Hi everyone, The following article is taken from today's Daily Mail newspaper:
Daily Mail Weekend Magazine - A-Z of Rock and Pop M is for Madness TRACK RECORD: 27 UK Top 50 singles and 12 UK Top 50 albums (including 2 No. 1 s). HIGHS: The successive Top 10 hits between January 1980 and November 1982 - from My Girl to Our House - which were all-time pop classics. LOWS: The 1984 departure of pianist and resident musical genius Mike Barson; they were never the same again. STAR QUALITY: The nutty boys of Camden, purveyors of the heavy, heavy monster sound. No band spent more time in the UK singles charts during the 1980s than Madness. For the first half of the decade they were ever-present in the hit parade, producing songs that summed up what it felt like to grow up British - from the schoolyard memories of Baggy Trousers to the second-hand motors of Driving In My Car. Madness started out as a bunch of mates from north London. They were named after a song by Prince Buster, a Jamaican singer who helped create ska, an early form of reggae, but bizarrely, some of their most fervent early fans were National Front skinheads. Why these racists loved black Jamaican music is anyone's guess. Yet there was much more to Madness than ska. Like their heroes, the Kinks' Ray Davies and The Blockheads' lan Dury, they wrote classic, quick-witted pop lyrics about London life. In 1980, Madness spent 46 weeks in the singles charts, although they failed to crack America - Our House, in 1983, was their sole U.S. Top 10 success. But by then, the band were nearing the end. Mike Barson - the keyboard player and main songwriter - quit and moved to Holland. The band finally split in 1986. Lead singer Suggs, who went on to a career as a singer and TV presenter, was the only member of Madness to enjoy significant solo success. In 1992, the band reformed for two open-air 'Madstock' concerts in London's Finsbury Park, and Madstock became a regular summer event throughout the 1990s. A new album, Wonderful, followed in 1999. That year also saw tours of the UK and U.S. Today SUGGS, 41, lives in Tufnell Park, north London, with his wife of 20 years, Anne, and their daughters Scarlett, 19, and Viva, 16. He once turned down a date with Madonna. Born Graham McPherson, he scored seven UK solo hits before becoming a team captain on TV's A Question Of Pop. MIKE BARSON, 43, celebrated his marriage to Dutch wife Sandra Wilson in February 1981 with a slap-up breakfast for two at George's Caff on north London's Holloway Road. The couple live in Holland with their children, Jamie and Timothy. CHRIS FOREMAN, 43, has married twice, with a son from each marriage; MARK BEDFORD, 41, a typographer and screen printer, studied graphic design after Madness split, lives in Camden and has a six-year-old daughter, Alice. LEE THOMPSON, 43, was a dustman before hitting the big time; he and Debbie have three children. DANIEL WOODGATE, 43, lives in south-east London with his second wife Siobhan Fitzpatrick, with whom he has a daughter, Jane. CHAS SMASH, 43, became a senior executive at Go! Discs. He and wife Joanna have three children - Milo, Casper and Eloise and live in north London. Have a great Easter, Chris www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~cjbyrne/MadNet/ ______________________________________________________________ Visit the Total Madness Mailing List website for: news, members section, madmeet info, list charter, competitions, & more... http://www.madness7.com 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
