My Motley Meanderings

Madness are doing a Manchester gig this December!

Madness recently put on three shows in London showcasing songs from their new album, The Liberty of Norton Folgate. The clips I've seen on YouTube look brilliant and I really wanted to go, but they were all mid-week and I decided it wasn't quite worth taking two days off work and spending a lot of time and money getting there and back. I hope they decide to take the show on tour later this year.

The consolation prize for people who couldn't make it to an actual gig was that you could buy a recording from the sound desk. In the past these recordings have taken the form of a couple of audio CDs in a nice case. This time round they decided instead to sell a bunch of sound files, images, video clips, etc. on a USB wrist band. Mine arrived today and it's a natty little thing, though I'm not quite sure what advantage it has over a data CD. There is one small problem. Here is what is on it. A single text file called "Click Here for Help" that contains the following text:

For help with this LIVE in a FLASH USB Wristband please contact us on [an email address]

www.aderra.co.uk

QC _ Test PASSED

Gah. I want my MP3s!

UPDATE: Ask and ye shall receive. About an hour after posting this entry someone from Aderra (the company that made the wristband) emailed me with a link to the MP3s. Excellent customer service!

I took the day off work yesterday and drove down to Birmingham to meet emmzzi and see Our House, the musical based on the songs of Madness. It was the first time I had ever driven into the centre of Birmingham, and I left the motorway at bang on 5PM. Luckily nearly all of the traffic was heading out rather than in, but working out which lane I needed to be in at each junction/roundabout wasn't easy. I miraculously reached the car park behind the theatre without getting lost, parked up, and wandered off in search of food and a public toilet. The latter proved rather difficult to find - I came across one in a shopping mall that was locked, then I found my way to the railway station because I was sure there was one in there, only to discover that the toilets are on the concourse and you need a valid travel ticket to get to it. While I was in the station I decided to grab some takeaway food from Burger King, then carried on up the escalators and through the huge mall, eventually finding some toilets about another ten minutes walk away. The place was strangely laid out, and it took me another five minutes to work out how to get outside (passing a second Burger King on the way), where I sat down near some interesting buildings and water features to eat my now-cold burger.

emmzzi had arrived at the theatre by this time so I set off back, taking a detour on the way to buy a new parking ticket (it costs £2.50 from 6PM to midnight, but I had arrived at 5:30PM so was forced to buy a more expensive ticket that didn't allow me to park for as long). I encountered three Big Issue sellers, two of them very bouncy and charismatic compared to the ones we get in Nelson (but still not enough to make me buy a copy). Even though emmzzi had texted me to say she was in the bar, I still wandered twice around all the public areas of the theatre without spotting her before phoning to discover she was sitting at a table a few metres away.

The musical itself was really very good. It's a fairly simple morality tale about a lad who takes a girl out on his 16th birthday and breaks into an empty flat to get out of the rain, wrongly thinking this will impress her. The police arrive and the story splits off in two directions, one where he runs and gets away, and the other where he stays to face the punishment for his crime. Musically the songs were good and fit the plot fairly well. We discussed during the interval how they might be going to fit Night Boat to Cairo in, and the link was... inspired. The hero had a rather harsh singing voice but his girlfriend sung beautifully. The cast were all very young and athletic apart from the hero's parents, and the choreography really took advantage of this. Of course the real star of the show was the knackered white Morris Minor convertible the hero buys at one point for £80 to take his girlfriend out in (It says Morris on the door, the GPO owned it before). We had a good time and I would definitely recommend going to see it if you enjoy Madness songs.

There was another incident of lorry-rage on the way home. Entering a single-lane 50MPH section of roadworks on the motorway, the van in front of me slowed down to 50 so I did likewise, maintaining a sensible stopping distance in front of me. The HGV behind me kept on going until he was literally inches from my bumper. If I had braked at all at that point, he would have clipped me. After a few seconds he dropped back perhaps ten yards (still much too close to safely follow someone at 50MPH) and maintained that distance all the way through the roadworks. It's not as if I could have gone very far if I had accelerated as he seemed to want me to do, because I was simply following the van in front of me. Upon reaching the end of the restricted area, the van quickly accelerated up to 70 and so did I. The HGV pulled into the next lane as if meaning to overtake me, only to see me rapidly getting away. This really ticked him off, so he pulled back into my lane and gave me a long blast on his main-beam headlights and spotlights.

I really wish I could go to this gig Madness are doing to promote their new album, The Liberty of Norton Folgate. Unfortunately it wouldn't be very practical because it's in London mid-week - I would have to take a couple of days off work to get to it.

I love the style of the advert, although it could have done with a bit more proof-reading and they have scaled it down too much for the web. "[The Liberty of Norton Folgate] Danced skanked and boggled for the cause of man and woman's need to be." Check out the video too. How many movies do you recognise?

I've decided not to buy a ticket for the O2 Arena gig Madness is doing at the end of the year, as I don't particularly want the hassle and expense of going to London for it. I just hope it won't be their only UK gig this year - the language announcing it seems deliberately ambiguous: "The only planned gig in December." The past couple of years they have done a UK tour in December.

Somebody has uploaded a video of Forever Young, one of the brilliant new songs Madness will be putting on their next album.
( Video behind the cut... )

I couldn't find the lyrics posted elsewhere on the web so I've transcribed them myself (using my CD copy of the Astoria sound desk recording because the audio on the Youtube video is a bit ambiguous in places): ( Read more... )

So, my second Madness gig. I drove down to Liverpool Aintree Pavilion last night to catch them on their Transport From London tour. It was another brilliant show; Madness are still playing on top form. They performed a few brand new songs from their forthcoming album, including the catchy Forever Young.

( Read more... )

Madness is touring again in December! They're not doing Manchester this time so it looks like I'll be taking a trip down to Liverpool.

Glastonbury isn't really my thing, but I'm very sad to be missing this.

Madness are doing a set on the Lost Vagueness stage, and at 1:30AM they'll attempt to break a world record by asking the entire audience to kiss the person next to them. The record they have to beat is 6,124 couples. Good luck to them!

The CDs recorded at the Madness gig I went to last month arrived today. I've just listened to a few tracks and it took me right back to the event, singing and dancing and jumping up and down in the stands. There are some really good songs on there that I'd never heard them perform before (I don't have all the studio albums), including Out Of Space, I Will Love You All My Life, and Taller Than You Are. Their latest song, Sorry, is excellent too. On the back of the CD case it says "Allergy advice: Recorded on equipment that may have come into contact with nuts." :-D

The replacement for one of my Christmas presents arrived today too: the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy complete radio series box set. I'm really looking forward to listening to them - it's been a while since I listened to the earlier series, and I've only listened to the later ones once when they were first broadcast. The box is really nice; it almost seems a shame to rip the discs and then put it on the shelf and never open it again.

Those of you who guessed in the recent poll that my desk would remain uncluttered at least until the next postal delivery were right :)

I've made a start on one of my new year's resolutions by wheeling out the exercise bike and pedalling for about 20 minutes while watching a Blake's 7 DVD. That's pretty rubbish - when I stopped a few months ago in the summer heatwave I was pedalling much harder for two or three times as long as that several times a week, but I've got out of condition since then and it's going to take a while to get back into it. I'm trying to break in gently because I have a slightly dodgy knee and I don't want to mess it up again. This method of exercise suits me pretty well as I find most forms of exercising incredibly boring, but with the exercise bike I can do it while watching the telly or even reading a book.

Going to a Madness gig has been a long-time ambition of mine and I'd built it up in my mind to an event of mythic proportions, so tonight's gig could easily have been a let-down, but luckily it met and if anything exceeded my expectations.
( Executive summary: it was brilliant! )

I've just learned that Madness are going on tour again in December. The last time they went on tour, the way I learned about it was by reading a glowing review of the last gig in the series, which had taken place less than 20 miles from where I was staying at the time, bored out of my mind in a cheap hotel room. So I don't plan on missing this one. I know it's a long shot, but is anyone else here planning on going to the 13th December gig at the MEN arena in Manchester?

On an unrelated note, I asked somebody on my friends list a question yesterday and the answer made me happy. And that's as much as I'm prepared to say on the subject for the moment :)