poptimists | The Friday Canon: MADNESS

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The Friday Canon: MADNESS

The nutty boys are in town, so don your pork pie hat and jump on board the Night Boat To Cairo!

MADFAX

Madness have an average of 0.86 legs per band member (see photo above)

One of the saxophone players runs the Dublin Castle and demands that at least 75% of wall space in said drinking establishment must feature signed posters of the band

Madness once caused an earthquake in Finsbury Park that measured 4.5 on the Richter Scale

Madness are so named because frontman Suggs was (and remains to this day) a rabid fan of the Loch Ness Monster

[Poll #933532]

EDIT: Just so it doesn't get short shrift, Night Boat To Cairo appears on the Work Rest & Play EP.

The results of last week's Missycanon:

1. Get UR Freak On
2. Work It
3. The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)
4. One Minute Man [ft Ludacris]
5. Pass That Dutch
6. Lose Control [w/ Ciara & Fatman Scoop]
7. Gossip Folks [ft Ludacris]
8. 4 My People
9. 1-2 Step [w/ Ciara]
10. All N My Grill [ft MC Solaar]

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Was Night Boat To Cairo not a single then, or was it on that EP malarkey?

It's on the EP I think, along with erm dunno.

Yes it was on there. Bvms, I might have to go back and change my ticks.

WR&P EP contains:

A1 Night Boat To Cairo (3:26)
A2 Deceives The Eye (1:58)
B1 The Young And The Old (2:03)
B2 Don't Quote Me On That (4:30)

My ticks have duly been changed!

B2 featured Peter TOSH: "it's all eggs, bacon, beans and a friiiied.... SLICE."

A1) Oh you know already
A2) Cheeky chappy generic excellent madness tuney thing about stealing stuff in stores: "In the earliest days of my shoplifting career / You could safely say I was filled with fear" etc.
B1) Might be hailed as international masterpiece if by teh Specials, really a knockoff abt how you feel in morning vs night or something, hence title. Maybe.
INTERLUDE) I cannot see why teh lex calls Madness "ghastly"?
B2) It's all eggs, bacon, beans and a friiiied.... SLICE.

NBTC was released a single in BELGIUM! Oh, and France. There was also a dub remix of it in 1993 that didn't chart.

Didn't the Prodigy start covering it live? Or was that 'Ghost Town'? or both?

The Prodge did a cover of it in their Reading 2002 set. Or was it 2001. Whatevs. It was pretty good!

This was honestly the hardest canon to whittle down ever. I like pretty much everything they did up to 1985 (the only really dodgy one is "Uncle Sam"), and when I'd ticked my 5 or so "OMG TOTAL GENIUS" tracks I had a wide choice of 8 or 9 out of 10s.

Actually if you leave out the PSBs they're the best British singles band of the 80s.

Hence priority in canon land :-)

Even if you DON'T leave them out...

The best British singles act of 79-85, then :)

And I do

The thing about Madness: very few of their singles are ska.

Famous TOTP where Chris Eubank was reading out the countdown.

"Thtill thtable at thix, Thethilia by Thuggth."

Also LL & MO are ace.

I don't think I've heard "Blue Day", but I should have probably ticked it for the "ft" artist on principle.

I dare say it's no "Blue is the Colour" tho'

It's the one Chelsea fans actually sing (as oppose to 'Blue Is The Colour' which gets played on the PA at Stamford Bridge, but which fans don't really join in with).

Chelsea, Chelsea
Chelsea, Chelsea,
We're gonna make it a bluuuuue daaaay

yes, that's why those two singlegot antick from me

That was the reason I gave it a tick!

For most of Madness's career they had SEVEN members (Chas Smash was still an unofficial member in '79, hence he didn't appear in the One Step Beyond era photos, of which your selected photo is an example).

So 0.86 legs can't be right! So much for MADFAX bah.

Closer inspection of the other MADFAX may reveal further slight inaccuracies.

yes, it's actually 100% of the Dublin Castle wall space etc.

The earthquake one is true though.

Also you can see an average of more than one leg per member even in that photo, not less than one.

I vaguely remember this from the time (4 yr old Kat knew about Madness but not about Scritti Politti obv) but cannot remember much about it. Surely it must have been dreadful compared to the amazingness of the original?

Predictably, it's nowhere near as good as the original.

But it's not awful - it's quite sweet in a "clumsy giant holds tender baby" sort of fashion.

If you google Night Boat To Cairo the first (sponsored) link that comes up is for STENA LINE FERRIES!

needs more love

If I had a couple of extra ticks it would get all the love it deserves.

YES

Mike Barson = most undersung pop genius auteur evah amirite?

Only 8? I need about 13

"Complete Madness" pretty much has all the essential singles on it IIRC. i.e. everything pre-1983

Can I just say...

I <3 MADNESS

I think this calls for some dodgy footage of LJers at Benicassim!!! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOJKyejrzmY)

I meant 'dodgy' as in 'badly-filmed', rather than 'dodgy' as in 'NSFW'.

I think of Madness as a true pop band IE all their best stuff is the famous stuff (of which there are exactly 8 hurrah). But I've never heard Embarrassment, which appears to be beating the pants off Michael Caine, Wings Of A Dove, Driving in my Car AND My Girl! What's it all about?

Isn't Embarrassment basically the same idea as "Shame and Sorrow" (which I've never heard), ie., being about an pregnant, unmarried, single girl, told from the point of view of a family member.

There's a race angle to "Embarrassment" too.

It's my favourite Madness song actually.

mippy wrote something about it recently here (http://mippy.livejournal.com/288509.html).

...must have just missed the bottom reaches of the charts.

Johnny the Horse (http://download.yousendit.com/C30E0CD32D6E91EC). I am also quite fond of "Victoria Gardens," which was on one of the singles collections but must have also missed the charts.

Otherwise, glad to see all the love here.

streaming at their you-know-what (http://www.myspace.com/madnessofficial) page, feat. Sway and Baby Blue, whoever they are

Sway is 'our Derek' = ace grime rapper!

is sway 'grime'?!

How long is a piece of string etc. Open to suggestions!

AAARGH i only just saw this what the FUCK are lovely Baby Blue and awesome Sway doing hanging around ghastly Madness AAAARGH also i did not know you lot loved them :((((

fucking kids.

i have cheated and voted for lots but i am drunk and do not care hurrah!

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The Friday Canon: MADNESS

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However

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Red Rag to bull, Tom

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Cecilia: tick explained

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Re: Suggs solo

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HANG ON

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Sweetest Girl

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MORE MADFAX

GREY DAY

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Embarrassment?

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My favorite track

and there's a new single, BTW

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