Madness: Classic Or Dud?

the back catalogue is chocka with some drop dead classics.

i'd add my vote to rise and fall and 7.

but then this was my 1st fave band .. and remained so for many many years. i still love em despite rarely listening to them these days. though the forthcoming ska based album sounds like it could be fun.

extra spooky, since i watched the greatest hits dvd and 'take it or leave it' with the band/director's commentaries on just the other night.

gosh.

i always assumed the band was effectively powered by chris/lee/mike

never expected The Boy to leave the gang first after Barso returned ..

I just saw them over the weekend. I had no idea they were in the states and touring.

They were outstanding!

i love madness. i really fucking love them. why do i never listen to them these days?

Every time I listen to them (which isn't nearly often enough) I keep thinking I should listen to them more. Then I don't.

These guys sucked

Tory turncoat scum, the lot of them.

They are Tories because.......??

I mean, if all traditional typical English working class culture is Tory these days, then the future of Labour seems black if Labour has to rely upon the votes of immigrants only....

stick to the music geir. Please.

then the future of Labour seems black

Is this a Norwegian pun?

Anyone who says "dud" is the nemesis of fun,

They played at the 50th birthday party of the Conservative Party treasurer. They had a choice.

I've been waiting for this from Dom for years. Strange, this moment just arrived now.
And naturally, Dom's wrong.

There isn't a great deal of fun in the later works of Madness.

If you are speaking post-comeback, no.

Dom is Rong. Suggs was good on the Paul Morley thingum last night. Last couple of Madness albums (pre split) were bleak in places, but still great records...

You feeling Suggs as a Virgin Radio drivetime DJ, big man?

I'm feeling killing Suggs for those twatting fish finger adverts.

Shows you how bad that Morley thing must have been if Tory Suggs was the best he could manage.

Is he out as a Tory or are we just running an exciting McCarthyite witchhunt? Which I'm totally cool with by the way.

Presumably, Madness' agency booked them for the gig, so it's more about "were they violently opposed to whoever it was" as opposed to "are card carrying tories" right?

Suggs, the Madness frontman, chaired a special Question Time for local teenagers at Camden Town Hall earlier this week as part of Local Democracy Week.

Over 50 teenagers from schools and youth organisations across Camden fired questions at a panel of Councillors representing the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrats parties. Among the topics covered in a very lively discussion were education funding, leisure facilities, voting for 16 year olds, anti social behaviour, environmental issues and how relevant politics was to ordinary people.

Tory Suggs commented that the party gave them an opportunity to see "how the other half lived."

But they took the thirty thousand pieces of silver and THEY HAD A PRINCIPLED CHOICE

Oh I didn't read upthread. OK cool Tory Scum. Ban.

they are pay cheque whores though aren't they.
they have always moaned about how during their peak years they were all broke and got ripped off by Stiff (though having 7 members in a band is always going to make the money a lot less per person) and always go on about it via little digs here and there (video commentaries), so i'd suggest that this was just a way to earn a few extras.
as for the music - well i still think that Wonderful is just that.
I hate the Party Pleasers a lot, but as i stated ago up there ^^^ i still love this band.

xpost : oh fair enough. they are tory twats.

The sight of Suggs gurning and doing his jerky dad-can't-dance dance in a Phil Jupitus cast-off big loud suit, singing Cecilia on TOTP in the mid 90s still haunts me for some reason.

Morley was right though, My Girl wasn't a bad song.

Tracey Ullman's version is better though.

i would listen to suggs drivetime djing if he did not play anything off their playlist.

Madness represent archetypical North London Cockney culture, and I guess for some people that is automatically Tory as it is so typically English in a traditional way.

http://img172.imageshack.us/img172/7201/geirbotee0.jpg

Geir, you're a moron.

Madness represent archetypical North London Cockney culture, and I guess for some people that is automatically Tory as it is so typically English in a traditional way.

-- Geir Hongro, Wednesday, 9 January 2008 13:14 (17 minutes ago) Link

http://www.freewebs.com/gutman/sabo2.JPG

"This is a chemist not a joke shop"

Does anyone have any ill-informed opinions about Norway they'd like to get off their chest?

As regards the thread title, total Classic.

Having written the likes of Return of the Las Palmas 7, Our House, Embarrassment, One Better Day and House of Fun, they can be forgiven a bit of middle-age toryism, if indeed that is the case. There must be a thread somewhere about the political skeletons in one's record collection...

I enjoyed the Paul Morley programme, by the way, and I found Suggs' contribution thoughtful and insightful.

they can be forgiven a bit of middle-age toryism, if indeed that is the case.

is there any more evidence of middle-age toryism on their part than rote Marcello witch-hunting? i don't think its cool they played that gig. i also don't think it makes em tories, or invalidates their previous activism/writing.

What's Marcello got to do with all of this?

http://www.mdk-design.com/images/blog/guyincognito.png

Phil O'Donnell morelike

What's Marcello got to do with all of this?

*frowns*

xp EXACTLY dom

It'th a mythtery.

Anyway all middle aged Tories should be rounded up and shipped to Kenya, same as the rest of them. Especially traitors like Madness and their domed Cameron-loving audience.

Guy Incognito OTM

(ta for keeping the thread honest stevie, and apols for hasty posting on zing - I mean that the others play on nearly every track, vs less-frequent trumpet, and Suggs wrote less than a frontman is often assumed to do... ofc the range of writing credits, and variety of writing collaborations amongst members, is one of the most remarkable and admirable things about the group!)

Yes, everybody contributed to the songwriting ... and wrote (or co-wrote) good songs!

*hands out menus* are you ready to order?

I misquoted above, it was "comic malevolence", not "grinning". More fitting, not quite as sinister. This level that is perfectly possible to ignore and only see the fun surface, without there being anything wrong with that.

Madness have this in common with another of my favourite bands: Stump, which are also clearly Not For Everyone. I totally get why one might be allergic to what can be perceived as mere gratuitous zanyness and unwarranted quirk; but for me, as I've mumbled on here on occasions, I find Mick Lynch a fantastic lyricist, employing a multitude of poetic means to give real character to different songs, not least that which could be called "comic malevolence" ("Chaos" could have been written with that phrase in mind). It was a massive YES. MAKES SENSE. THANK YOU moment for me when I read in the recent Whatever Happened to the C86 Kids? book that he was a huge Madness fan.

I also just recently realized (and yeah I know this is the kind of thing that aging guys always go on about with the Beatles etc) that at the release of The Rise and Fall, Suggs had not yet turned twenty-two. Yikes.

Track from the new record, v Barzo sounding (to me)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EmfBzpefz0

That is indeed a Barso song.

My two faves off this are Suggs's ones, the opening Theatre Of The Absurd, and If I Go Mad. The latter really reminds me of Mad Not Mad-era b-side Call Me, which I always loved.

while they rarely step out of their comfort zone these days, they really know how to present themselves now.
their online/video/social media presentation has been fantastic for years.
oh, and had to really dig deep to find 'call me' (disc 3 of 'the business') !
not sure i have ever heard it before, but yeah, its clearly from the MNM era.