Hey Now!
I know its perhaps a bit late off the mark....but yet
again another highly POSITIVE review comes today from
Music 365. Such a pity this wasn't echoed in
sales.....ah well such is life....Release 'Youre
Wonderful' and repakage it with the album and big push
on th rerelease is what I say!
Anyway enough of me........
Reviews MADNESS : Wonderful
(Virgin 7243 8 48406 2 4)
Madness are back - every single one of them - with an
album as fine as any they ever made...
If you're the supplier of raw materials rather than
the venture-capitalist cartel running the show, not
only does pop offer no pension scheme, there's no ISA
for dignity, either. Not only can you not salt the
adulation away against a grey (haired) day, it usually
has to be repaid, with interest, in contempt later.
Quit when you're ahead and join the straight world -
as, say, Madness's deft-fingered keyboardist and chief
songwriter Mike Barson, now a graphic designer, did -
and you'll hear "didn't you used to be...?" forever.
Keep eking it out through a sense of mild desperation
- provoked through having grown unfit for any other
work besides television presenting, as, say, Graham
"Suggs" McPherson did - and you risk the old "wot, you
still around?" Or, worse still, "yeah, we liked the
old stuff, back when you woz good". Damned if you stay
or if you go.
Which may be why for some of us, surveying a career
that included a dazzling number of cheekily cockerney
(TM) hits and summed up a particular kind of
Londahn-ness - or at least, the way a particular kind
of Londahner (not always the nice kind) liked to see
'imself - cheekily cockernee ska-popsters Madness'
most affecting album was, paradoxically, 'Mad Not
Mad', the one at the very fag-end of their (first)
career. Downbeat, bittersweet and oddly vulnerable in
comparison to its predecessors' cartoon laddery, its
gritted-teeth 'I'll Compete' and wearily autumnal
'Yesterday's Men' had perspective. Or, as was surely
the point and as Spinal Tap put it best, "too much
fucking perspective, mate".
One decade and one protracted breakup later, all of
Madness, including Barson, are back, the success of
their semi-annual Finsbury Park Madstock dates having
proven that the (oh, awright, nutty) boys could still
turn out shows tight as hospital corners. And, what's
more, that their fan base still included the tens of
thousands of Londahners (mostly the nice kind, if you
didn't look too hard down the front) in amongst those
improbable flocks of American East and West Coast
teens who weren't, unfortunately, of record-buying age
when it might have mattered. So here's the new,
reformed Madness record, then, and it's as good,
consistent, bright and sparkly a thing - minus
anything quite as big as their biggest hits or as
interestingly knackered as 'Mad Not Mad' - as they've
ever made. And if it sells less than any of its
predecessors, it'll probably be because thirty-five
year olds don't buy as many records as seventeen year
olds. And the seventeen year olds, outside Orange
County anyway, aren't buying.
Which isn't, of course, Madness' fault. In the
meantime, there mightn't be a surplus of older-
and-wiser insights here, reflection never having been
their strong suit, but there's not a really weak track
either. At worst, '4am', 'Going To The Top', a Beatley
'Elysium' and string-section-y 'If I Didn't Care'
tread lyrical water, but still acquit themselves
professionally. On the plus side, Suggs still does his
knowworrimean winky frontman thing to a T, and
set-closer 'No Money' offers up a deliciously tight
horn section and velcro-sticky chorus. On the
more-than-plus side, Barson's irrepressible ol' joanna
lopes all over a lovely, lolloping pair of
sad-words/happy- melody gems, 'Lovestruck' and 'Johnny
The Horse'. And for those of a certain inclination,
the obligatory jump-up of Cathal Smyth's 'The
Communicator' shows there's life in the ol'
(apparently, one and one only) skank tune yet.
And, easily best of all if you're not put off by the
traditional cockernee practise of glamourising people
who beat people up for a living, there's the
irresistible 'Drip Fed Fred'. It's driven by a
fantastically filthy panto-Kray voiceover courtesy of
Ian Dury, who oozes Londahn baddy-ness over the
knees-up proceedings with such sweaty relish he sounds
like a black cab driver wiv that Satan in the back of
his taxi, en route to Hell, NW1.
Which, on the evidence, rather knocks limbo, as a
second choice destination, into a cockernee hat.
Madness, of course, have sussed that one already. ***
Jennifer Nine
Thu Dec 9 1999 23:32 GMT
All the best
Vince!
=====
"If it ain't Vince, it ain't worth a F*CK!"
ICQ 46099201
NEVER SAY NO TO A MAD IDEA!
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products. All in one place.
Yahoo! Shopping: http://shopping.yahoo.com
-
______________________________________________________________
Visit the Total Madness Mailing List website for:
latest news, madmeet info, list charter, games, and more ...
http://members.xoom.com/totalmadmail/
Contact the TMML Moderators at: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To unsubscribe, send an e-mail to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
and in the message body put: unsubscribe total-madness
