Hello and a warm welcome to this week’s edition of the MIS Online Newsletter.
If you’ve yet to read the recent Madness book “Before we was we” you may be interested to learn that this coming April the paperback version will see a release. Not only that, but on Tuesday 7th April the band will be appearing at Camden’s Dublin Castle pub for a very special Q&A and signing session. Check out our “Showtimes” section for more information.
With Christmas well and truly done and dusted and those bank accounts hopefully on their way to full recovery you made have been considering making further additions to your Madness collections. If that’s the case then get yourselves over to the official Madness online store where at present you can bag yourself a whopping 30% off everything apart from music. See our “Buy it” section for all the details.
Finally, after weeks of “will they? won’t they?”, it’s now official. Madness will be performing at Pulso GNP, Queretaro, Mexico on 30th May. This is fantastic news for our fellow fans based in that part of the globe and we look forward to receiving details of the forthcoming Mexico Madmeet as the gig gets closer!
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.
7th – Before we was we Special Q&A and signing section at the Dublin Castle. Tickets here: https://t.co/dZTZ1zjHrG?amp=1 ** new **
May 2020
21st – House of Blues, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
22nd – Manhattan Centre, New York, USA
25th – Punk Rock Bowling 2020, Las Vegas, USA.
27th – Fox Theatre, Oakland, California, USA
30th – Pulso GNP, Queretaro, Mexico ** new **
June 2020
13th – Westonbirt Arboretum, Tetbury
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
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
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 825 – Sunday 1st March to Saturday 7th March 2015
You joined us this week as Madness hit number one in the charts. The music charts? Unfortunately not. Instead, MIS regular Paul Rodgers, reported that Madness were number one in Ticketmaster’s “most searched artists” category. As he rightly said at the time “Clearly the Grandslam message has reached a very wide audience”.
On the subject of the Madness Grandslam, yet another video had been produced to help promote the event. It wouldn’t win any awards, and it did look like it was quickly put together, but what it did do was demonstrate just how many gigs this forthcoming tour would feature.
This weeks MIS Feature covered Nick Woodgate and the release of his brand new EP entitled “Hope”. Coming hot on the heels of his debut album “Morning”, this 6-track production featured the following tracks;
All Of You
1966
Every Day
Looby
See You Next Weekend
You Can Run You Can Hide
Proceeds from the sale of the EP would go to the Rethink Mental Illness Charity.
Moving on to Live and Intensified, and thanks to the typing efforts of the one and only Daren West MIS readers were treated to a detailed account of the recent Silencerz gig at the Black Horse, Barnet on 21st Feb. Daren rounded off his review by commenting;
“The set as always with The Silencerz is fantastic albeit shorter than usual with a still impressive 17 set of songs they finish at the 11pm curfew with Sunny Afternoon.
Much to everyone’s delight a stage hand says they can play 2 more. The keyboard players shout of No No No gets played followed These Boots Were Made For Walkin’ which is timely cos as soon as they’ve finished playing I’m heading off down the road just in time to catch the last bus home.
Yet another superb show by The Silencerz – well done fellas!”
We brought this issue to a close with the news that media student Natalie Fitzgerald had been in touch to tell us that a documentary about the Dublin Castle she’d produced as part of her course in Uni had now been uploaded to YouTube.
Issue Number 565 – Sunday 28th February – Saturday 6th March 2010
Following last week’s announcement revealing that the band were due to play York Racecourse on the evening of 23th July, further performances had now been added to the list.
The band would now also be playing:
– T in The Park, Scotland, on the 11th of July
– Quex Park, Margate, on the 24th of July
– Epsom Racecourse, on the 29th of July
– Newmarket Racecourse, on the 6th of August
Next, we moved on the Daily Star web site who reported that a £2 million advert produced using Government money and starring Suggs, had been blasted a waste of time and money by other groups and organisations.
Ministers insisted the advert had led to an upsurge in the numbers of people using the DirectGov web site, and that this could in turn lead to savings of up to £400 million.
Following this we took a look at the latest round of offers currently running on the Retro Madness web site. It turned out that there weren’t any new offers to report of, but a number of previous sales were still running. These included brand new copies of the Nutty Boys / Crunch! cassette single of “It’s OK, I’m a Polieman” and CDs of the last five Madness singles.
The cassette could be purchased for £1.99 including p+p, while the CD package was £29.99 including p+p. Not bad at all!
How did you fancy getting your child a part in the production of Madness musical Our House? Well, in this issue you had a chance. Paul Rodgers reported that the White Rock Theatre, Hastings, were looking to hold their Summer Youth Project, a production of the Our House Musical, and they wanted children aged 8 to 18 to take part. All you had to do was get your child along to the auditions.
It was over to Spike of Mad Inc Films next, as he showed off his latest audio visual production – Lee Thompson singing The Prince, at a recent Like Father Like Son gig. The video’s still available, and can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYxjhRacHZE
We brought this issue to a close with news from Emma Southerby, who reported that a few tickets for the Songs in the Key of London gig were still available. Taking place at London’s Barbican, this was co-curated by Chris Difford (Squeeze) and featured Blaine Harrison (Mystery Jets), Robyn Hitchcock, Jools Holland, James Hunter, Derek Hussey, Becky Jacobs & Mike Lindsay (of Tunng), Natty, Rico Rodriguez, Chas Smash (Madness), Peggy Sue, Andy Serkis (Ian Dury – Sex Drugs & Rock & Roll, Gollum – Lord of the Rings) & Chaz Jankel, Suggs (Madness), Glenn Tilbrook, Kathryn Williams & more.
15 years ago…
Issue number 303 – Sunday 27th February to Saturday 5th March 2005
We started off this issue with the news that Madness retailers ‘madness4sale’ (these days known as Retro Madness) had won the tender to market everything that remained of Tiger Aspect’s merchandise and promotional goods left over from the Our Hour Musical.
The aim of this mass purchase by ‘madness4sale’ was to give fans the best possible deals on the remaining merchandise, with most items being listed at less than half their original price.
A mega pack was also available comprising an Our House carrier bag containing all 6 of the different T Shirts at your choice of size together with a Mug, Programme, Cloth Patch, 2 Keyrings, 6 Flyers and an Enamel Badge all for just £59.95 (normal price over £120).
Elsewhere, we featured an exclusive question and answer session with Bedders. These originally appeared on the skadancecraze.com web site, and it was there we urged you to go if you wanted to read the full interview.
This week Virgin Radio had been busy promoting Suggs’ radio show on their station, with adverts in national UK papers urging people to take part in their £25,000 joke competition. All you had to do was email the station with your joke, the best would get read out by the man himself, and his favourite would win £25,000.
Moving on, and we reproduced an article which originally appeared on the Youth Music web site. Featuring the one and only Carl Smyth, this saw the great man chat about all things Madness, and their forthcoming album of covers, due for release in April.
Next, it was all a bit cloak and dagger, as we revealed that the band would be playing at least one live gig this coming summer. How did we know this? Well, earlier in the week we received an email from an MIS subscriber who passed this information on to us, but asked that we keep their name under wraps. Our source was claiming to be quite reliable, as they informed us that they knew of a number of previous gigs from other bands before they were officially announced.
20 years ago…
Issue 41 – Sunday 27th February to Saturday 4th March 2000
This week we had news of a possibly `lost verse` in the classic Madness track `Johnny The Horse`. This verse turned out to be one that MIS subscriber MTB had put together as their preferred ending to the track.
These final lyrics were as follows:
“Evening fell that fateful day,
he screamed out loud with nothing to say.
So drunk, he felt no pain,
so low he felt no shame.
Forgotten forever,
and outta the game,
Johnny The horse,
Will you remember his name?”
Moving on, and we featured a really terrible review of `Wonderful`. This one was so bad that it really had to be seen to be believed. Thankfully, the transcripting skills of one Dominic Kearney gave us the chance to read it and shake our heads en-masse.
Next-up was MIS subscriber Ian Taylor, who wrote in informing us that he’d been basing his entire English lesson around the Drip Fed Fred election campaign. The response from his pupils had been excellent, and he also explained that he had urged them to go out any buy it on release.
Ian had also sent press releases off to all his local papers, tying in with a play he was directing at the time. The press release covered his Madness obsession, and promised all people coming to watch that play that they’ll get a chance to hear the new single.
Elsewhere, we had Vince Foley who had yet again managed to get hold of a Madness single BEFORE the official release date. Here you could find out just what the legendary Vince thought of the releases in his excellent review he’d put together.
Simsey meanwhile was asking all Blockhead fans for some help with the Official Ian Dury Fansite, and if all that wasn’t enough, we also had a review of the latest edition of `Ska Mad`.
Madness are to be the second band honoured with a stone in Camden’s walk of fame.
On March the 2nd at midday, the band will be unveiling their walk of fame pavement plaque outside the electric ballroom. The area will be cornered off, with wristband invitees attending.
At 2pm a game of Mecca Bingo Madness will take place at the Arlington Road hall. Entry to the game is free.
Amy Winehouse and Madness among latest inductees to Camden’s Music Walk of Fame
Amy Winehouse, Madness and Soul II Soul have been announced as the latest inductees to Camden’s prestigious Music Walk of Fame.
They join The Who, who were the first act to be honoured with the special award when it launched in November 2019.
Plaques celebrating all three acts will be unveiled in the north London location between Monday March 2–6, with special unveils set to be announced on the day.
Paul Weller New album ‘On Sunset’ out June 12th (Featuring Lee Thompson)
Published on Tuesday, 25 February, 2020 – 12:09
Paul Weller today announces the first details of his eagerly awaited new album ‘On Sunset’ which will be released on June 12th. “On Sunset” will be Paul’s first release for his new label Polydor
Paul Weller’s 15th solo album, On Sunset, is a soul album. At the same time it’s an electronic album, an orchestral album, an album packed with classic pop songs and heart-tugging ballads, and an album filled with touches of experimentalism. It’s also an album that sees Weller taking a rare glance into the rear-view mirror as he speeds into the 2020s.
Most of the album sees Weller multi-tasking on various instruments with accompaniment from his regular band, comprising Steve Cradock on guitar, Andy Crofts on bass, Tom Van Heel on keyboards, Steve Pilgrim on drums and guitar, and Ben Gordelier on percussion. But there are also a host of guests. Backing vocals throughout are by Watford indie trio The Staves, while Weller’s old Style Council comrade Mick Talbot plays Hammond on a couple of tracks, “Walkin’” and “Village”. “Walkin’” also features a tenor sax solo from Madness’s Lee Thompson. “I’ve seen Lee playing blinders in recent years, both with Madness and with his Ska Orchestra. He’s a terrific player.”
“I’m still excited by what’s new,” says Weller. “I find it depressing when people get to a certain age and stop listening to new music. I’m 62 this year and I’m still seeking out new stuff every day. It gives me hope that there is still so much amazing music being made. Music is my obsession, it’s my education, it’s my entertainment, it’s the way that I communicate, it’s everything to me. Every track here reflects that obsession.”
