We begin with further gig cancellation news as this week saw the unsurprising announcement that the band’s Hi Tide Festival appearance in Margate on 5th July was knocked on the head. On a positive note, like many of the recent cancelled gigs this has been moved to 2021, and will now take place on the 4th July.
2020 may be looking pretty bleak for Madness gigs, but 2021 is already starting to fill up rather nicely indeed.
Continuing on a positive note, Nick Woodgate emailed in this week to remind us that this coming Friday (24th April) will see the release of his latest single “Indie Love”. The track will be available to stream with a video coming soon after.
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.
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
The Sliencerz
May
30th – Bull and Gate, Barnet
Buy It
New Single From Nick Woodate – “Indie Love” ** New **
New single from Nick Woodgate. Entitled “Indie Love”, this will be released on Friday 24th April. The track will be available for streaming with a video released shortly after.
In Before We Was We Madness tell us how they became them. A story of seven originals, whose collective graft, energy and talent took them from the sweaty depths of the Hope and Anchor’s basement to the Top of the Pops studio.
In their own words they each look back on shared adventures. Playing music together, riding freight trains, spraying graffiti and stealing records. Walking in one another’s footsteps by day and rising up through the city’s exploding pub music scene by night.
Before We Was We is irreverent, funny and full of character. Just like them.
Record Store Day – Work Rest and Play ** revised date **
Release date: Moved to 20th June (was 18th April)
Format: Double 7″ single
Cat No. BMGCAT430DSV
Overview:
Fortieth anniversary re-issue of Madness’ “Work Rest & Play EP” – the follow-up to their debut album, 1979’s “One Step Beyond…”
Limited edition Record Store Day 2020 release on double 7” format with a triple gatefold sleeve including photos from the time of the original release.
Track listing:
Side One
Night Boat To Cairo
Side Two
Deceives The Eye
Side Three
The Young And The Old
Side Four
Don’t Quote Me On That
Record Store Day – Dance Craze 40th Anniversary Edition ** revised date **
This is a new half-speed master exclusively for RSD and part of the Two Tone Records 40th Anniversary celebrations. This is a soundtrack to the live movie of the same name featuring exclusive live recordings by The Specials, Madness, The Selecter, The Beat, Bad Manners and The Bodysnatchers. This is also first vinyl repress since its original release in 1981.
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 832 – Sunday 19th April to Saturday 25th April 2015
This week’s intro boasted of a re-vamped “Buy it” section, and we were right. This issue’s selection of goodies to spend your hard earned cash on was huge. We brought you details of Grandslam Tour T-shirts, new Madness accessories, the new Cathal Smyth album, and the new album from Woody. Surely there would have been something amongst that lot to persuade you to part with some cash.
Next, and in our regular “Sign of the Times” we focussed on yet more Grandslam promotional material. This week our snippet was from The Gloucester Citizen web site where the band explained how they kept things fresh after all these years.
Further into this issue you’d find our “MIS Feature”, which this week looked at The Ska Orchestra who were readying new songs. Jonathan Young gave us a lowdown of these new tracks and finished off his article with a teasing “The second album cometh”.
We brought this issue to a close with the heartwarming news that Cathal had visited a Madness fan at the hospice she was staying at. With Cathal’s visit this not only completed her ‘in person’ set of photographs, but it was another item she’d been able to tick off her bucket list.
10 years ago…
Issue Number 572 – Sunday 18th April – Saturday 24th April 2010
With such a packed issue on offer we kept the intro text to an absolute minimum, and instead urged you to get straight on to the articles, which kicked off with “Paul Rodgers’ Musings and Facts”.
What were these musings and facts? Well, with the first week out for the deluxe versions of Absolutely and Seven Paul felt it was a good time to have a look back at Madness’ performance in the UKL charts with the original versions of those albumbs. He began with One Step Beyond, which had already received the deluxe treatment.
Next, it was over to The Guardian newspaper, and an interview conducted by reporter Jo Mears, who interviewed Suggs on his family values.
“When I was eight, Mum took me to visit my Auntie Diana in Haverfordwest and then left me there for three years because she felt she couldn’t cope. It was a shock and I did feel bitter and angry about it for a while, but not any more. I get a bit sick of knocking my mum in the press all the time. She’s a good listener – she’s even fostered several children – and we are still very close. I’ve just been out for lunch with her and I see her every couple of weeks.
Looking back, I realise she did the best she could at the time.”
We continued our issue with another newspaper article. This time we went to the York Press, who covered a recent gig of The Blockheads who performed at The Pocklington Arts Centre on the 16th.
It was back to Madness next as we re-printed an article from the official Madness email newsletter, which was advertising Madness 7 and Absolutely for only £7.49.
Following this Jonathan looked at Deaf School’s tribute to Eric Shark with Suggs and Lee.
“A line up of stars joined Deaf School for two shows in Tribute to Eric Shark who passed away. With Suggs teaming up alongside his wife, and Lee Thompson front man-ing again it was a memorable night for Madness fans too.
It was a fun Matinee show, the 7pm gig. The Frank Sinatra support I think chose Mac the Knife on purpose “oh the shark has pretty teeth dear”, well Mr Eric Shark was the reason for such a line up of people joining Deaf School to tribute him tonight. His passing leaves a gap in some parts of Deaf School songs, a band who until his passing had three singers, who each have their own character, and often have specific parts of songs to sing.”
After this we reported on Carl Smyth joining the Madness Central forum where he made a few nice comments including a great poem we suggested you checked out. He also commented on an old MIS article about his box set song “Fish and Chips” that he saw there.
Instead of our usual end to an issue outro this wek we left you in the capable hands of Jon Yong, and his news of a little Madness Easter egg.
This wasn’t actually an official Easter egg. What you had to do was make a note of the 4th and 5th words from a particular paragraph on a certain page. Gamers used to late eighties and early nineties would be well used to this kind of manual copy protection. Once you had the two words you were told to go to a specific link and use the two words as a filename for a special MP3 download. All you were asked was to not reveal the password publicly.
15 years ago…
Issue number 310 – Sunday 17th April to Saturday 23rd April 2005
We started off this week’s with news in from Darren Balsdon, reporting that the V2 web site had announced a number of release dates.
Here’s what Darren had to tell us at the time;
“Just been checking the V2 site on my lunch break – v2music.com, and they have added a section for Madness.
It’s blank at the moment, except in the “catalogue” section there is a hint of proposed release dates:
20 June for a single
4 July for an album”
This was all we had to go on, so all we could do was promise the loyal MIS readership that we’d report back as soon as we knew more.
Well, what else could we do?
Moving on, and we took a look at number 47 Stephenson Street in North London? Why? Well, this was the house that featured in 1982’s legendary “Our House” music video. In 1982 the value of the house was a mere £28,000. Come forward to 2005 and its value had rocketed to a whopping £248,000. How much is it worth now? We’ve no idea, but we’re sure that’s gone up still further!
Next up was Jonathan Young, bringing news of a Q magazine covermount CD giveaway. Entitled “Rule Britannia (40 years of great British music), this album featured 15 tracks from bands such as Ian Dury and The Blockheads, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, The Kinks, and of course, Madness. What was a pleasant surprise was that instead of using something like “Our House”, “Baggy Trousers” or “House of Fun” the team putting the compilation together had gone for the excellent “Mr Speaker Gets The Word”.
On to more release dates next as we reported that we’d been contacted by Emma at 101cd.com, telling us that the release date for the next Madness single would be on the 20th of June, following by the new album on the 4th of July.
She finished by saying that 101cd.com were really appreciative of the support they get from Madness, the MIS and the MTR, and as soon as the release dates were finalised, she would let all online Madness news outlets know.
Elsewhere in this issue we featured a write up of a new book – “Rip it up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978 – 1984”, by the author himself.
The author told us that:
“Based on over 125 interviews, it’s a panoramic survey of the seven year period following punk, taking in everything from PIL to ABC to ZTT, from industrial and 2-Tone to synthpop and goth. Of particular interest will be the chapter on Madness”
We finished off this week’s issue with a number of questions and answers that had recently been posted over on the official Madness messageboard.
20 years ago…
Issue number 48 – Sunday 16th April to Saturday 22nd April 2000
Over the past few weeks and months, everyone had been gearing themselves up for Madstock 2000 and the rumoured US tour which would coincide with the Stateside release of `Wonderful`. Now that both of these events had sadly been shelved things had gone all quiet on the fan side of things.
Well, you had no need to fret. Things were far from quiet on the Madness scene. There was an ever growing collection of Madness tribute bands out there, and with Scatty beavering away with his Madness and Ian Dury day, the scene was very much alive, meaning we had lots to look forward to over the coming weeks and months.
“What about Madness?”. Well, whatever they had planned, it wasn’t yet public domain. We’d just have to wait and see what they wanted to do.
In the meantime, we had this snippet from a certain Mr. Vince Foley which we thought you’d find most interesting:
“Hey Now!
I have some good news here for ye all…
I have known this for a while, but have held off until the right mo….spoke to the man himself literally a minute ago and I got the go-ahead to let you all in on something…….
Cathal J Smyth will be playing at the Fleadh festival at Finsbury Park London on June 10th…
As he quoth himself….. “getting the band together in two weeks…..it’s only half an hour on stage two and early at 12:45 but still …..humble thyself and ye shall be exalted……”
The ‘Velvet Ghost’ shalleth ariveth…..
All the best
Vince!”
We were sure Cathal would appreciate any Maddies popping along to cheer him on and show their support.
On a slightly different note, and following the recent passing away of `Uncle` Ian Dury a few weeks back, a recent edition of `The Sunday People` newspaper reported that Robbie Williams was organising a tribute album to Ian with the proceeds going to cancer.
Following last week’s unfortunate news that the much anticipated Madstock 2000 would not be happening, Colin Hinchley had come up with one possible solution for brightening up the summer months;
“So, no Madstock 2000 then.
Well, why not come to Morecambe in June for the Ska Fest. It is being held at the Empire arena from Friday June 16th – Sunday June 18th. Bad Manners, The Specials, The Selecter, The Beat, Laurel Aitken and The Hotknives are all playing.
Anyone up for it? There will be record fairs and DJs as well”.
It was now time to start saving those pennies back up again, as we learned this week that not only did we have the re-mastered version of Divine Madness to look forward to, but we’d just received details from Virgin announcing the forthcoming release of a book about the band.
Details were sketchy. In fact, the only information we had was that the planned title of the book was “Don’t Watch That, Watch This”.
After what seemed like an age, we finally received issue 15 of the Nut Inc fanzine. Although we’d only just got hold of our issue we were still able to give a detailed lowdown of this issues’ contents.
We finished off this week’s issue of the MIS with a request to our readers, asking for reviews of any Madness tribute acts they’d seen recently. With Madstock not taking place this year, any self -respecting Madness fan would need their fix somehow.
Rob Hazelby
Sign of the Times
Coronavirus Kent: Hi-Tide festival at Dreamland in Margate postponed until 2021 due to ongoing pandemic
A festival featuring Fat Boy Slim and Madness has been postponed until 2021 due to the ongoing coronavirus crisis.
The two-day Hi-Tide festival was due to be held in July at Dreamland in Margate as part of the theme park’s 100th birthday celebrations.
But organisers Fifty Six Group Ltd say the ongoing pandemic has led to the decision to postpone the major event until July next year.
In a statement, they said: “In the current situation brought about by Covid-19, it’s not possible to hold the festival this year for several reasons – the most important being the health and safety of the local community, fans, artists, our staff and suppliers.
“Could u not play a session via the internet where u all play from home and join in via zoom? That would be awesome”
Mark responded (saving Chris the bother) with the following;
“You can do stuff individually on zoom but you can’t play together because of the delay between everyone’s connections. It’s a good idea. It’s just a bit frustrating that we can’t play using it. But… we do have a few ideas on how we might do something….”
Time
We’re almost done for this week, but before we go we do have a quick correction to make.
In last week’s issue we closed with several updates from subscriber Kieron Murphy.
Kieron had sent us in two updates of Mad Chat related projects but we failed to to post the correct URL for the group should you wish to join it.
