Madness, Telewest Arena
Created | Updated Mar 19, 2004
Friday 12th December, 11.00pm, Sunderland, Tyne and Wear.
Egon, Post sport reporter extraordinaire, is relaxing in his lounge. He is watching a DVD of comedian Robert Llewellyn's 'Woman Wizard' stageshow, while playing the insanely addictive computer game Championship Manager, and drinking a cup of Echinacea and Raspberry flavoured tea. Not the usual late night Beverage of students, granted.
Friday 12th December, 11.15pm, Warrington, Cheshire
Alfredo Marquez, civil servant and old friend of Egon, is surfing the internet, when something attracts his attention, he reaches for his mobile telephone and dials Egon's number.
Friday 12th December, 11.15pm, Sunderland
Egon's viewing, playing and tea-drinking is interrupted by his new mobile phone, ringing its ringtone of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Fortune Faded. He reaches forward and answers it.
The trans-penine phone conversation:
Alfredo: 'Evening. What are you doing tomorrow?'
Egon: 'Not much, why?'
Alfredo: 'You fancy going to see Madness1 at the Telewest2?'
Egon: 'What, Tomorrow?'
Alfredo: 'Yeah, there're tickets left, according to ticketmaster.'
Egon: 'Oh, alright.'
Alfredo: 'Great. I'll book the tickets then. Oh, and the support band's Aswad3'.
Saturday 13th December, 1.20pm, Sunderland
Egon awakes to the sound of Fortune Faded coming from the infernal Nokia mobile again. It's Alfredo, saying 'I've got into Sunderland, you still in the flat?', to which Egon rather fuzzily replies 'urgh'. Alfredo gets to the flat, by which time Egon is in a fit state to let him in.
Saturday 13th December, 5.30pm, Newcastle Central Station
Egon and Alfredo leave the station to set off for the Telewest. Neither had actually been there before, so they allowed themselves plenty of time to find it and headed off right out of the station, as it seemed from the train that the Telewest was that side.
Saturday 13th December, 6.00pm, Newcastle Telewest Arena, Outside
Our intrepid heros finally find the arena. And find that if they'd turned left instead of right, it would have taken five minutes. Ah well, the Madness tickets are now in their posession, and they join the long queue for entrance to the venue.
Saturday 13th December, 7.3pm, Newcastle Telewest Arena, Inside
As we get to our seats, having each purchased two beers and a 'f**k art, let's dance' (without the asterisks) T-shirt, Support act Aswad take the stage.
ASWAD
Now, I must confess, I never thought of myself as an Aswad fan, my attitude always being 'Well, Shine was alright, but what else have they done'. Well, the answer is, they've written some absolutely stonking soul-tinged reggae tunes. Frontman Brinsley Forde has crowd banter down to a tee, the songs had everyone who had already entered the actual arena on their feet and dancing - number one hit Don't Turn Around briefly segued into the A love you don't find everyday verse of the Righteous Brother's You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling and motown classic My Girl. During the set-climaxing performance of Shine, the band were all pogoing up and down like nobody's business, and the entire arena was pogoing along with them - never before have I seen a crowd so joyously swept up in the excitement of a support act!
I must go out and buy an Aswad album, cos those guys are fantastic. But they weren't what we came for...
MADNESS
Hey you, don't watch that
Watch this!
This is the heavy heavy monster sound
The nuttiest sound around
So if you've come in off the street
And you're beginning to feel the heat
Well listen buster
You better start to move your feet
To the rockinest, rock-steady beat
Of Madness
One step beyond!
The words that began Madness' career also began this concert. Suggs is throwing himself around the stage. Chas and Chris are wearing bloody stupid hats. And Madness are belting out the heavy, heavy, monster sound, and will continue to do so for two hours
All the classics were thrown out - Embarrassment, House of Fun and Baggy Trousers were all dispensed with surprisingly early - the relentless tempo and feelgood atmosphere is infectious - the people in the standing area are dancing like it's 1981, those people who had tickets for seats (like ourselves), were up out of them and dancing in exceptionally silly manners - well, Suggs was, it would have been rude not to.
The tempo is relentlessly high, with a few exceptions - the glorious cover of Labi Siffre's ballad It Must be Love sounded even better live than on record, recent material such as Lovestruck sat neatly alongside classics like Wings of a Dove - the banter from Suggs rarely stopped, and the crowd sang heartily along all through the gig - from the spoken words of One Step Beyond at the beginning of the gig, to the resounding chorus of Our House over one and a half hours later. 'Our house, in the middle of our street' we all bellowed. Several thousand people in an ice hockey arena singing along to a band who were always fun. The fact that none of the songs I have mentioned were reserved for the encore - traditionally the section dedicated to a band's most crowd-pleasing numbers - is a reflection of the astonishing depth of Madness' output in the last twenty-five years.
The encores were the song entitled Madness, and early classic Night Boat to Cairo. The highlight? Hard to pick. But the performance of Johnny the Horse, starting off as a dirge performed solo by Chas until the first chorus - the song was barely recognisable in those early stages, threatening the audience with a dire reinterpretation4 before bursting into life with the utterly ridiculous chorus line of 'Doodle dee doo doo doo, doodle dee doo doo WOOH!' (or words to that effect) was marvellous. Although the performances, and even more the crowd atmosphere, during House of Fun - the band's only number one hit, inspired by the intense embarrassment felt when buying condoms in a chemist, the legendary tale of playground misdemeanours that is Baggy Trousers, and the band's glorious cover of Jimmy Cliff's Reggae classic Wonderful World, Beautiful People all deserve honourable mentions
F**k Art, Let's Dance
A T-shirt slogan, or a philosophy? Well, madness' music seems to be an embodiment of that motto which they put on their T-shirts - in a world where musicians become increasingly introverted, navel-gazing and want to be seen as 'artists' with grand pretensions, Madness are an oasis of old time fun - their music is there to dance to. They aren't making art, they're making feel-good ska. They don't want you to appreciate their grand purpose, they want you on your feet to the rock steady beat. And you know what? You can't resist them. They still have it, whatever 'it' is. Twenty-five years on, and the nutty boys are amongst the best showmen in music.
