Madness Central Newsletter: Issue 12.
Kevin Tizzard
19th December - 26th December 2009.
Welcome to the 12th edition of the Madness Central weekly newsletter.
If you've missed the previous issues you can catch up by viewing the groups archive at:
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/madness-central-newsletter?hl=en
Contents:
1. Latest News And Information
2. Three Final Tour Dates for 2009
3. "Suggs and the City" book review - Guardian.co.uk
4. Early Reminder: Sponsor Woody's London Marathon Run
5. Concert Online UK Tour 2009 Recordings
6. The Liberty of Norton Folgate Screens in South America
7. Contacting Madness Central
8. Newsletter Subscription Details.
===========================================================
1. Latest News And Information
===========================================================
# A Quarter Million Madness Albums… Wow!
Our friend Steve Bunyan over at Union Square Music sent along some impressive numbers concerning the sales of Madness’ four album releases through 2009 ...
Read the complete blog at:
http://madness-central.com/blog/?p=847
# An Opening Salvo on Madness
News in today from our good friends at Union Square Music, who manage Madness’ back catalogue, that they have overhauled and upgraded their “Salvo Music” website [Insert Link here: http://www.unionsquaremusic.co.uk/salvo/news/index.html] that includes a Madness page that currently lists the One Step Beyond re-issue and will allow you to buy it direct in the near future ...
Read the complete blog at:
http://madness-central.com/blog/?p=845
===========================================================
2. Three Final Tour Dates for 2009
===========================================================
With the Christmas holiday past and the New Year quickly approaching, what better way to fill the interim week than by taking in one, or two, or all three remaining Madness gigs for 2009?
Check here for concert and venue information:
Dublin - The O2 - December 28
http://www.theo2.ie/event/madness/
Belfast - Odyssey Arena - December 29
http://www.odysseyarena.com/440/madness.html
Edinburgh Hogmanay - December 31 (Enclosure Sold Out)
http://www.edinburghshogmanay.com/content/Concert-in-the-Gardens-featuring-Madness/2548
===========================================================
3. "Suggs and the City" book review - Guardian.co.uk
===========================================================
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/dec/19/suggs-city-book-review
Published date: 19 December 2009
Suggs and the City by Suggs:
Kate Webb on two quintessentially English icons of pop ...
When the 21st century hits its stride, will pop groups start talking about "breaking China" in the way they used to talk about breaking America? I doubt it. Because even if China becomes the world's biggest market, the history and meaning of pop will always be bound up with the United States. And the English, in the grip of a cultural cringe that has lasted as long as rock'n'roll, will go on needing to prove themselves.
Questions of identity and influence dominate two new books from the pop world: one by Madness's front man, Suggs, explores his lifelong love affair with London and goes rummaging in its "history drawer"; the other, by Marcus Gray, looks at the Clash's double album, London Calling, on its 30th anniversary.
"I don't think you could really mistake Madness for an American band, could you?" Suggs asks pointedly. The question of influence matters because there has always been a Beatles/Stones divide in England: do you sing in a Liverpudlian accent or adopt an American drawl? Suggs was never in doubt about his stomping ground. "Hollywood?" he brags, "I only got as far as Holloway."
His book grew out of research for Madness's most recent album, The Liberty of Norton Folgate, about Spitalfields, one of London's most fluid and historically redolent areas. From Protestant Huguenots to European Jews, from Bangladeshis to Poles, "we're all", Suggs concludes, "dancing in the moonlight . . . on borrowed ground".
But Madness were not always so all-embracing. For a work intended to shore up memory in the face of careless forgetting ? its dedicatee is London's last rag-and-bone man ? the author's own recollections seem partial. Suggs talks fondly of early gigs at the Hope & Anchor in Islington, for instance, but makes no mention of the sieg-heiling, swastika-sporting fans I saw there. Perhaps a biography will bring a fuller account of the transition he and his fans have made ? something to look forward to, because among his descriptions of Camden's Irish pubs and Soho nightlife, music halls and race tracks, dandies and Bohemians, the most vivid are those etched with stories from his life.
Like Suggs, Joe Strummer insisted that he, too, "sang in English", yet the Clash's loyalty was still called into question. If Suggs is concerned with a disappearing past, the Clash reserved their nostalgia for the future. The album's title track, one of the most rousing and urgent products of punk's apocalyptic imagination, depicts the band as clandestine Londoners, under threat and sending out distress signals: "London calling to the faraway towns / Now war is declared, and battle come down".
"London calling", of course, was the BBC call sign to occupied Europe during the second world war. In 1979, when this record was made, a new war was under way on London's streets: Margaret Thatcher had come to power, unemployment was rising and the National Front marched, brandishing Union Jack flags. The Clash heralded this new order in songs such as "Clampdown" and "The Guns of Brixton", tolling the death knell of 60s optimism. Now all that swung in London was the policeman's truncheon.
Gray's sprawling book, Route 19 Revisited: The Clash and London Calling
by Marcus Gray (528pp, Jonathan Cape, ?20) has a fan's tendency to throw in every last scrap of information, and is written in a linguistic mishmash ("the sounds and rhythms of days of yore"; "urgent crosstown dashes by the ever-prosaic bus or Tube"). But the discussion of the band's influences is interesting. The album also contains American-inspired material ("Brand New Cadillac", "Koka Kola") and reggae ("Rudie Can't Fail", "Revolution Rock"). For the Clash, the problem was this: it was a principle of punk that you did-it-yourself: music should be homemade and home-grown. The reason Jagger's drawl was so loathed was not that anyone hated the black American sound he mimicked, but that it represented a kind of musical tourism.
This, Gray reminds us, is why Johnny Rotten objected to white kids playing Jamaican music ? it was a sort of cultural imperialism to which they hadn't earned the right. It was a persuasive argument, but one that Strummer strongly rebutted: "People say white blokes can't do reggae, but that's a load of s**t . . . I didn't discover reggae in a book, I grew up with it. It's part of me."
The dangers of bad faith, however, were there for all to see. In 1974, Eric Clapton remodelled Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff" and had a number one hit in the US. Two years later, he harangued a bewildered Birmingham audience: "I think Enoch's right . . . Stop Britain becoming a black colony . . . Get the foreigners out." Such hypocrisy from a man who'd made a career playing black music was more than some music fans could stomach: it was this outburst that led to the creation of Rock Against Racism, an organisation the Clash played for at the Hackney Carnival in 1978 and again the following year, in aid of a defence fund set up to help those arrested or injured when the National Front brought mayhem to Southall.
In these Cowell-fuelled times, young musicians would do well to look to Suggs's historical delving, or the Clash's internationalism, to see how pop might reimagine itself. It's going to be interesting listening to the sound of Britain as the world tilts away from the Atlantic, and America starts to lose power.
===========================================================
4. Early Reminder: Sponsor Woody's London Marathon Run
===========================================================
Even though it's a few months away yet, it's never too early to donate a few quid to Woody's 2010 London Marathon charity:
http://www.runningsponsorme.org/woody
Woody's raised £4,255.96, more than halfway to his goal of £8,000.
We'll be holding a charity drive contest closer to the marathon date, but don't let that keep you from make a donation today.
===========================================================
5. Concert Online UK Tour 2009 Recordings
===========================================================
The pre-Christmas gigs are available for purchase through Concert Online as digital download, USB and MP3 player. All shows through 18th of December London concert are available:
http://concert-online.com/en/shop/29368/live-recordings/Madness.html
Concert Online is recording the upcoming Dublin O2, Belfast Odyssey and Edinburgh Hogmanay gigs as well, all open for pre-order.
===========================================================
6. The Liberty of Norton Folgate Screens in South America
===========================================================
Julien Temple's "The Liberty of Norton Folgate" film continues to do the international film festival circuit. On December 15 the Madness documentary enjoyed a screening at the 6th International Musical Film and Documentary Festival of Chile in the capital city of Santiago.
Three of Julien Temple's films screened at the festival this year: "The Liberty of Norton Folgate", "Glastonbury" and "Oil City Confidential: The History of Dr. Feelgood." Temple visited the Santiago festival with his son, where he spoke to a limited audience and journalists about his films. This extension of the Barcelona International Film Festival has toured Argentina and Chile thus far and will be traveling to Brazil and Mexico in the new year.
Here's a review from a Chilean native who attended the Norton Folgate screening:
Source:
http://nihilismo-innecesario.blogspot.com/2009/12/madness-traves-de-los-ojos-de-julien.html
Madness through the eyes of Julien Temple:
Published date: 16 December 2009
"Joe Strummer, a longtime friend, told me that before his death had to come to Chile," said Julien Temple on the Plaza Camilo Mori about 2225 December 15, amid the introduction of the premiere of the documentary Madness: The Liberty of Norton Folgate (2009).
The brief opening words of the filmmaker gave way to their work carried out 64 minutes with Luke Cresswell, who ran in the context of In-Edit Festival Nescaf.
Within the material, also responsible for Punk Can Take It, exhibits, audiovisual proposal by its hallmark-that condenses with the same level of importance the aesthetic appearance next to the content, the back label of the ska group formed in London 1979.
And not just any return: they are 10 years without release an album in studio. As Temple sparing no resources to convey the importance of this situation.
Zona liberada - Liberated Zone
The three presentations condenses the material that the band performed at the legendary Hackney Empire Theater in June 2008. There Madness presented the aforementioned The Liberty of Norton Folgate.
The title is inspired by one of those curiosities of British law, where a small area in east London had different laws to other municipal regulations, to be managed by its own residents.
The confluence in the place of artists, including the famous poet Christopher Marlowe, symbolizing the free spirit and independent of London, as opposed to the dictates of the Elizabethan crown. This lasted until 1900. Temple plays with this reminiscence, recreating a story that is emerging between songs of the presentation of the group, giving a turn to the poetic and symbolic lyrics to this.
One problem is that the material is only limited to an audience that has some knowledge of Madness. Someone who does not know the history of ska and 2 Tone revival of Chris Foreman initiate and co in the late seventies, soon will understand what he is seeing through the screen.
An introduction, with a minimum of context on the grouping would not have bothered in the least.
Moreover, unlike other works of authorship, including The Filth and The Fury and The Future Is Unwritten, where there is a central concern in exploring the stories of its protagonists. Temple here only focuses its efforts on exposing viewers the vitality and significance of the band's songs. Something, which in any case, it did in There'll Always Be an England (2008) on the return of the Sex Pistols.
This is done by using the above parallel story, which reconstructs the missing imaginary space freed and remarkable visual planes of both the band and the ecstatic audience at the venue.
It is generally a good job. Shows the effect on the stages of a true legend of English music. At the same time, details, c on the meaning of art outside the superfluous and haunting Temple substance, that side of London recently made visible. That with their loves, their dreams and frustrations cyclical, who passed them on through the dusty streets for over five centuries.
===========================================================
7. Contacting Madness Central
===========================================================
You can send all communications relating to Madness Central to the e-mail address:
ad...@madness-central.com
===========================================================
8. Newsletter Subscription Details
===========================================================
# Subscribing to the Newsletter:
If you are reading this newsletter via Google, Facebook and/or RSS feed, you can have this newsletter delivered weekly directly to your e-mail inbox.
To subscribe, visit the Madness Central website at: http://www.madness-central.com and use the relevant subscription box displayed on the homepage.
Alternatively, you can send a blank e-mail to:
madness-central-ne...@googlegroups.com
You will need to reply to a confirmation e-mail prior to your subscription being processed. With some ISP's this email may be filtered directly into your spam/junk folder.
# How to Unsubscribe:
If you no longer wish to receive the Madness Central Newsletter, send an e-mail to:
Kevin Tizzard
27th December 2009- 1st December 2010.
Welcome to the 13th edition of the Madness Central weekly newsletter.
If you've missed the previous issues you can catch up by viewing the groups archive at:
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/madness-central-newsletter?hl=en
Contents:
1. Latest News And Information
2. New Videos from MadtubeMTV
3. www.retro-madness.co.uk - This week's Special Offer
4. Gig review: Edinburgh's Hogmanay: The Concert in the Gardens
5. Madness Central Updates: The Nutty Caption
6. Belfast Review: Wordmagazine.co.uk
7. Contacting Madness Central
8. Newsletter Subscription Details.
===========================================================
1. Latest News And Information
===========================================================
# It Must Be Gov
The British government have tapped Suggs to star in a 1 million advertisement for Direct.gov, a push to encourage people to access public services online. The advertisement, base on Madness’ version of “It Must Be Love”, has been criticised for using taxpayers’ money on the star-studded advert during the current downturn in the economy. Voiced by Oscar-winning actress Dame Helen Mirren and directed by Steve Bendelack (whose credits include Little Britain and Mr Bean’s Holiday), the advert also stars Honor Blackman, Christopher Biggins, and Nick Moran ...
Read the complete blog at:
http://madness-central.com/blog/?p=853
You can view the advertisment in its entirety at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2009/dec/29/suggs-directgov
# Radio 2 Stays Forever Young
Madness Makes the Radio 2 Playlist. The week starting 26 December sees the forthcoming Madness single “Forever Young” taking a slot on Radio 2’s B-List ...
Read the complete blog at:
http://madness-central.com/blog/?p=850
# You’ll have to wait another week to be Forever Young
Forever Young release date pushed back. In what may be the shortest news blog entry ever, it's been announced the January 11 release of the forthcoming Madness single "Forever Young" has now been pushed back to January 18 ...
Read the complete blog at:
http://madness-central.com/blog/?p=852
===========================================================
2. New Videos from MadtubeMTV
===========================================================
The Official YouTube Channel has seen a host of uploads in the past few days including on stage performances at the London 02, Belfast and Dublin and short clips of the band members wishing fans a Happy New Year.
You can view all recent uploads by visiting the official Youtube page at:
http://www.youtube.com/user/MadtubeMTV
===========================================================
3. www.retro-madness.co.uk - This week's Special Offer
===========================================================
This week's offer is for a vinyl 12" of the second (and last?) ever single to be released in the UK by Chris and Lee's band the Nutty Boys / Crunch! ...Magic Carpet from 1996.
The title track was written by Suggs, Lee and Chris and the other tracks are Magic Carpet (remix), Danger Zone and Hereditary - two classic tracks not available anywhere else except this single.
The 12" is still in brand new / mint condition, never been played and even includes a 7 page press pack. For this week only we are reducing the price from £7.50 to £4.99. UK postage (which will cost us approx £3 inc packing and Paypal fees) is completely free to you, so effectively you are buying this record for just £1.99! Postage outside the UK is extra.
Click the link below and you will find the 12" about 1/3 of the way down the page. We still have a handful of Stiff Records books left over from last week's deal so we are holding their bargain price of £13.50 for one more week, you will find them near the top of the same page.
Happy 2010!
Chris & Emma of Retro-Madness
===========================================================
4. Gig review: Edinburgh's Hogmanay: The Concert in the Gardens
===========================================================
Source: The Scotsman
http://living.scotsman.com/features/Gig-review-Edinburgh39s-Hogmanay-The.5951151.jp
Published Date: 02 January 2010
By David Pollock
IT SEEMED strange, in the context of this event, to make up for the lack of big-name breakthrough Scottish bands in 2009 by asking possibly the most London-centric pop group in history to headline Edinburgh's Hogmanay celebrations. Yet any doubters' minds would have been put at ease within the first few minutes of Madness' set.
The ten-piece Camden ska-pop orchestra appeared in a blaze of pomp and swagger, their matching black suits bringing to mind the Blues Brothers with Cockney accents, their backing singer Carl Smyth (aka Chas Smash) bellowing the introduction to One Step Beyond.
Previously, the crowd had been entertained by the also smartly-dressed Codeine Velvet Club, although this new project from Fratellis singer Jon Lawler and Glasgow-based singer-songwriter Lou Hickey didn't quite capture the imagination in the same way as previous breakthrough Scots artists like Glasvegas or Paolo Nutini have managed at this
event. Similarly, London garage-rockers turned inoffensive pop moppets Noisettes have not exactly defined 2009 with their sound, although Don't Upset the Rhythm and Never Forget You were perfectly serviceable hits which entertained the crowd here, along with a closing cover of T-Rex's Children of the Revolution.
This may not have been the finest musical celebration Edinburgh has held to see in the New Year, but it must certainly have rated as the most stylish. Madness frontman Suggs cut a particular dash in his lamé houndstooth suit, with sharply-shined white shoes and a white silk handkerchief in his breast pocket, and his performance was delivered with the kind of droll deadpan which suggested that perhaps a pre-bells sherry had been taken.
Playing for half an hour before midnight, the group leaned on the less lively areas of their back catalogue, although there are few Madness songs which don't lend themselves to furious skanking from young and old. Embarrassment, The Prince and My Girl were played here, along with Suggs's lone version of The Beatles' Help! (which quickly found itself
hijacked by the crowd) and Forever Young from the latest Madness album The Liberty of Norton Folgate. While the song's tone of regret perhaps made it an appropriate choice to see out the old year, it was the least exciting track of a generally entertaining set.
Following a five-minute break for the countdown to 2010, a truly stunning fireworks display and a somewhat botched karaoke singalong to Auld Lang Syne, the party restarted in earnest. This time the big hits weren't spared, with House of Fun kicking off Madness's gigging year followed by a light version of Max Romeo's reggae classic I Chase the Devil,
plus Shut Up, Baggy Trousers, Our House and It Must Be Love.
By this point, more celebratory nips had been taken by the crowd, and misty-eyed slow dances were breaking out, to be temporarily curtailed by the band's signature track Madness and the closing Night Boat to Cairo. An emphatic away win for the sometime Nutty Boys.
===========================================================
5. Madness Central Updates: The Nutty Caption
===========================================================
Have you ever seen a picture of Madness and, with puzzled amazement, said to yourself, "Just what the blue blazes were they thinking?" Why not put some words in the mouths of Madness and answer that question for yourself?
The chosen 'victims' this time are Suggs and Chrissy Boy..
Enter you caption(s) at:
http://www.madness-central.com/interactive/caption/caption.php
===========================================================
6. 6. Belfast Review: Wordmagazine.co.uk
===========================================================
My night of corporate Madness
Posted by Steven C on 29 December 2009 - 11:35pm.
Source: Wordmagazine
http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/my-night-corporate-madness
Today it was my birthday, I hung one more year on the line as they say, and I spent the evening in an executive box at the Odyssey Arena, Belfast watching Madness. Just as there comes a point in every young man's life when he realises that he will never play the Dane, so too comes the slamming realisation that he has become a middle-aged man in a metaphorical pork pie hat.
I turned up with my complimentary ticket, was wined and dined at the expense of a client, and I was and am grateful, it's just ... I suddenly knew that never again will I climb through a barbed wire fence to get into a gig free (I'll just make a phone call), or stand outside in the rain to get an autograph (I'll go online), and I'm long past sitting on the floor skinning up on a copy of 'Astral Weeks' and smoking a joint with friends (I have two sofas and access to several bottles of single malt).
I chatted with the assembled guests vaguely aware that in the background, down in the arena, a DJ was spinning some discs. At one point he had the entire crowd singing the chorus to 'Ghost Town'. Turns out it was Jerry Dammers, although I never thought to actually pay any attention because, hey, there were canapes!
Madness put on a very slick revue, and that was what it was - a theatrical revue. Fairly lacklustre trots through the hits. This played equally well to the floor as to the boxes. £10 for a fez. I found myself drifting off ... musing about when I first heard these songs, and doing 'that dance' at the 6th Form disco, but most of all I was thinking ... 'Play some new!'.
The few songs from 'The Liberty of Norton Folgate' in the first section of the show were genuine highlights. The band seemed more energised tackling this material, than when running through the back catalogue. Having said that the triple punch of 'Wings of a Dove', 'Baggy Trousers', and 'Our House' perked up even the birthday boy, so I'll probably be alright in the morning.
Set List:
One Step Beyond - Embarrassment - The Prince - NW5 - My Girl - Dust Devil - Sun & The Rain - Johnny The Horse - Shut Up - MKII - Clerkenwell Polka - Iron Shirt - Bed & Breakfast Man - That Close - Ernie - Forever Young - House Of Fun - Wings Of A Dove - Baggy Trousers - Our House - It Must Be Love - Tarzan's Nuts - Madness - Night Boat To Cairo