We begin this weeks’ issue on a low note with news of further gig cancellations.
First-off, and it’ll likely come as no surprise to learn that Madness’ last remaining gig for 2020, due to be held at The Irish Village, Dubai on the 12th November has now been knocked on the head for this year. The band’s management tells us that all being well, the Dubai event will be rescheduled. Naturally, we’ll keep you posted as soon as we hear anything.
The cancellations continue as we can now reveal that Suggs’ October dates will also not be taking place this year. These dates were:
1st – Chelmsford, Civic Center
15th – Newbury, Corn Exchange
23rd – Forum Theatre (Malvern Theatre)
Now, on to some good news.
We learned this week that Madness have been booked for two new festival dates in 2021. These are:
July 9th – Sjock festival Lille, Belgium
August 19th – Venoge festival, Switzerland
So, while we see this year out with a whimper rather than a bang, 2021 looks to be playing host to a mass of Madness and Suggs live shows.
Let’s just hope these events can actually be staged. Only time will tell!
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.
This album was previously available as a pop-up 4 disc gatefold LP priced at around £50. The 4-disc release is now sold out on vinyl.
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 857 – Sunday 11th October to Saturday 17th October 2015
Madness’ Grandslam was well and truly over at this point, but it looked as if the band were continuing to meet up as work on the new album continued apace.
“Hi-Ho Hi-Ho it’s off to rehearse we go… Meeting up with The other Grumpys…” tweeted Mr. Bedford. “Deep in concentration. We’re getting there.”, added Woody, accompanied with a selection of photos showing the band at work.
Moving on to our MIS Feature, and this week we reported on this weeks’ Koast Train Ska Radio Show hosted by Mr Scurf. Why? Well this episode featured an on air chat with the one and only Clive Langer. We featured transcriptions to Clive’s answers to the main questions as well as a link to the full interview. The full interview is still available for your listening pleasure. Simply point your browser over to: https://youtu.be/9UItGRCXkI0
Next, in Sign of the Times we featured a review of the recent Madstock CD/DVD pack which originally appeared in the Scunthorpe Telegraph. The publication loved this release, giving it a mammoth 10 out of 10!
Over in The Facebook / Tweets of a Dove Woody posted on Twitter that he’d be taking a break from Facebook, to which Chris replied “Is it because I added you?”.
We brought this issue to a close with a reminder that our Rhoda Dakar competition was open for one more week. If you won you’d be the recipient of tickets to her show at the Jazz Cafe on the 31st October plus her promo album and press sheets. Very nice indeed!
10 years ago…
Issue Number 597 – Sunday 10th October – Saturday 16th October 2010
Fans had been trying to unearth it for the last 26 years, and this week we learned that our searching would soon be over.
What were we on about? The Madness sitcom pilot episode, of course, which would soon be available on the forthcoming multi-DVD compilation ‘The Gogglebox’.
Spanning 4 DVDs and weighing in at over 7 hours of footage, this would no doubt be appearing on the Christmas list of many a Madness fan this year.
The box set wasn’t yet available, but in this issue we explained how you could go about placing your order. Following that, our very own Jonathan Young gave you an in-depth review of this long lost recording, and detailing just how it came about.
On to our articles, and we got things off to a cracking start with a detailed review of the opening night of Two Tone Central.
Seven years after hearing Japanese visitors to Coventry ask “Where can we find 2Tone?”, many years of planning and countless favours from passionate 2Tone fans, Coventry based music journalist Pete Chambers finally saw his venue open.
By day it was a Café open to the public and housed in the student union building of Coventry University, the very building where Jerry Dammers and Horace Panter met (Pauline Black studied there, too). Blissfully unaware of its significance, students could sip their drinks in a room with black & white chequered floor, walls and wall blinds. There was also a museum with dozens of original 2Tone artefacts donated by fans and artists, including a set list written, (well more scribbled really) by Jerry Dammers on a small jotting pad.
Back to more Madness related news, and we passed the reigns over to Jonathan Young and an in-depth review and history lesson relating to the legendary Madness sitcom;
“Regardless of quality of content this has been on fan’s wish lists for years to see. Now, amazingly, this will happen.
It seems the title would have been “Madness”. The plot as revealed before in Madness interviews is that Thatcher has been voted out, and Madness voted in to run the country. The sitcom begins with the boys moving the cabinet to a Camden Cafe.
There’s those Madness sketches that link the videos and this has got a similar feel to those but a bit more longer in narrative form, and less real. There is a very early sense of roles being applied to band members for the situation comedy set up. Not just in Prime Minister Suggs or Chancellor Carl, but Bedders seems to be the mum, Chris the brains, Woody and Lee the kids. Mike is not in the show as he was on the verge of leaving the band at the time”
Further on we took a look at the Power Amp Music scheme. Some Madness fans may recall that instead of following the normal record company route, Madness became one of the first artists to be funded by Power Amp Music (an investment fund set up specifically to work with established artists).
This week’s Music Week contained an article about how well the fund has performed, and in particular whether their investment in Madness paid off.
We brought this week’s issue to a close with the news that the previous day Suggs stood in for Danny Baker on his Saturday show. If you’d missed it you didn’t have to worry as we had the audio link for you so you could catch-up at your leisure.
15 years ago…
Issue 337 – Sunday 9th October to Saturday 15th October 2005
It seemed that it was only a week or so back that we were wishing Jonathan Young all the best as he left the MIS fold to take a well earned three month break from work and other commitments.
This break had seen him travel to various corners of the planet, including a short stint Stateside which coincided with a chunk of the recent Madness tour – lucky swine!
Well, his three months were up. His days of travelling were at an end, and it also meant the MIS editorial team was now back up to full strength. Instead of easing himself back into the rat race he jumped straight on in with a number of articles in this very issue.
It was good to have him back!
Now, there’s one thing Madness had continually tried (and succeeded) to do over the years, and that was to get the fans involved.
Well, it would seem as if this long-running tradition would continue following the recent email via the official Madness email list;
“Bill & Ben Productions are offering an exclusive chance to feature in the new Madness ‘Dangerman’ DVD. We are looking for fans to film themselves singing along to THE DANGERMEN’s cover version of LOLA. We will then create a funky and fantastic music video from all the clips and include it as and exclusive extra on the Dangerman DVD new release.”
On to this week’s collection of articles, and we got underway by reporting that on BBC1 last night, Suggs appeared as a guest on “Test The Nation”, a regular interactive quiz, designed to see how clever Britain is.
This edition of the show was subtitled “Know your English” and all the questions were about language. Suggs was on the show as someone who uses language to write songs. He was spoken to at various points during the quiz.
After the first round, Anne Robinson asked Suggs “You’re a song writer so you must like language?”
Suggs: “I do love language, though I’m not really academic. Unlike my math teacher who gave me the option of never attending a class ever again, my English teachers did encourage me slightly. But I do love language, yes. Ian Dury and Ray Davies, who inspired me, were very good with language.”
Next-up, and over the past few months MTR/MIS subscriber Paul Muscat had been compiling your votes for the 2005 edition of the Madchart.
With the results being revealed gradually over the last couple of weeks the top 30 were now unveiled.
So, what was the winning track, as voted by us, the Madness fanbase?
Embarrassment, which last time trundled in at number 6.
Moving on, we reported on an Ebay seller who had been selling footage available freely on the MIS web site on DVD. Not only that, but the seller had been so daft, that links to ALL of the clips they were selling were in their auction description! A quick email to Ebay and the auction was promptly removed.
Elsewhere in this issue…
Like you, we were looking forward to tomorrow’s release of the USA Madness Dangermen Picture Disc.
But, we’d just been informed by Chuck Wren (head of Jump Up Records) that the release was to be put back AGAIN!
The delay was due to Chuck not being happy with the sound quality of the vinyl. He’d received the test pressing of the album & was not happy with them, so this had lead to another delay of up to 3 weeks.
Chuck had not given us a precise date for the release now, but insisted it should be out (all being well) around the first week of November!
Further on…
Following the sad news of the passing of Ronnie Barker this week the Official Madness website placed his picture in tribute on the main page.
Taken from www.madness.co.uk message board where a person with a username of Secret Squirrel asked the following question, which was answered by Chrissy Boy.
05/10/05
Glad to see you paying respect to Ronnie Barker.
Was it true that the Nutty train was based on a two Ronnies sketch ?
Regards and thanks for all the nuts !
SS
“NUTTY TRAINED”
says Chrissy Boy(05/10/05),
I heard about Ronnie Barker on the radio yesterday morning and felt really sad.
We all loved the Two Ronnies, Porridge and the man was a genius. I got the picture off the internet and put it on the site.
The sketch was really funny. Basically a man comes out of a house walks along the street and knocks on a door. A second man comes out of that door and walks really close behind him followed by a third and so on till there about 6 people walking in a tight formation train style.
They walk up the street and go into…The Sardine factory.
I thought this hilarious and was always trying to do it. Well with my mates that was when lagging. When we did a photo session for the NME we did a prototype walk but we were too far apart. It eventually got refined and also became the One Step Beyond album cover. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Chrissy Boy
We finished off this week’s issue with details of forthcoming MOT and Orange Street gigs, that were due to take place over the next month or so.
20 years ago…
Issue number 75 – Sunday 8th October to Saturday 14th October 2000
Did you fancy helping Madness get their name up in lights? If so, you were advised to get along to the Channel 4 web site, to vote for Madness in the station’s top 100 songs of all time survey. No doubt this would be used as the basis of one of Channel 4’s often repeated rundown programmes.
Unless you’d been living under a rock for the past year or so, you’d know that the Harry Potter series of books, had become such a phenomenon that the production of a full-scale movie was just about to start.
There were obviously a few fans lurking out there on the Total Madness Mailing List who were following the film as a mail appeared on the list during the week saying that a friend of one of the subscriberswho works for Warner Bothers had heard that Madness had been approached to be involved with the upcoming Harry Potter Soundtrack with that oh-so-catchy of track, `The Wizard`.
Being somewhat of a regular contributor to threads in the past couple of weeks, a certain Mr. Smash tapped out the following reply in response to the mail;
“about this “Madness involved in the Harry Potter film”. Having read all the Potter books ( after my son had read’em first), and being interested in things of an esoteric nature…twas I the Smash who thought it might be cool to get the Wizard included in the film…but as far as I know nothing has happened…..and as the dude wot wrote it i would be very happy if it was included….I am crossing my fingers…in fact I think I will ring our publisher and see what they are doing about it……..see you all later and have a happy halloween…
Mr. Smash”
Hopefully Cathal would keep us all informed with regards to the progress as `The Wizard` would make a blummin’ superb title track for the film.
Moving on, and if you were planning to see the Crunch gig in London on the 14th, and had still not purchased a ticket, you were advised to get your backside in gear and start making enquiries before they’d sell out. If, on the other hand you were one of the many who had already secured your ticket, then you could sit back and feel a little
smug as you’re not having to run round at the last minute trying to find the last unsold few.
Next, and although we still had a few months of the year to go, we decided to have a quick look at NEXT year, in a short article which gave readers the lowdown on what Madness weekends Butlins had planned for March 2001. Bad Manners would be appearing at the Bognor Regis Butlins between the 9th to the 12th, while Complete Madness would be performing at Skegness Butlins between the 27th and 30th of April.
We finished off this week’s edition of the MIS by announcing that the DotMusic web site were looking for all web site owners to submit their music site for this year’s DotMusic Online Music Awards. The event, now its fifth year, would see the awards handed over at a glittering awards ceremony on the 23rd of November.
Rob Hazelby
MIS Feature
Full House Vinyl Competition
Recently released to market is the “Full House” vinyl compilation. This collection of tracks takes a real potted history through Madness’ back catalogue
Previously only available as a pop-up 4 disc gatefold LP priced at around £50, the 4-disc release is now sold out on vinyl.
Now, thanks to the very nice people at record company BMG you can be in with a chance of adding this one disc Full House vinyl release to your beloved collections.
All you have to do is answer the following question:
How many tracks does the new “Full House” vinyl compilation contain?
Once you have your answer send your email to staff@madness-mis.com with the subject line of “Full House Competition”.
You have until 11:59pm on Saturday 24th October to get your answers in, with the winner being announced in the issue of the MIS going out on Sunday 25th October.
Finally, before we go we just want to give you a heads-up that on 20th November Nick Woodgate’s JoJo Man Band will be releasing their next single entitled “Time”. You can check it out over on Soundcloud at the following link: https://www.facebook.com/nicholaswoodgate/posts/10157253906801949
Meanwhile the band’s new album, The Best of the JoJo Man Band, is available to purchase from 16th October. You can find out more at: https://thejojomanband.com
