Hello, and a warm, wintry welcome to the latest issue of the MIS Online Newsletter.
This week just gone, the band announced two new overseas gigs. On Saturday 30th June they’ll be playing at Tinderbox, Denmark. While on Thursday 19th July they’ll be at the Bellaria Igea Marina, Italy.
Hopefully, these two additions to Madness’ 2018 gig line up will give many more non UK based fans a chance to see the band in the flesh.
Meanwhile. Suggs’ One Man Show continues to rattle through its massive list of tour dates with performances in a Preston, Northampton and Southampton this coming week. Performances in Dunfermline, Glasgow and Newcastle were cancelled this past week due to the issuing of a rare red weather warning and snowy conditions. New dates will be announced. You can also obtain refunds if you so wish.
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.
Madness
June 2018
Saturday 30th, Tinderbox, DENMARK ** new **
July 2018
The Stately Madness Tour
Friday 6th July – Englefield House, Reading – More Info
Saturday 7th July – Euston Park, Suffolk – More Info
Friday 13th July – Ragley Hall, Alcester – More Info
Saturday 14th July – Alnwick Castle, Northumberland – More Info
Thursday 19th July – Bellaria Igea Marina, Beky Bay, ITALY ** new **
Friday 27th July – Galway International Arts Festival – More Info
July 28th/29th – Car Fest. Announced on Chris Evans’ Radio Show!
November 2018
Friday 30th Nov – Monday 3rd Dec – The House of Fun Weekender
Ticket hotline 08450261274 / http://www.butlins.com/madness
Suggs
What a King CNUT Tour 2018
A life in the realm of Madness.
Tue March 06 2018 – PRESTON Guild Hall
Wed March 07 2018 – NORTHAMPTON Royal and Derngate
Thu March 08 2018 – SOUTHAMPTON O2 Guildhall
Sun March 11 2018 – BIRMINGHAM Alexandra Theatre
Tue March 13 2018 – AYLESBURY Waterside Theatre
Wed March 14 2018 – POOLE Lighthouse
Thu March 15 2018 – CHELTENHAM Town Hall
Fri March 16 2018 – BATH Forum
Sun March 18 2018 – NOTTINGHAM Theatre Royal
Mon March 19 2018 – IPSWICH Corn Exchange
Tue March 20 2018 – CAMBRIDGE Corn Exchange
Thu March 22 2018 – LONDON Palladium
The Silencerz Featuring Lee Thompson
Tuesday 17th March – Chandos Arms *free*
Sunday 1st April – Dublin Castle, Camden
Lee Thompson
Sunday 25th March, The 100 Club. Part of the Sound Screen Festival. This is a performance plus a screening of One Man’s Madness
This week Dunfermline, Glasgow and Newcastle Suggs shows were cancelled due to the rare issuing of red weather warnings and general snowy conditions.
These dates are being rescheduled. Tickets are valid and so are refunds, if preferred.
Buy It
Suggs “My Life Story”, DVD
Out now!
Price £12
Director Julien Temple (The Great Rock n Roll Swindle, Absolute Beginners) takes a stage show, adds some drama, archive, animation and music, then shakes it all up for MY LIFE STORY where Suggs, takes a hilarious, yet moving, look back at his life in a musical form.
Is it a drama? Is it a comedy? Or a music hall dream? Whatever it is hold on to your seats as Suggs goes on to stumble and plummet through the trap door of failure; then trampoline back up to catch the passing trapeze of show business success.
£9.95. Limited to 250 copies. A5 paperback photo-zine. 36 pages.
Hanging Around Books’ tenth release (HA010), “Kimono Our House: Madness In Japan 1982” features rare and previously unseen photographs of the Nutty Boys taken by Andre Csillag at various locations during the band’s 1982 tour of Japan.
As Andre writes:
“In May 1982 I was asked by the manager of Madness, the late and sadly missed Matthew Sztumpf, to accompany the band on their first Japanese tour. These shots were taken over a period of a week in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Nagoya and on bullet trains inbetween.”
“It was an intense week of gigging, travelling, promotional work and making history. While in Japan, the band had their first number one on the UK singles chart and were filmed live via satellite from Tokyo introducing the video for that week’s chart topper, “House Of Fun” — a first for the BBC and Top of The Pops.”
“Thanks to Graham “Suggs” McPherson, Cathal Smyth, Lee Thompson, Chris Foreman, Mike Barson, Mark Bedford and Dan “Woody” Woodgate for their time and the enjoyable madness.”
Andre Csillag, February 2018.
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 721 – Sunday 3rd March – Saturday 9th March 2013
After months of rumours, predictions and guesswork this week finally saw details of the Oui Oui, Si Si, Ja Ja, Da Da special edition revealed to the music buying public.
The cover artwork featured a Zoltar fortune telling machine, which many of you would know featured in the film “Big”, starring Tom Hanks.
If you looked closely at the Oui Oui special edition artwork you’d notice that Zoltar is non other than Suggs. With Zoltar making Tom Hanks’ character’s dream come true in “Big”, it now looks like he wasturning his attention to us, as this release brought with it 20 new exclusive Madness tracks.
We also some sad news to report this week as we learned that legendary Madness roadie John “Kellogs” Kalinowski had passed away at the age of 66. Our thoughts went out to family and friends of Kellogs at this difficult time.
Back to Oui, Oui, and we were finally able to pass on details of the special edition of the album.
Spanning a whopping 3 CDs and 1 DVD, this package contained a staggering 70 tracks, including:
– 9 Exclusive Band Demos,
– 7 Exclusive New Album Tracks,
– 4 Exclusive Alternate Version Tracks,
– 1st ever Live performance of the album (DVD)
Along with that you’d also find a:
– 32 Page Booklet,
– Oui Oui Ouija Board Game Artwork
– Oui Si Ja Da – The full story unravelled before your eyes and ears
A very impressive compilation indeed! The album was due to ship on the 15th April, and was priced at £29.99 + P&P.
Moving on, and it was over to Lee Thompson news. Lee had taken part in a nice long interview on radio station EN5.
During the session he spoke about his nickname Kix, his graffiti tag, and the early days of the band Madness. He was asked about the first big Madness gig, and he said The Two Tone Tour was what came to mind as the big time. “the music world in the palm of our hand and we was aiming for something”, he said.
He told the story of the recording of It Must Be Love. The writing of the current Madness album was discussed. Thommo praised the Suggs song “1978” due out on the deluxe album, as well as Woody’s writing of late.
Next, it was over to signal news, as we revealed that the band would be releasing “How can I tell you?”, which was due out on the 7th April. Unfortunately, this would be a download only release including the shortened radio edit of the song, which truncates the intro, as well a live version of the track, and an exclusive demo of the track.
Camden news next, and we reported the Camden was set to honour the biggest names in music with a new walk of fame. The first 30 discs were due to be laid down this summer, organisers said.
Elsewhere, we reported that Madness would be taking part in a slice of BBC history as the band were due to perform live in the front of BBC Television Centre as part of an evening of entertainment bidding farewell to the iconic building.
Celebrating its 53 year history, BBC Four would produce the hour-long programme to be shown on 22 March; nine days before TV Centre closed its doors.
We brought this issue to a close with the news from Paul Rodgers that Madness had no albums in the top 100 charts, and Oui, Our had plunged from 9 to 21 in the Indie charts. Not brilliant news.
10 years ago…
Issue 461 – Sunday 2nd March to Saturday 8th March 2008
Was Lee Thompson a master of disguise or merely prolific? Apart from his role in Madness he’d been in Crunch, The Madness, Like Father Like Son and more.
His latest line-up were titled “Damaged Goods”, and we felt it was time to give this ensemble a brief investigation and overview.
Much like the previous two incarnations of Lee’s local based bands, the set list of music played at the homely Red Lion gig was a collection of Madness tracks and well chosen classic cover versions of great bands.
At this stage we weren’t sure if this new band was merely a one-off grouping of local talent, or the start of something more permanent.
Only time would tell.
Moving on, and as mentioned in a recent Clash Magazine interview, “The Liberty Of Norton Folgate”, from the forthcoming Madness album, this production featured in part, The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.
Who were they? In an effort to find out more Jonathan went off to investigate, and came back with a massive in-depth report, complete with YouTube video links of The Orchestra covering various songs from down the years. Covers included Smells Like Teen Spirit, The Theme From Shaft, and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
Continuing on the subject of Madness off-shoots, and it looked as if the Crunch bandwagon was starting to get underway once more. If news if the Crunch gig at Camden’s Koko Club on the 12th of March wasn’t enough, the band had just announced another date, this time on Sunday 4th May at The Barfly, Brighton.
We brought this issue of the MIS to a close with news in from subscriber ‘Owen the Nutter’, who emailed in to tell us that Suggs could now be found providing the voice over for a commercial advertising soya beans, chicken dippers and other such goodies.
While it wasn’t worth you setting the PVR form, it was nice to see the great man keeping himself busy.
15 years ago…
Issue 199 – Sunday 2nd March to Saturday 8th March 2003
With the date of Madness’ Royal Albert Hall performance penned in for Saturday 29th of March plans for the obligatory Madmeet were well underway. The starting point was, of course, The Dublin Castle in Camden Town.
This issue contained a short history lesson, courtesy of subscriber Chris Wardell. The subject matter? The legendary Liquidator Studios in the Caledonian Road. During the mid eighties, until 1990, Liquidator was a professional 24 track recording studio owned by Madness.
News in from Chris Carter-Pegg was that on the 24th of May MGM Home Entertainment would be releasing The Tall Guy on DVD. Priced at £12.99, the 1989 film included It Must be Love, a very brief appearance from Suggs, a quick plug of Utter Madness, and some unusual piano playing.
Following the first Chas Smash web chat, which took place on Friday 28th of February, Madness Trading Ring co-maintainer, Steve Bringe was kind enough to dig through the mountains of answered and unanswered questions the 30 or so fans who were online during the session submitted during the half hour session.
Celebrating their 25th anniversary one year before The Mads, The Legendary Blockheads kicked off their quarter of a century celebration tour with a packed gig at The Marquee on the 5th of February. This guest packed show was witnessed by one Jonathan Young, who put together a detailed lowdown of the show.
Rob Hazelby
Sign of the Times
Aftershow
Suggs – What a King Cnut : a Life In The Realm of Madness.
Brighton Royal Theatre, February 18th
English translation by MIS subscriber Claire Riou
On holiday from Madness, singer – and, more importantly, tale-teller – Suggs goes on a triumphal tour throughout England with his long and hilarious stand up comedy show.
We thought that his life had been well documented through his lyrics – which are more personal than they seem, even with their red nose on – and we were sure that he had used up all his anecdotes during the My Life Story Tour. However, with such a rich life and such jocularity, Suggs still has some laughing gas left in the tank.
His last tour is a feat of strength and pranks : from Brian May to Primal Scream, his targets are ripped to pieces by his cockney wit. Gifted with punchline-writing skills that many an MC can envy, Suggs is a wonderful storyteller – one of the greatest in the great tradition of English pop music which, from The Kinks to The Streets, gave universal resonance to humble lives.
Either telling the story of how he met the Queen or a trip to Liverpool, each stolen moment becomes the stuff of tales – something that he has long kept to his own songs. With a pianist as an accomplice, he sings a deeply touching selection of his songs. Beyond joyful ska, mischievous pop music and harsh portraits (he doesn’t spare himself), Suggs remains a genuinely sensitive chap, moved when people from the audience start singing « Celery, Celery/If she don’t c*m/I’ll tickle her bum/ With a lump of celery », one of the most nonsensical chant of his beloved Chelsea club.
Written by JD Beauvallet, in Les Inrockuptibles 02.28.2018 (n°1161)
Translated by Claire Mad Squirrel
Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley Receive MGP Outstanding Contribution to Music Award
The production duo behind hits for artists such as Madness, Elvis Costello and Bush received this week the Music Producers Guild Outstanding Contribution to Music award at the 2018 MPG Awards ceremony in London.
One of the top accolades at the 2018 Music Producers Guild Awards – PPL Presents The MPG Award For Outstanding Contribution To UK Music – was handed to producers Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley in recognition of one of the most influential partnerships in music production over the last 40 years.
Developing a sound described as “That English Pop Thing”, Langer and Winstanley have a credit list that reads like a pop hall of fame and includes many classic albums, not least Elvis Costello’s Punch The Clock, Dexys Midnight Runners’ Too-Rye-Ay and Bush’s best-selling album Sixteen Stone.It was while at art college in Liverpool during the 1970s that Clive Langer formed the cult rock band Deaf School – a band that released three albums and was described by Mojo founder Paul Du Noyer as one of the “only two bands that mattered” in the history of Liverpool’s famous musical heritage.
Langer met Alan Winstanley while recording a demo session at TW studios in London where Winstanley was working sessions as an engineer. Fascinated by the sound of Phil Spector, Winstanley spent the late 1970’s learning his craft and was employed on numerous sessions for acts such as The Buzzcocks, Generation X, Joe Jackson and various Stiff Records artists including Wreckless Eric, Lena Lovich and Rachel Sweet. His switch from engineering to production came in the late 1970s when he produced The Stranglers fourth album, The Raven. Langer and Winstanley’s first venture into co-production was for Madness and resulted in the band’s 1979 debut album One Step Beyond, which was recorded and mixed in less than four weeks and spent over a year in the UK album charts. This inaugurated a partnership that has resulted in numerous hit records for artists such as David Bowie (for whom the pair produced the Live Aid single Dancing In the Street), Morrissey, The Teardrop Explodes, Catatonia, They Might Be Giants and Hot House Flowers. By honouring Langer and Winstanley with an Outstanding Contribution Award, the Music Producers Guild is recognising an exceptional body of work that has made a significant contribution to the success of the music recording industry.
“These are two guys who exemplify the role of music producer,” says Tony Platt, MPG Awards Group Managing Director. “Their collaborations across so many genres have been an outstanding example to all those upcoming music makers that we have seen building their careers over recent years.” As sponsors of the MPG Award For Outstanding Contribution To UK Music, industry organisation PPL says it is delighted that Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley have been chosen as the 2018 recipients. Peter Leathem, Chief Executive at PPL, says: “A huge congratulations to Clive and Alan, one of the most successful and acclaimed production duos of the past four decades, on receiving the Outstanding Contribution Award at the 2018 MPG Awards. A quick look at their production back catalogue and you realise how many seminal hits they’ve been involved in the making of; Our House and One Step Beyond by Madness, Come On Eileen by Dexys Midnight Runners and Reward by The Teardrop Explodes, to name just a few. They are both thoroughly deserving recipients and have well and truly made their mark on popular music in recent years.” Langer and Winstanley were presented with their award at the MPG’s 2018 Awards Ceremony, which took place on March 1st, at the prestigious Grosvenor House, Park Lane, London. Their award was presented by Alexei Sayle.
Now firmly established as a must-attend industry event, the MPG Awards attracts music industry stars and VIPs who turn out in force to celebrate the enormous contribution that recording professionals make to the success of the UK’s music industry.
Time
As we bring this week’s issue of the MIS to a close we urge you to pop along to the latest Seven Ragged Men web site, which has now got up to 1986. By now Mike had left the band, and the remaining members seemed to be wondering if it was time to call it a day.
