Album Madness

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Maral Mende

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Aug 5, 2024, 1:39:15 AM8/5/24

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Madnessis a compilation album by the British ska/pop band Madness. It was issued primarily for the North American market in order to capitalise on the top 10 success in the United States of their hit single "Our House" from the 1982 album Madness Presents the Rise & Fall, which had not been available there.

The album contains every UK single from "Grey Day" to "Tomorrow's (Just Another Day)," with the exception of "Driving in My Car," which has never been issued on any US compilation. However, the album was also issued in Japan where "Driving In My Car" replaced "Rise & Fall".

Rolling Stone's J. D. Considine gave the album a rave review, saying that it introduced the best tracks from Madness's earlier albums to an American audience, while leaving out any songs with insular British cultural references. He praised the uniquely British "economy and wit" of the melodies and the sobering lyrics, remarking that "Madness offers up all of the clichs of traditional British entertainment - but with a twist, revealing the hard realities behind the soothing illusions."[2]

I still rank Liberty as there absolute masterpiece and despite them still being great with the loss of Cathal Smyth, I do think they would be better with him. His solo album from a few years ago is superb.

Looking at YouTube, it seems they have only about 160k subscribers. This is an outrage, and I think questions must be asked in Parliament. How can one of our greatest bands have such a relatively low profile?

I am very excited about a new offering as I think their sound has matured & it has unleased a whole new side of them which I love. Liberty was great (as mentioned above), but I thought Oui Oui, Si Si, Ja Ja, Da Da was superb too. Misery from this is the Madness track that usually starts me down the nutty wormhole*

In 1974, Richard Thompson converted to Islam, and he remains Muslim to this day. His wife Linda Thompson converted as well, but apparently more reluctantly. They released two albums in 1975, but then they moved to a Sufi community in the English countryside, much like a religious commune, and dropped out of the music business for a while.

In 1977, Richard wrote some new songs and went on a short tour with Linda. He also made an attempt to record a new album in the studio. However, something felt off to him about the new songs, or maybe getting back into music in general, because the new album never materialized. He put out another Richard and Linda Thompson album in 1978, "First Light," but it didn't contain any of the 1977 songs.

Luckily though, one concert (at Drury Lane, London) from that short 1977 tour was recorded fairly well. The first five songs here come from that Drury Lane concert. Many years later, Richard was asked about these songs, and he said, "Some songs deserve to fall off the radar." He's avoided putting them on retrospective compilations or adding them as bonus tracks or the like, so he really must have an issue with them. But it's very puzzling, because they're all good songs. Graham Parker even covered one of them ("Madness of Love") for a Richard Thompson tribute album.

If you take the five unreleased songs from that 1977 concert and add in two other obscure songs released in 1978, it makes up a lost 1977 album. In my opinion it's just as good as their other albums, though the song quality is a bit lower than ideal on the live songs.

In late 2020, the box set "Hard Luck Stories" was released. Happily, it contained better versions of four of the songs. Unfortunately, that means it didn't contain two of them, "Rescue Me" and "The Fire in the Garden." Those two sound a bit worse than the others.

The bonus track "The Flute Tells a Story" seems to be another original from this time period. But while it was played at that same Drury Lane concert, it didn't make it to the bootleg. Instead, I found a version from a different concert bootleg. The sound quality is okay, but of lesser quality than all the others on this album, which is why it's only a bonus track.

The Flute Tells a Story (Richard & Linda Thompson)

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When I first posted this, I had a different cover. But I wasn't happy with it, due to the lack of good color photos of Richard and Linda Thompson, especially in their first years. Many months later, I found a better picture, from December 1974. It was in black and white, but by then I had a program to help with colorizing, so I colorized it.

One thing is for certain: this album is not the easiest Animals As Leaders album to lock into. It is, however, especially revealing upon repeat listens. Admittedly, initial impressions were that this record was scattered and had no real place to call home, but sometimes you have to really give an album your undivided attention and contemplate its intentions before you see it for what it really is. The Madness of Many is three technically gifted and uniquely voiced musicians trying to let themselves be heard and as previously stated, sometimes the songs buckle under the pressure, but there are plenty of moments on this record where magic is found and incredible chemistry is displayed. Give this record some time and attention and you will likely be rewarded with a well-earned appreciation for something that shows promise and potential for a group that keeps finding new ways to keep themselves interesting.

This album is a series of jazz-ish improvisations recorded last month (except a couple piano pieces). I say "improvised" in the sense nothing was planned, I didn't write anything: I just improvised each part in a first take. An exercise I'm not really used to.

This is not background music or easy listening.

The drafts are on my Youtube channel.

You can listen on most streaming platforms including:

YouTube Music, Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Bandcamp.

For the piano pieces I just played them while recording in NS2 with one of my custom piano patch in audiolayer, that made the first take. Then I rehearsed until I could play again the same music, keeping the vibes and spontaneity, getting rid of all some of the imperfections of the first improvisation.

For the other pieces, exact same process, just with a little bit more tracks. All the sounds are my patches in Obsidian or Audiolayer. Edit: I play first an invisible track that I won't export, usually with an electric piano with the basic harmonic, rhythmic and melodic structure, that gives me a reference when I play the other instruments.

Soundpaint flute and sax don't work on iPad, so I recorded them on the MacBook and imported the audio in NS2 with Non audio editor.

Thank you @GeoTony , @NeuM, @LinearLineman .

I'm afraid my holidays are fucked up. Because of a train strike (guess what country I live in) it was impossible for me to reach the airport in time to get my flight. Weather made any other option impossible. And prices during this period also made impossible to book another flight less than 12hours before take off. Had to cancel the flight, hopping for maybe a partial refund, and booked another flight in January, but the holidays are fucked up anyways.

And of course, as always, one section is dedicated to our favourite song on the album. To be honest this was a hard album to pick a favourite song from. Creatures, Ruins of a Kingdom, and Ballad for a Fallen Hero all are great songs that we adored on this album. However we finally agreed to talk about the latter because it is a very special song. The lyrics, the melody, the intro and outro, and the guitars fusion with the ballad sound all make the song a great one to listen to again and again and again.

One thing we think would have made the album even better is some more balancing between the volumes of vocals and music. On some songs the volume of vocals was much lower than the music to a point the lyrics were not distinguishable. Otherwise, this album kept giving and giving!

The album is predominantly Polkas, which are quite common in Slaibh Luachra, but not as much in the rest of Ireland. To be exact, 50% of the tunes are polkas. As well, most of the tunes on the album are played in the flat keys. The total run time of the album is 48:52. The total number of tracks on the album is 12, including 2 solo tracks, one for Caoimhn and one for Brendan. The total number of tunes on the album is 26, 13 polkas, 7 jigs, (including slides and slippery jigs,) 3 hornpipes, 2 slow airs, and 1 march. The liner notes include narratives by both Coaimhn and Brendan, talking about the tunes and the music in general.