV marathon, while in recent years he has also been an active supporter of Cancer Research UK and Pancreatic Cancer UK.
Donated by
Suggs
The Cause
CALM
The Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) is leading a movement against male suicide – the single biggest killer of men under 45 in the UK. CALM runs a free and confidential helpline and webchat – 7 hours a day, 7 days a week – for anyone who needs to talk about life’s problems, as well as supporting those bereaved by suicide and working in the community to reengage with people before they reach the point of crisis. The charity actively campaigns via the media to spread awareness of suicide and challenge male stereotypes, using cultural touch points like art, music, sport and comedy.
Together for Short lives
Together for Short Lives is the UK’s leading charity for the 49,000 children living with life-limiting conditions. The charity wants to help every child and family living with a life-limiting or life-threatening condition get the very best care and support they can so they can make the most of every moment together. Many of these children have complex conditions and need specialist care 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Together for Short Lives runs a helpline to support families and champions improvements in palliative care, supporting a network of children’s hospices across the UK
The auction runs until 10th March. To place a bid go to:
Hear what Fatboy Slim and Suggs have to say about playing at Dreamland this summer.
Iconic ska band Madness and world-famous DJ Fatboy Slim will headline Hi-Tide festival at the Margate amusement park in July.
Speaking about when he was approached to play Suggs said: “The first thing I thought when I was approached was – well, I am a vintage theme park and I’m in a vintage theme park band.”
Fatboy then chipped in: “It’s always been on my bucket and spade list.”
The pair are looking forward to performing at the same festival together.
Suggs said: “We’ve known each other for all our professional lives but not played together since 1985.
Just before we go we’ve got a quick correction to pass your way. In last weeks’ MIS we gave you the incorrect Stateside Madness Twitter link. It should have read: https://mobile.twitter.com/StatesideMDNSS
Get yourselves signed up for the latest news on the forthcoming US tour!
