Hello, and a very warm welcome to this week’s edition of the MIS Online Newsletter.
A lot has gone on over the past seven days. We’ve had Lee’s One Man’s Madness launch event and a couple of sell out Voice of the Beehive performances for good measure.
Our resident reporter, Jonathan Young, is still recovering from the drinking/hard work of these monumental tasks, and all being well we should have reviews of both in next week’s issue.
In the meantime, to keep you going, we have details of a week-long run of the Our House Musical in March 2018 at the New Theatre, Oxford, details of a new TV series featuring the one and only Suggs, and an MIS Feature for your reading pleasure.
Naturally, there’s much more besides, so without further ado let’s get on with the issue.
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.
Hi everyone, thanks so much for your support – it’s great to have finally reached the target and get to 100%. We’re keeping the store open for a few more weeks whilst we get all the production in place, we’ll have another update for you soon with dates for when you can expect your goodies.
Available to Pre Order now from Madness.co.uk & Pledge music.
Welcome to Full House – The Very Best Of Madness, a brand new compilation from the UK’s favourite band.
Encompassing the length and breadth of their stellar career, ‘Full House’ captures the legendary British pop band’s much-loved recorded output to date. Since the release of their last best-of in 2012, Madness’ phenomenal career has continued to go from strength-to-strength with the release of the critically acclaimed, top 5 album ‘Can’t Touch Us Now’ and the top 10 charting, gold selling ‘Oui Oui, Si Si, Ja Ja, Da Da’. Containing hit singles from both of those albums, and unfolding largely in chronological order, ‘Full House’ is a best of and then some, featuring 42 of the songs that have made Madness one of the nation’s best loved bands. Kicking off with 1979’s ‘The Prince’ and wrapping with 2017’s ‘Another Version Of Me’, the album takes in bona-fide classics such as ‘Our House’, ‘Night Boat To Cairo’, ‘It Must Be Love’ and ‘Can’t Touch Us Now’ along the way.
Madness say: ‘‘It’s nearly that time of year but Wot no Madness Xmas tour?! We wouldn’t want you or your loved ones to miss out on your yearly fix so here’s our promise to you -Full House, 42 of our greatest hits to fill those stockings with this festive season.’’
The Nutty Boys’ huge appeal continues to cut across the generations, with new fans discovering their life-affirming back catalogue all the time. ‘House of Common’, their annual family-friendly alternative to Carnival is fast establishing itself as a must on the festival circuit, their legendary ‘House Of Fun’ Weekender (November 17-20th) goes from strength-to-strength and recent knock-out performances everywhere from Glastonbury to Boomtown, V Festival to Bestival reinforce their unrivalled reputation as one of Britain’s greatest and most enduring live acts.
Artwork for ‘Full House’ is by the inimitable Paul Agar, whose cut-and-paste collage style has become synonymous with Madness’ recent work and will be instantly recognisable from his work on ‘Can’t Touch Us Now’ and ‘The Liberty Of Norton Folgate’. The 4LP version also features a special pop-up gatefold mechanism that’s sure to make it a must have for fans and collectors alike.
A comprehensive compilation that perfectly captures the national treasures’ career to date, ‘Full House’ will appeal to fans old and new as Madness prepare to embark on the next stage of a career that has rewritten the rulebook and continually defied all preconceptions.
Full House will be released on November 17.
Please note: Orders are not part shipped so if wish to order catalogue music and you would like it shipped before 17th November we recommend you place separate orders. Unfortunately this item cannot be shipped to North America
1. The Prince
2. One Step Beyond
3. My Girl
4. Bed And Breakfast Man
5. Night Boat To Cairo
6. Madness
7. Baggy Trousers
8. Embarrassment
9. The Return Of The Los Palmas 7
10. Grey Day
11. Shut Up
12. It Must Be Love
13. Cardiac Arrest
14. House Of Fun
15. Driving In My Car
16. Our House
17. Tomorrow’s (Just Another Day)
18. Wings Of A Dove
19. The Sun And The Rain
20. Michael Caine
21. One Better Day
22. Uncle Sam
23. Yesterday’s Men
24. (Waiting For) The Ghost Train
25. Sarah’s Song
26. Lovestruck
27. Johnny The Horse
28. Drip Fed Fred
29. Simple Equation
30. Girl Why Don’t You
31. NW5
32. Dust Devil
33. Forever Young
34. Sugar And Spice
35. My Girl 2
36. Never Knew Your Name
37. How Can I Tell You?
38. Misery
39. La Luna
40. Mr. Apples
41. Can’t Touch Us Now
42. Another Version Of Me
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 years, 10 and 15 years ago this week.
5 years ago…
Issue Number 700 – Sunday 7th October – Saturday 13th October 2012
Well, this was it. Issue number 700. We’d come a long way since the first issue back in 1999, and this week, to celebrate the milestones that had already come and gone we took a look at issues 100, 200, 300, 400, 500 and 600, and reported on what was going on in the world of Madness when each of those bulletins landed in your mailboxes. We suggested that you thought of it as a special edition of “That Was The Week That Was”.
On to the articles, and we were sad to read via a number of online news sources that Suggs had to cancel his October solo gigs.
Sadly, the gigs in Scunthorpe and Spalding, along with Ipswich and Folkestone dates of Suggs Live solo show had been cancelled. The venues state the reason for cancellation due to the illness of a close member of Suggs’ family. We don’t believe it’s a serious ongoing issue, but it’s been enough of a time pressure to have to pull out of these live dates for now.
Also this week, in apparently, unrelated news, the publishers of Suggs’ book, “That Close”, revealed that it wouldn’t be available to purchase in October. Instead, the release had now been earmarked for June 2013. The extra time would be used to finish and finalise the text. All preorders should automatically update to future dispatch dates.
Moving on, and we were pleased to see that Lucky Seven Records had released a live EP from the band’s recent iTunes festival gig, held at London’s Roundhouse in September. The EP featured 8 tracks from the set. These included live versions of three of the new album tracks.
The sound had been mastered for release. The track listing was as follows:
1. Embarrassment
2. La Luna
3. Misery
4. My Girl
5. Death Of a Rude Boy
6. House Of Fun
7. Our House
8. Night Boat to Cairo
Tracks were priced at 99p each or £4.49 for the full EP.
Skipping over the previous centennial issue loopbacks we went straight on to My Girl 2 news.
There were, it seemed, 3 mixes of My Girl 2. The single matched Track 1 of the new album, beginning as it does with the shout “Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da”. This matched the version heard in Camden at the Cooking Vinyl album playback. Radio stations had also been playing a version of Track 1 off the album, but no shout out at the beginning, and it also had the line “Granny out the armchair” before the keyboard solo. This version also appeared on online videos from Madtube this week.
Next, it was competition time. The Reggae Steady Ska web site were running a competition for 4 tickets to see Madness in Düsseldorf on 26th October. All you had to do was submit your votes for your favourite Madness album to be in with a chance.
Moving on, and we went over to Paul Rodgers for another one of his Madness Stats, Facts an Figures articles.
Skipping past album chart news Paul gave us the lowdown of My Girl 2’s progress;
“Seemingly rush released after the iTunes Festival appearance, Madness’ new single My Girl 2 has been available to download for the last week.
Its original release date was given as 22 October (although we’re still in the dark about whether it’s getting a physical release).
There now follows an extensive breakdown of its chart performance:
Finished!
The single is starting to attract airplay and is available to stream on a few online sites. So far Radio 2 have added it to their C playlist. It will be interesting to see if other stations follow suit.
With its rip of Tainted Love’s riff and dreadful sexist lyrics, I can’t see many stations picking up on it. That is unless no-one listens to words anymore. I did a brief survey last week and found that amongst female Madness fans having looks and a personality is not that rare, although none of them claimed to have a bar in their car, unlike her in the song. It’s not as bad as Sorry, but then nothing is.
It would seem to have as much chance of charting as I have of shifting my spare place for Butlin’s.”
Thankfully, Paul felt the forthcoming album was in with a better chance;
“The album it is from, Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da, has much better prospects and rightly so. Available to pre-order from several online sites for a few weeks now this week saw it’s welcome arrival at number 20 in Amazon’s pre-orders charts. That means that overall it is their 20th best selling forthcoming CD. Keep those orders coming folks!
Its prospects are further improved by the apparent change in release date for the special edition of this year’s biggest selling album by Emili Sande. It was previously slated for release the same day as Oui Oui, but it now coming out a week earlier.
In terms of new releases due on 29 October I can’t see any offering serious competition to Madness to be the highest new entry at the end of that week. Contenders could be Calvin Harris (who I seem to recall has a portaloo based score or two to settle with Madness), The Soldiers and a highly thought of prospect who goes by the name of Kylie.”
10 years ago…
Issue number 440 – Sunday 7th October to Saturday 13th October 2007
With the Madness Blackpool weekender a fading memory for those who went, it wouldn’t come as much of a surprise to many that as this was the first weekend after the event, much of the issue was taken up with reports of what went on.
We had a whopping 4 sections of the issue devoted to the weekender, with general lowdowns detailing what went on, including reports on the “Big Quiz”, the merchandise stand, fancy dress and more. For those who missed this event it was a chance to find out just what went on.
For those who did go this was more of a refresher and an opportunity to fill in the blanks.
Also this issue, we reported that Suggs had visited residents of Gospel Oak, to help out with their 9th Annual Gospel Oak district housing gardening competition.
Organised by the Council’s housing office in the area, it was set up in 1999 to encourage residents to take pride in the communal areas on their estates.
The competition has grown from strength to strength and there are now prizes in five categories: best communal garden, best individual garden, best balcony or patio, best window box and wildlife care award.
Suggs said: “Creating an environment people like to live in is really important and the competition is also getting people involved in improving their area. It’s great to see so many people taking part, feeling proud and putting something back into the place where they live. Congratulations to everyone.”
We brought this issue to a close with a lengthy thank you from Vince Carden, organise of the recent Blackpool Weekender, who wanted to thank those who came and supported the event.
Here’s some of what Vince had to say;
“When I set out last May to organise the weekend I did it with a sense of unfinished business in mind from Great Yarmouth (and longing for some Madness related beers).
Great Yarmouth 2003 was good, Blackpool 2001 was good but this time I wanted everything to be a step up from everything we had before and maybe add something different too. Not to mention, being the most organised event would also be important.
Everything was exactly that from start to finish. The weekend was better than I could have imagined. It was certainly the best of the 3 weekends”.
15 years ago…
Issue number 178 – Sunday 6th October – Saturday 12th October 2002
We started off this week’s issue by warning subscribers that with the impending release of a mass of Madness merchandise they could be in for a very expensive run up to Christmas 2002.
Elsewhere in the intro were belated birthday well wishes as Lee notched up an impressive 45 years. We’ve no doubt that Lee saw the big day out with more than a few lager shandies!
With the opening of the Madness music only a day away we gave one last shout out to let Maddies know about the Madmeet coinciding with the event, as well as printing out a detailed roll call of all those who had said they’d be attending.
News in from the Chas Smash web site was that the Divine Madness DVD would hit the shelves of music stores up and down the country sometime this month. Featuring all 28 music videos from The Prince to Drip Fed Fred, plus audio commentary from Chris and Mike, this was one item that no Madness fan could be without.
Not to be outdone by those attending the Our House Musical Madmeet, Wee Stoo and Mr. G sent us details of the planned McMadmeet, which would take place on the 15th of December, when the band were due to perform at the SECC, Glasgow.
Before the regular “Five Years Ago” articles became part of the MIS contents we’d often raid the contents of Jermaine’s excellent ‘Tour Madness’ publication. This week we looked at October 1985, where the band performed leg one of their Mad Not Mad tour, in Chippenham and the day after were interviewed on Irish Radio by DJ Dave Fanning, where Carl admits that it wasn’t easy to write new songs after the departure of Mike.
Rob Hazelby
MIS Feature
We’re Going Out – Review
This demo release from Rudimental & Suggs has great potential to be a club anthem if they take the track any further together. It’s certainly a tune to play loudly in your bedroom while getting ready to go clubbing or off to a great live music event.
While there would be a time and reason in the past to worry about Suggs solo efforts being too dance music sounding perhaps for a lot of tastes, this tune feels such a world away from such concerns by a couple of decades of music evolution and mingling genres since then, and the gift of so many new Madness albums given to us since Wonderful, means it feels time and fitting that something so different and experimental for him can come out now.
It feels so relevant to the life of the man singing as we know him by his public personae as a man who likes a party. The rave music, the almost talkative nature of some of this track, the light aggression and straight forward talking attitude are removed from what a Madness track more warmly offers most of the time, or any Suggs previous solo rendition/collaboration. This is further on than even his neighbouring Audio Bullies collaborations. The wit of his lyrics remains recognisable, the poetic line about “sodium light down Holloway road” could be straight out of The Liberty of Norton Folgate or Blackbird. But we aren’t dancing in music hall moonlight, or passing modern mourned singers on Dean St Soho here, we are wandering further into the stage invading land of festivals where this track has been performed, or deep into the club of a Friday or Saturday night.
“Sing” on The Three Pyramids club might well flow into the world painted by this song, and it feels even more universal and youth focused or at least party focused in it’s simplistic message. Suggs occasionally mentions Grime these days as a musical interest, and the man still has one foot in the dancing music of today. It’s infectious to listen to as a result. The clear confidence of a Suggs with a happy smile on his face and a couple of pints of swagger in his stride, a good night out is the solution to the worlds depressions. Take it from a man who it’s so often, out on the town.
The rave parts of the electronic soundtrack are pretty easy on the ear and not too hardcore to break this track from having melody or sing-a-long ability and this makes it the backing from a great night out, in the way acts like “The streets” have previously delivered such giving for both euphoria and dancability mixed with street based social comment.
A message to you Rudi-mental they call it mental Madness. This track has no doubts.
Yeah yeah yeah put it out.
Jonathan Young
Suggs & Rudimental (Lyrics – We’re going out)
Could be Mid day
Could be One
Could be Two
Could be Three
Could be Four
Could be Five
Could be Six
Could be Seven
Could be Eight
Could be Nine
Could be Ten
Could be Eleven
Could be Midnight
Time is an irrelevance
Don’t interfere with my brain patterns,
You know what I mean
oh yeah yeah yeah
We’re going out,
There aint no doubt
Everybody’s here and
We’re going out
We’re going out,
There aint no doubt
All my friends
We’re going out
We’re going out,
There aint no doubt
Everybody’s here and
We’re going out
We’re going out,
There aint no doubt
All my friends
We’re going out
We’re going out,
There aint no doubt
Everybody’s here
Scream and shout
We’re going out,
There aint no doubt
There aint no doubt
I live in a nice little part of London
Landmarks, it doesn’t really have none
It’s not famous for anything really
Except the prison which you see quite clearly
Really
Well like er you’ve done a hard days graft
you’re just putting your feet up on the sofa
you turn on the telly, and there’s the news
and its like… “we’re going out”
You know what i mean.
oh yeah yeah yeah
We’re going out,
There aint no doubt
Everybody’s here and
We’re going out
We’re going out,
There aint no doubt
All my friends
We’re going out
We’re going out,
There aint no doubt
Everybody’s here and
We’re going out
We’re going out,
There aint no doubt
All my friends
We’re going out
We’re going out,
There aint no doubt
Everybody’s here
Scream and shout
We’re going out,
There aint no doubt
There aint no doubt
There aint no doubt about it x 12
Complete honesty
There you f*cking go
Stick that in your f*cking face
We’re going out,
There aint no doubt
All my friends
We’re going out
We’re going out,
There aint no doubt
Everybody’s here and
We’re going out
We’re going out,
There aint no doubt
All my friends
We’re going out
We’re going out,
There aint no doubt
Everybody’s here
Scream and shout
We’re going out,
There aint no doubt
There aint no doubt
Scream and shout
We’re going out,
There aint no doubt
There aint no doubt
Hold my hand
And we’ll skip down Holloway road together
Through the bright, sodium light
There aint no doubt
Cus you know what?
We’re going out!
Sign of the Times
Madness’ Suggs swaps the mic to co-host Second World War TV series
MADNESS frontman and history buff Suggs unearths amazing Second World War relics in a new TV series.
Suggs with archaeologist Stephen Taylor and the Covenanter tank found in a Surrey Vineyard.
On a muddy marsh dissected by the Ribble Estuary, near Liverpool, a gang of men in hard hats and safety vests wait anxiously as great mounds of mud are dug up by a mechanical digger.
As the machine eventually unearths a few large chunks of mud-encrusted metal, excitement levels rise significantly as the men realise they’ve found the treasure they’ve been searching 20 years for.
They’re members of the Lancashire Air Investigation Team, which for decades has been looking for the remains of a German bomber that was shot down and crashed at this spot, Banks Marsh, on its way to bomb Liverpool in 1941.
The one figure you wouldn’t expect to find in this group is Suggs, frontman of the pop band Madness, purveyors of snappy hits like Our House and House Of Fun.
It turns out that, alongside his love of music, pop star Suggs is something of a history buff.
He’s co-hosting a new eight-part programme on the History Channel, WW2 Treasure Hunters, with archaeologist Stephen Taylor, which follows the unearthing of war relics throughout Britain and describes the events surrounding them.
“I thought it was an interesting concept and a unique idea of mixing archaeology, metal detection and social history,” explains Suggs, 56, of his decision to take part.
“And the idea that we were going to try to find out personal stories made it a very visceral experience.”
Suggs, whose real name is Graham McPherson, knew that his late grandfather had fought in the Burma Campaign during the war, adding: “But, unfortunately, he wasn’t around long enough for me to talk to him about it.”
Instead, Suggs is learning about Britain’s wartime past this way.
“We often imagine World War II as fought in some foreign field, but it was here on the home front that the battle really began,” says Suggs, of the airfields, military camps and gun installations that covered the UK landscape between 1939 and 45.
“There’s not much left on the surface today, but we went on a mission to unearth the truth of Britain’s wartime past.”
They start their journey at Banks Marsh with the digging up of the Junkers Ju 88 that was shot down by a British fighter on the night of April 7, 1941.
The plane had been carrying two 500kg bombs that were intended for Liverpool and Birkenhead, which endured the terror of a bombing blitz throughout 1940 and 1941.
Suggs admits that he knew little of the Liverpool Blitz, which was aimed at the dockyards that were the UK’s lifeline at the time, receiving shipments of munitions and food from the US when the rest of Europe was under Nazi occupation.
Merseyside sustained bombing that was second only to London in its severity, resulting in 4,000 deaths and destroying much of Liverpool city centre.
“I’m a Londoner and I understand the history of the Blitz in London, which was primarily to demoralise citizens, and then the second place I think of is Coventry,” says Suggs.
“Liverpool seems to have slipped under the radar somehow.”
He later learns that that the wartime government deliberately kept news of it quiet to prevent the Germans discovering how much damage they’d done.
Over the series they dig up a Covenanter tank in Surrey, one of only three in the world; in Leicestershire, they learn how bombs and munitions were stored in the countryside before being shipped to the front line.
At RAF Duxford, the pair dig up relics of the brave RAF pilots who fought in the Battle of Britain.
And throughout the series, they reunite some of their finds with their owners or their descendants.
Suggs’ best find was a rusty old dog tag dug up at Kings Cliffe Airfield in Northamptonshire, which was the wartime home of the American 20th Fighter Group, who flew B17 bombers into the heart of Nazi Germany.
“It looked like you couldn’t possibly read the name on it, but we took it down to an X-ray specialist and it was a fantastic moment when he X-rayed it and you could see his name and his address in New York,” says Suggs.
“To think that that was a kid over here, along with thousands of Americans who came over.
“These kids from Arizona, from California, they’d never been outside of America, and they were dumped in Norfolk or somewhere in two feet of snow with no idea of what was coming.”
“The dog tags were found a new home.
“They managed to trace them back to one of the American’s grandchildren, which was a fab end to the story.”
Suggs, a father of two, explains that what moved him most while visiting battlefields for the series was thinking about the youth of the soldiers involved.
“We kind of know the headlines of World War II, but making this series has been understanding the detail of what really went on for the individuals, who were primarily kids – that’s what struck me most, they were kids.”
TV Treasure Hunters reveal secrets of Nazi bomber shot down near Southport
Stephen Taylor and Madness frontman Suggs feature Junkers Ju88 which crashed onto Banks Marsh.
The mystery surrounding a Nazi bomber shot down near Southport during World War II will feature in a special TV programme.
The first episode of the new series of WW2 Treasure Hunters will focus on the story of the Junkers Ju88 plane which was hit above the Ribble Estaury and then crashed onto Banks Marsh.
Madness frontman Suggs has admitted that the British ska band would never have made it through modern music competition shows such as X Factor.
While the Londoners were chart regulars in the 1980s and their hits such as My Girl, Baggy Trousers and House Of Fun are still well known decades later, he suggested they would struggle to begin the journey to fame in today’s music scene.
The 56-year-old told the Press Association: “X Factor is a hugely popular show nowadays. I know that if Madness were around now we definitely wouldn’t have made it through X Factor.”
But the group are far from forgotten, with their Can’t Touch Us Now European Vacation tour kicking off at the end of this month and a fresh compilation album of their greatest hits out next month.
Suggs, real name Graham McPherson, is also focusing his performing talents on the upcoming tour of his latest one-man show, Suggs: What A King Cnut, a sequel to his My Life Story that will humorously share the tale of his life since rising to fame.
He has also been transforming his autobiography into a film, as well as hosting new documentary series WW2 Treasure Hunters, where he will join militaria expert Stephen Taylor in unearthing artefacts from former military sites across the UK.
“I wasn’t very good at school, it’s a real shame,” he confessed.
“I got progressively interested in history through various television programmes and also from growing up in London. London itself is a very interesting place with lots of history.
“But this particular show was very much about the personal stories, as much as the military had a role, this is very much about individual people and the experiences that they faced at such young ages.”
Commenting on the most interesting moment during filming, he continued: “I learnt what a complex issue D-Day was; this was the turning point of World War Two. The day they were supposed to go the weather was too bad.”
The eight-part series, which will begin with an investigation of a German bomber found in Liverpool, will launch on History at 9pm on Monday.
Time
We’re almost at the end of this week’s edition of the MIS.
We did say that we’d “possibly” feature a lowdown on the recent One Man’s Madness launch event in this issue. We now hope to bring that to you in the next issue along with a review of the recent Voice of the Beehive gigs.
