While the forthcoming Madness Christmas tour may be some months off yet dates are already starting to sell out.
Two venues are now listed on the official Madness web site as having sold their ticket allocation and these are Hull on the 18th December and Brighton on the 22nd. The latter being the final date of this year’s tour.
If you’ve yet to book yourself a ticket to this December’s Sound of Madness tour then point your browser over to http://www.madness.co.uk/live/ for details of remaining dates and ticket availability.
Continuing on the subject of tours, don’t forget that Suggs’ One Man Show gets back underway in October, and this week he has a one-off gig in Wales.
On the subject of Suggs, you’ll notice we’ve reinstated details of his forthcoming DVD to our regular “Buy it” section. Following so many complaints from backers rightly annoyed with the continuing delays, we took the decision to remove it from the MIS many weeks ago.
With a revised campaign and a new delivery date of November, we felt it was now time to add it back into the bulletins. You’ll also find that this issue’s “MIS Feature” contains details of the revised DVD campaign.
This week we also learned that a certain Lee Thompson will be hosting a one-off event in November. On the 11th, he’ll be attending “The Big One 7” at Parkdean in Dorset for “Lee Thompson in Conversation”. We can only hope that this proves to be a success and subsequent dates are added.
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.
1st – Suggs & Friends – Porchester Hall, London. Annual Charity show for Pancreatic Cancer UK
2nd Kings Lynn, Corn Exchange
3rd Crawley, The Hawk Theatre
4th Bury St Edmunds, Apex
5th Stafford, Gatehouse Theatre
7th Glasgow, Pavillion – rescheduled date
Lee Thomspon in Conversation
Sunday November 11th – The Big One 7 – Parkdean Sandford Dorset ** New **
“Meet the Legendary Sax man” at this QnA musical career discussion event.
Near Jazz Experience
Wednesday 8th August – Varanger Festival – Norway
The NJE on tour supporting The Nightingales (plus Stew Lee. Cambridge, Birmingham and London dates with 15 minutes of 80s comedy material )
September
25th – Soup kitchen – Manchester
26th – stereo cafe – Glasgow
27th – Opium – Edinburgh
28th – Central bar – Gateshead
29th – The lantern – Halifax
30th – Greystones – Sheffield
October
2nd – Hare & Hounds – Birmingham
3rd – Moth club – London
4th – Portland arms – Cambridge
5th – Canalhouse – Nottingham
Deaf School
September
20th – London Bush Hall
21st and 22nd. – Liverpool Everyman Theatre
The Silencerz
Saturday 22nd December, The Dublin Castle, Camden. No Lee, as this is the date of the Brighton Madness gig.
Buy It
Suggs My Life Story DVD ** New Info **
“After a bit of messing about…”, says the new advert for Suggs Movie DVD of his One Man Show, which now has a new release date of November 2018. This opening line is the admission that a delayed March release, a lack of updates before August 10th, and a rejig of both the pledge campaign account and the team behind the release have all taken place.
Now that the Pledge is relaunched though with a new release date of November, and with a fresh launch event to take place at the Pleasance Theatre in London we feel that now is the time to add this back in to our regular “Buy It” section.
Available only for the next couple of weeks. These official Madness T-shirt’s feature lyrics from the Magnum Opus song The Liberty of Norton Folgate. They will be shipped on July 20th, available only for this limited time period.
Available in 3 sizes, the profit is going to the Music Venture Trust.
Lee Thompson’s One Man’s Madness DVD & CD Soundtrack
Lee ‘Kix’ Thompson is a most unlikely character. Early career choices had him spend a year in Borstal. He still hasn’t found the receipt for his first saxophone. Luckily, he met two other unlikely characters: Mike ‘Barso’ Barson and ‘Chrissy Boy’ Foreman, who shared his interests of graffiti, train hopping and music.
One Man’s Madness, a feature length rocku-docu-mockumentary directed by Jeff Baynes, tells the story of Madness saxophonist Lee Thompson, told by Lee and his fellow Madness band mates, his family, friends and musicologists, who strangely all look a little like him! From meeting Barso and Chrissy Boy, and later Suggs, Chas, Woody and Bedders, to becoming one of Britain’s most iconic and successful bands, this joyous and light-hearted film follows the path of Lee’s life through his lyrics and songs, including such Madness classics as The Prince, Embarrassment, House Of Fun, Lovestruck and NW5.
Two CD set. Original soundtrack to the 2018 documentary about Madness saxophonist Lee Thompson. Includes tracks from Madness, Crunch, ‘Thommosina Leigh’, Ian Dury, and the Lee Thompson Ska Orchestra. Including Hidden Tracks. New Mad store T-shirts & Madshorts
Further New T-shirts are now in stock for the summer. Including Madness Shorts as this hot weather continues to encourage getting your legs out. The recent Stately Holmes tour T-shirt is now in stock on line. A rather fetching Lady Killers poster of the old Ealing comedy about a gang of roguish bank robbers, re done with Madness heads taken from old shut up artwork and repurposed nicely in this fitting parody. A fetching Morris Minor car picture harking back to Driving in My Car video and the Mad 7 number plate, with the paraphrase lyrics from Muswell Hill to Selsey Bill! Check out the Madstore now.
Danceable and delightful, this debut album of the band’s much loved original songs pushes on through, breaking the mould of standard ska cover band. Catchy tunes and powerful brass and rhythm section make this a must-listen. Featuring Lee Thompson.
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: 747 – Sunday 1st September to Saturday 7th September 2013
If you were into your meteorology, then the day this issue landed in your mailboxes was the first day of autumn for those living in the Northern Hemisphere. If you weren’t then you had almost another three weeks of the summer to look forward to. Regardless of how you measured your seasons the end of the year was still a long way off.
What did this have to do with Madness? Well, this week rumours reached us of Madness being booked to play in Dublin this New Year’s Eve. If performed at the right time this could have effectively seen the band take part in their last gig of 2013 and their first of 2014.
The gig had sort of been confirmed by one of the band, but the full announcement with regards to venue had yet to be revealed. It was likely that it’d be the main Countdown Concert in the centre of the city.
As always, if we heard anything further we promised to let you know.
In the meantime, the band were booked for a whole stack of gigs over September, October and November so as fans there was much to look forward to.
With the Madness Weekender in Minehead getting ever closer our MIS Feature for this week was the “MIS Presents” event in Jak’s Night club, which was due to take place over the course of the weekend. The plan was that the MIS and several other members of the Madness fanbase would be taking over the venue on the Sunday afternoon and evening of the weekend.
With three live bands and four DJs booked, this promised to be an event that you couldn’t afford to miss.
Over in our Live and Intensified section Looby Loo kindly reported in with a detailed review of the Craig Charles Fantasy Weekender in Bristol, which featured a set from the one and only Ska Orchestra. Looby commented in her review
“Craig was a wonderful host and totally appreciative of everyone that played. The video shows him coming on stage with the album, reading out the title and telling everyone to buy it and that LTSO were some of his favourite people. Really nice.”
Moving on to our regular Sign of the Times section, and we re-printed an article from ITV.com, who revealed that Madness had completed the line-up at the forthcoming Blackpool Illuminations switch-on weekend. Of the appearance, Suggs responded by saying;
“Madness in Blackpool? With illuminations? What a combination! We’ll definitely be wearing our sunglasses on stage for this one.”
Further down, and in Tweets of a Dove the majority of the section was taken up with Facebook comments and Tweets from Carl. He revealed further details regarding the band’s appearance at the recent Blackpool light switch-on and spoke of the buzz he got from seeing so many happy faces.
We brought this issue to a close with a reminder of the forthcoming Ally Pally gig Meets and pointed you towards a Facebook event group where you could keep track of the plans. 85 people had already signed up. If you wanted more information or to simply confirm your attendance, you were urged to join.
10 years ago…
Issue Number: 487 – Sunday 31st August to Saturday 6th September 2008
You’d had your chance, you’d been sent reminders, but today was the day when MIS/MTR subscriber Paul Muscat said “Enough is enough”, and he stopped accepting entries for the 2008 Mad Chart.
A good three of four months in the making, the timescale to submit entries for the 2008 chart has been the longest running yet, and with around 180 songs to choose from the Madness back catalogue, you could be sure that the final results wouldl be well worth the wait.
We had a feeling that the results would get the fanbase talking, and would possibly raise a few eyebrows. We were sure that we’d be in for an interesting couple of weeks ahead.
On to the articles, and we reported that the one and only Dave Robinson had been presented with the coveted Mojo Medal. Presented by Phil Jupitus, the award was issued on June 16th, but we’d only just found out about it, thanks to the team at news.co.uk.
Next, and busy with terrible puns, and fake Victorian Fossard songs, it seemed we’d forgotten to include the lyrics to two new Madness songs – ‘On The Town’, and ‘Dust Devil’. Thankfully, Graham Yates and Lee Buckley had rectified this little omission and lyrics to both tracks were printed in this very issue.
Moving on, and taking a well earned breather between Tour Madness updates, TM editor, Jermaine, was here with a collection of Dutch related Madness news snippets and tidbits, ranging from news of a New Wave version of It Must be Love to One Step Beyond being used on an episode of Footballers’ Wives.
Over to Nutty Radio next, and it was here that we reviewed the first 60 minute episode of Adam Nicholls’ Madness-tinged internet radio station. Despite this being the first ever show and very much a test, 12 listeners tuned in and listened from start to finish. Not bad for the first airing, and we hoped that more shows would follow.
Jonathan Young commented at the time;
“This Try-out show was an interesting new idea. It proved that the technology works and that the hard set up work paid off. That people are interested in it. That Adam can front a show well, and will improve with practice. It highlighted some of the issues that can help improve future broadcasts. Such as the level between broadcast volume of voice and music, the thought that some people might listen using headphones. Crackling voice issues. What is the best satisfactory run time, for a show like this? And thoughts about how scripted it should or shouldn’t be. Along with myriad potential future directions to take with content”
Next it was competition time, where we gave you the chance to win a copy of an extended edition of Record Collector magazine. The extended part came in the form of an MIS review of the Hackney gig which would be included as an insert, and could be compared against the magazine’s own write-up. Most odd.
To be in with a chance of winning this special prize you simply had to answer the following question;
If Madness wrote a song about Record Collecting what would they title it?
We brought this issue to a close with a reminder that if all went to plan, next week’s issue would see the start of Paul Muscat’s latest version of the Madchart appear in the MIS. The results would be drip-fed to us over the coming weeks, culminating in the reveal of the top ten favourite Madness tracks as voted for by fans.
15 years ago…
Issue Number: 225 – Sunday 31st August to Saturday 6th September 2003
With the previous couple of issues tending to be a little on the lean side it was nice to see that suddenly news had ramped back up, and we were once again able to push out a packed MIS.
We started off the issue with the latest news surrounding the forthcoming Madness Weekender. With less than four weeks to go until the big event Vince Carden gave those people who had put their namesdown the wonderful news that the hotel in Great Yarmouth was like a five star establishment compared to the dump used for Blackpool (and a dump which would once again get used some 4 years later in 2007).
Moving on, and the next article really raised a few eyebrows when it landed some ten years ago.
According to Andrew Fisher of The Sun newspaper Cathal Smyth’s brother, Brendan decided he was going to claim £500 from Madness tribute act ‘Ultimate Madness’, for using Madness’ walk, over the past 12 months. Then, going forward, he wanted £100 per performance.
But the Birmingham based band – started by saxophone player Jason Reynolds – have vowed to fight the demands.
Jason, 30, of Great Barr, Birmingham, said: “Madness are our heroes but this is a real kick in the teeth. The walk is only a small part of the performance.
It’s daft. We only earn about £600 a gig, so we’re hardly making millions from copying them”.
Brandon Davis Publishers spokesman Tony Martin, acting on behalf of Mr Smyth, confirmed: “Brendan owns the copyright to the dance and is demanding payment for its use”.
Following the publication of the link to this article on the Madness Trading Ring, Suggsy of Madness tribute group `First Step Below` decided a response was needed…
“I normally keep very quite in this forum but I am 100% gob smacked by this (and those that know me will say and not much can do that). This time I couldn’t help but put fingers to keyboard. I would like to pass on that 1StepBelow are 100% behind Ultimate and all the tributes should stand united and help fight this silly claim. Although we don’t do the walk in our show it’s a matter of principle.
We all work very hard for very little gain, and often crowd participation is our only reward, taking into account that many of us supported the boys during the early days and remember spending my paper round money on them.
And our stage shows are just a continuation of our respect and support. Although I am pretty sure that the Nutty Boys didn’t instigate this they should support us as we support them.
Maybe John Cleese should sue Brendan Davis Publishers And then Hitler could sue John Cleese or something equally as stupid.
If Brendan Davis Publishers would like to get in touch maybe I can find them some proper work that would look better on their balance sheets”.
Thankfully, even the band thought it was a daft claim, with Lee Thompson commenting that it was ridiculous.
Moving back to the forthcoming Madness Weekender, and Cheryl decided to tease all those down to attend, by listing just some of the goodies available in auction, due to take place in Great Yarmouth.
Masses of signed items were available for bidding on, including Woody’s drumsticks, vote for Fred flyers, various issues of Nut Inc, and much, much more.
Finally, we finished off this week’s issue with news that the forthcoming Christmas tour had proven to be so popular that an extra date had been added, and it was one that the Irish Maddies were especially pleased with, as on the 6th of December the tour would kick off at Dublin’s ‘The Point’.
Rob Hazelby
MIS Feature
My Life Story DVD – Out November
“After a bit of messing about…”, says the new advert for Suggs Movie DVD of his One Man Show, which now has a new release date of November 2018. This opening line is the admission that a delayed March release, a lack of updates before August 10th, and a rejig of both the pledge campaign account and the team behind the release have all taken place. You won’t have to go far on the Pledge site then or social media to read the opinions of customers or fans which are myriad in complaint of all this messing about.
Now that the Pledge is relaunched though with a new release date of November, and with a fresh launch event to take place at the Pleasance Theatre in London in line with this… we take a look at what’s changed and what’s now available in the Pledge options. And also remind you what we thought of the actual film at the heart of this release, underneath the messing, there is a movie worth owning to do with Madness.
The main difference to the actual D is that it is now to contains “My Life Story behind the scenes documentary”. While it’s not yet known how long this extra is, it sounds so much better than the previous QnA with Keith Allen option, given that that shambolic talk appeared on social media and isn’t worth your time anyway. The Original theatrical trailer and Digital pdf file of the theatre program that was available for Suggs first one man show tour round out a slightly more worth collection of features if not extensive, certainly more expansive than the previous plan. For twice the price you can have this Signed by Suggs. If you want to add your name into the DVD booklet, grab some postcards and carry it all off in a themed tote bag, that will be a collectors bundle for £100.
The new Pledge campaign added handwritten lyrics into the project all of which, be they Baggy Trousers, or Shut up, have already been snapped up adding to funds. There’s badges and T-shirts, and sign script options. And a chance to commentary the movie if you’ve a crazy couple of grand spare.
“The film is a fitting permanent record of Suggs’ first One Man Show, giving you the best humorous and touching tales told in that show all about his life. From growing up discovering music, headlines of his times with Madness, his emotional family journey and some asides on other avenues of entertainment he turned a hand to over the years.
It’s well performed in a honed and confident performance that was shot at the end of its successful touring run and staged especially for this film in an intimate Hoxton theatre. It’s 90 to 95 minutes worth of the 2 hour stage show many have witnessed, and much like The Norton Folgate movie a collage of extra tricks is pulled in presentation here by Julien Temple.
From the repurposing of clips from Take It or Leave It, Madness videos and other archive punk, pop and film sources, to adding colourful animation representations, and projecting the theatre performance across London landscapes again to transition moods.
Finally, dramatising unique shot sections with Suggs as himself, as narrator and performer, and occasionally filling in with a young skinhead extra as a representation of some of the youthful antics Suggs used to do as a teenager”.
It took a relaunch approach or two to complete the One Mans Madness pledge campaign and that movie is now in fans hands, lets hope with worthy film does indeed make it out for Christmas, and finally make some upset Suggs fans happier when they get to see it.
Jonathan Young
Time
That’s almost it for this week, but beefier we go we’d like to finish with a Specialised update. Over to Jonathan Young, Paul Willo and Specialised for the details…
Specialized Update – Boss Sounds
The new CD box set album is available to pre – order now…
‘BOSS a Tribute to Original Sounds’ celebrates an international love affair with Jamaican music. Since the early 60’s the sound of Jamaica’s distinct syncopated lilt has filled dancefloors and sold records across the globe. Boss pays tribute to the great music of the 60’s and 70’s that inspired 1000’s to follow.
Musicians from across the globe have contributed their time and skills to the creation of these 70 tracks for a 4 disc CD boxset. It includes tracks originally recorded by the pioneers of ska, reggae and rocksteady, including Laurel Aitken, The Skatalittes, Desmond Dekker, Jimmy Cliff, Toots and the Maytals and many more.
This boxset is available as a limited-edition release and if the sales of our previous box-sets are anything to go by, it will sell out before the year is out
PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS A PRE-ORDER. This item that has not yet been released. By pre-ordering this item you are reserving your copy for when it becomes available
Here at MIS, we are privileged to have heard a track from this forthcoming box set. Our friends “Indeed” allowed us to play a preview of their version of “Taller than you are” on our Camden boat trip last weekend. This Trojan cover of a track the Dangermen also notably covered has been has now been given the light touch of this classy French band previously noted by Suggs as the best covering artist for their rendition of The sun and the rain. Once again, it’s dreamy pop of a madly known tune.
More on the Boss album artists and tracks in a future issue.
