It was only a matter of time before the remaining dates of Suggs’ 2020 tour were either moved or postponed, and in the week just gone this happened.
The performance on the 9th October at the Lichfield Garrick Theatre has now been moved to April 16th next year, while the remaining 2020 dates have now been postponed with a new date TBA.
Check out our “Showtimes” section for a complete list of rescheduled Suggs and Madness tour dates.
This past week we spotted several comments on Facebook from fans who’ve booked places for November’s House of Fun Weekender. The general feeling was although they’d yet to receive official word, it would be rescheduled for next year. We don’t have any further official information at present, but management informed us that a final go, no go would be announced in late August or early September. We won’t have long to wait to find out.
On a jollier note, and this week we welcome back our resident statistician Paul Rodgers. Check out our “MIS Feature” for Paul’s stats on the Full House vinyl release and much, much more!
And finally, do check out our “Time” section for a heads-up on something very collectible being made available very soon!
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.
Description: TWO TONE RECORDS was created in 1979 by The Specials founder Jerry Dammers. The label spawned a youth movement and a number of well-known artists and singles throughout its tenure including the aforementioned Specials.
This 40th Anniversary 8-CD Collection contains the first 8 albums released on the label, with offerings by The Specials, The Selecter and Rico, along with the sought-after live concert album ‘Dance Craze’ and the ‘This Are Two Tone’ which includes a host of non-album releases.
Record Store Day – Work Rest and Play ** confirmed release date **
Release date: 29th August
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 ** confirmed release 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.
Tracklisting:
Concrete Jungle
Mirror in the Bathroom
Lip up Fatty
Razor Blade Alley
Three Minute Hero
Easy Life
Big Shot
One Step Beyond
Ranking Fullstop
Man at C&A
Missing Words
Inner London Violence
Night Boat to Cairo
Too Much Pressure
Nite Klub
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 850 – Sunday 23rd August to Saturday 29th August 2015
This week’s news got underway with our regular Sign of the Times section where the Hospitality and Catering News web site reported that;
“Madness tried their hand at pulling pints at a London pub as they introduced their two new ales to the drinks menu at the Imperial.
Late last year Suggs and the band headed to the Imperial pub, one of only a few UK pubs to currently offer the brews, to pour the first few pints of Lovestruck, a hoppy amber Ale, and Night Boat, a London porter style beer”.
This section also included a short article from the News Shopper web site where they reported that Madness would be playing just one London show this year; and it was headlining the Sunday at OnBlackheath. You could even take your little ones with you as kids under 12 could get in free!
Over in Live and Intensified MIS subscriber Stav reported on his recent visit to the Union Theatre where he attended a performance of the Madness musical. Despite having reservation prior to the show he gave it a resounding thumbs up, rounding off his review by commenting; “…it was really put together well and the cast all seemed to be enjoying it. I would recommend going to see it if you can. It was good to be up close and personal to the cast”.
Next, we moved on to our MIS Feature, which this time took a look at the BBC’s recent screening of Baggy Trousers on Top of the Pops. The episode was a repeat from an episode of of TOTP from back in the day, and MIS readers picked up that something wasn’t quite right.
Alex Davidson commented; “Did anyone else notice an edit in the lyrics? The word ‘fight’ in the line “gone to fight with next door’s school” had been edited out and replaced with what sounds like ‘knock’ but could be an unintelligible syllable from elsewhere in the song. In their wisdom Top Of The Pops must have asked Stiff to censor it, perhaps because they were worried it would promote inter-school fighting or something…”
The MIS investigated Alex’s claim, which had also been spotted by regular contributor and MIS statistician Paul Rodgers. Here’s what we found on listening.
We thought the edit was “not”, taken from the line “how to bend NOT break the rules” and pasted over where “fight” would have been.
So it’s now had the slightly jarring line of “gone to NOT with next door’s school”
Madness indeed!
10 years ago…
Issue Number 590 – Sunday 22nd August – Saturday 28th August 2010
It’d been a little quiet in the World of Madness this week. News items had almost all dried-up, and where only a few issues ago we had masses to report we were now digging around for things to pass in your general direction.
We kicked off our articles by publishing an article which originally appeared on the NME web site. Clearly not impressed with Calvin Harris, Suggs and Lee allegedly told the crowd at the recent Bestival event;
“I would like to make a public announcement and make an apology for something that happened at Camp Bestival,” saxophonist Lee added: “I would like to apologise to that pr*ck Calvin Klein, sorry Calvin Harris. Anyway that’s enough of that.”
Next, it was over to The Specials, who revealed that the forthcoming Specials album would include songs about racism and the Afghan war.
Back in March, vocalist/co-songwriter Terry Hall told the Guardian that the same issues they raised 30 years ago are still relevant and still weigh on their minds today. “For example, racism in the UK, it’s sort of swerved a little,” Hall stated. “It’s heavily against eastern Europeans, whereas in the 70s, when we formed, a lot of the racism was directed against Asian people. But it still exists. It still affects us every day.”
Moving on, and although it wasn’t due for release until the 6th of September, the lovely people at Union Square Music had kindly given us a copy of the re-mastered Wonderful album to give away to one lucky person.
Continuing in the footsteps of earlier re-mastered Madness albums, this came on two discs, and contained a whopping 28 tracks, which were as follows:
Disc: 1
1. Lovestruck
2. Johnny The Horse
3. Communicator, The
4. A.M.
5. Wizard, The
6. Drip Fed Fred
7. Going To The Top
8. Elysium
9. Saturday Night Sunday Morning
10. If I Didn’t Care
11. No Money
12. Lovestruck
13. Johnny The Horse
14. Drip Fed Fred
Disc: 2
1. You’re Wonderful
2. Round And Round
3. We Are Love
4. Johnny The Horse
5. I Was The One
6. Dreaming Man
7. Light Of The Way
8. We Want Freddie
9. Drip Fed Fred
10. Maddley
11. Simple Equation
12. Sarah’s Song
13. It Must Be Love
14. My Old Man
To enter, you just had to answer the following question:
What year was ‘Wonderful’ originally released in the UK?
Further on we moved on to Madshop news, and the big announcement this week was that the store was selling a 5 CD bundle with free shipping;
“Back in stock now the Madstore bring you the complete 30 year celebration, Madness Remastered collectors CDs to give you an even nuttier sound than ever before.
Each of these 5 Double CDs has been lovingly remastered and repackaged together with a hat full of Bonus tracks and promotional Videos.
Topped off with a 24 page full colour booklet full of facts about Primrose Hills favourite popsters!
All CDs are available at £7.49 or why not take advantage of our Limited 5CD Suggstastic bundle and grab them all in one go and we’ll throw in free delivery as a special thanks for buying them all!”
We brought this issue to a close with news in from Jean-Pierre Boutellier, who reported that Ben Sherman were currently selling a range of Madness branded merchandise .
15 years ago…
Issue 328 – Sunday 21st August to Saturday 27th August 2005
It’s not often that US readers had something to get excited about in the world of Madness, but now they had their reasons to give the rest of us a cheeky grin, as Madness had been booked to play gigs in California and Oregon this coming September.
News in from Kevin Tizzard revealed that the band were lined-up to play the KRROQ Inland Invasion, California, and McMenamins Crystal Ballroom, Portland, Oregon, while Steve Bringe revealed that the band had also been booked to play The Troubadour, Hollywood.
Next-up was some news for UK based Madness fans, as it had just been announced that on Saturday 12th of November, Lee Thompson and The Camden Cowboys would be performing a selection of songs in aid of the Sudan appeal. We were promised that the set would consist of songs that had an inspiration to Lee’s own music since he’d entered into the business.
The line-up would be as follows:
Mark Bedford (Bedders): bass
Daniel Woodgate (Woody): drums
Nick Judd: keyboard
Kevin Burdett: guitar
On to the MIS web site next, where we were pleased to reveal that after our recent site outage, the much-loved downloads section had made a welcome return.
The issue had arisen as the downloads were proving so popular that we were using 500 gigabytes of bandwidth per month, and so we had to look for another solution and service provider. Regulars to the site would be pleased to learn that a solution had been found.
With the downloads section now back up and running, we also had a mass of new additions for you to watch and listen to. All downloads were made available for free, but we suggested that if you liked what we were doing, you may think about giving a few pennies to the very worthy Cancer Bacup charity.
20 years ago…
Issue number 67 – Sunday 20th August to Saturday 26th August 2000
We started off this week’s issue by advising UK-based fans to get the blank videotapes at the ready once more, as this coming Monday would see ITV showing the “Roots of Rock” documentary. Why would this be of interest? Well, a number of people apparently in the know were reporting that Lee says something in the programme that signified the end of Madness! Obviously, this was something you couldn’t afford to miss.
Moving on, and we took another look at chassmash.co.uk, and recommended that Carl got his skates on, as at present the site only featured a photo archive. Containing pictures of the band from years gone by, and of Carl when he was a small boy, we still suggested you take a look.
Next, we asked you to contact Scatty with suggestions for a 2001 Mad Meet. It was still undecided where and when this should take place, which is why they were after as much feedback as possible.
Since the major overhaul of the Dublin Castle was announced during the Ian Dury Tribute weekend some months back, Camden’s most sacred of pubs had been closed whilst the workmen have been busy beavering away inside.
Well, last weekend saw the grand re-opening of our most favourite drinking hole, and long time MIS and TMML subscriber, Simon Roberts went along.
Simon reported that not much had changed really. A few less seats, no TV, and new flooring, seating and tables. Contrary to recent rumours, Simon wouldn’t be hosting the next series of the BBC’s “Changing Rooms”.
Were you in the Manchester area and looking to join a band? If so, Dominic Kearney may have been the man you needed to speak to, as he was also looking to form a group. The idea would to not form a Madness covers band, but Dom felt that if everyone was a fan of the band, they’d at least all be coming from the same direction.
This week’s issue of the MIS finished with an in-depth review of the recently released issue 16 of Nut Inc fanzine. As always, issue 16, like those before it, arrived late, but it was certainly worth it. For those subscribed and awaiting their copy, they’d be in for a real treat. For those not subscribed, now was the time to sign up.
Rob Hazelby
MIS Feature
Paul Rodgers’ Madness Stats, Facts and Figures
Evening pop pickers! I would ask if you’ve been good whilst I was away, but I know you have. So well done. I know this because a couple of weeks ago I indirectly asked you pre-order Full House on vinyl to see if we could tip it into the top 100 of the official albums chart as it has been hanging around the top 200 recently. I say indirectly because I posted about it on Facebook and that Jon Young copied and pasted it into an article for this esteemed virtual rag. The upshot of this is that last week (14 August) the album was certified Gold by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) who know about these things. Full House has now passed the sales threshold of 100,000 copies.
It has been bumbling around the various charts for a few weeks now. It would seem that if there is one thing that the Covid19 pretend lockdown has been good for is persuading the public to panic buy or stream greatest hits albums by bands who should be old enough to know better, but aren’t. Since the 9th of July it has appeared in the top 200 at 197, 197, 114, 149. 174 and 169. It has done even better in the other charts (which means the ones that don’t include streaming). Firstly in the sales chart it has had a run of 69, 66, 33, 53, 63, 58, 83 entering the chart again on 2 July. This 7 week run on that chart was nearly as long at the previous one, which totalled 8 weeks.
On the physical sales chart (the one which includes vinyl LPs, plastic CDs, double vinyl LPs with gatefold sleeves, cassettes made of ‘tapes’ and plastic, wax cylinders and renting a pianist to come and perform it in your parlour) it re-entered on the same week (2 July) at 57 and then continued 56, 29, 45, 52, 44. It might have been in the chart last week too, but I don’t know as the Official Chart Company (OCC) who know about these things have accidentally deleted last week’s chart for now!
This week the only chart it is in is the Indie Album’s chart. It’s been back in that chart for ages having re-entered on 7 May at number 30. Since then it has gone down and up several times, including one week at number 9, its highest position since January 2018. This week it is number 39 on its 17th week of this chart run and its 41st week overall.
There is a reason why Full House has temporarily taken leave of the main charts and I am about to tell you that reason. You’d either have to be mad or bored or both to stop reading now.
A long long time ago, someone invented a thing called Record Store Day (RSD) an organisation who know about these things. They chose not to allow His Master’s Voice (HMV) who know about these things (selling records in this instance) to play. So HMV invented Vinyl Week (VW). Actually that’s wrong, VW is a type of German car invented for a war to wagon their volks around in. Anyway, HMV made this thing where they are sole sellers of a limited edition record. This week it was Madness’ turn to be featured, so HMV curated (sounds better than ordered or asked for) a special edition of One Step Beyond… on coloured vinyl. Half would be black and half would be white. But made into quarters. These were duly manufactured, but were not deemed rubbish enough (who would have guessed that making multi coloured vinyl with straight lines between the different colours would be a bit tricky?) so they used the rubbish sleeve from the red vinyl reissue from 2016 to lower the quality still further. You know, the one where it looks like a big blob of tippex was on the inside of Barso’s elbow on the front and the images of Chas on the back were traced by a bored 3 year old with a blunt crayon so they are all smudged. That was released last week.
1000 copies were released and sold in one day. This left 1000 Madness collectors super happy to have got one. Well not quite, because the last time I checked 13% of the sods had ended up on eBay. (The poor quality vinyl reissues, not the collectors.) This suggests there are maybe 870 mildly happy collectors with their shoddy new reissue and another 130 or so hoping to get one off eBay for less than One hundred and ten quid. The upshot of all this is that on Monday the OCC’s midweek album chart had One Step Beyond… at number 33. By the time the full chart was revealed on Friday, the album hadn’t made the top 100 of the official album chart, but it had done well elsewhere… On the indie chart is is a re-entry at number 11 (suggesting it is linked to the aforementioned vinyl issue in 2016), on the sales chart it is a new entry at number 23. On the physical chart it does better entering at number 19 and on the vinyl chart it is a re-entry at number 8, which is its peak position. This is its third week on the vinyl albums chart.
In coming weeks I am expecting to be forced to write more of this stuff by the new edition of the album I am calling ‘Line’ (ie less than a full house, but still a win at the bingo) and the RSD version of the Work, Rest and Play EP. Quite how the latter will land chartwise is open to question. I strongly suspect (as usual) that some RSD stock has been ‘sold’ (or put to one side to flog on eBay) by record shop owners who don’t quite understand the exclusivity rules of RSD. Why do I think this? Well two weeks ago a Status Quo Christmas single was riding high in the vinyl singles chart. This suggests that either Status Quo fans are weirdos who buy Christmas songs in August, or that the bar code from that single was being used to scan what were actually sales of some other item.
I wish they’d scrap RSD as it stinks. Personally I’d prefer Madness’ works to be reissued on vinyl at a rate of 5 or 6 singles a year, in high quality packages of 7”, 12” and/or picture discs, just like many other heritage acts do. The records could still be limited edition, but not necessarily released on days when there is the RSD scrum to buy what is most likely to go up in price purely to sell on eBay, by people other than the collectors who want the records. Could it happen? I certainly hope so.
See you in a couple of weeks chart fans.
Paul Rodgers
Sign of the Times
In The Middle of our Lawn:
For the first time, a national American TV advert uses a Madness recording from the modern era. An ad for lawn fertilizer, to the time of the Ally Pally fan singalong from a few years ago. And it’s brilliant. A nice feel-good story for these pandemic times.
Here at the MIS we don’t just run and maintain a web site for this weekly email publication. We also host the official site for the one and only Lee Thompson Ska Orchestra.
We have server and hosting costs to cover, so to help pay for these we have a signed double canvas copy of the ‘Benny Bullfrog’ lyrics by Lee Thompson to offer at a silent auction.
We’d like to make it clear that we are a non-profit making organisation and all monies go back into the Madness community. In fact we previously held a fundraiser several few years ago.
