Madness @ o2 Arena 14th December

[tone1976]

Madness @ o2 Arena 14th December 2012
For the first time ever I have seen Madness twice on one tour.
As usual with a london gig I take myself along to the spiritual base in Camden Town.
I got to the Dublin Castle pub about 3:30pm for a drink then I decided to plod around Camden for a bite to eat then headed over to the o2 arena .

One thing that baffles me about the Underground. Your train is hurtling through the tunnel and announcements are made and you can barely hear them. (What is the point of that)
I arrived at the o2 arena in good time so I enjoyed a hot chocolate at starbucks whilst waiting for my friend to turn up and to avoid standing around waiting for the doors to open.

Now I`ve seen Madness 9 times before I`ve seen various support acts from the Aggrolites, to the Bees, to more recently Paul Heaton but this years support I was hugely disappointed with. I`m one of these give benefit of the doubt types when it comes to hearing or reading reviews but if I had seen them at the Brighton Matinee I would`nt have got to the o2 arena early.

The crowd was well up with videos being played of The Jam, Blur, The Specials which got the crowd in the mood for what was to come.

Now on to the main event and what a main event. Everytime I see them they get better and better. Kicking it off with One Step beyond the place went mental as I have ever seen it for the opening number, Embarrassment, The Prince followed suit, then NW5, we was treated to My Girl and then we started going to the b-sides with a welcome return In my honest opinion Take it or Leave it. New songs from the latest album included My Girl 2, Never Knew your name, How can I tell you, Misery, Leon all blended in nicely with the likes of Grey Day, the Sun & The Rain Shut up, Bed & Breakfast Man, Wings of a Dove and Michael Caine.

One of the highlights for me was Chrissy Boys "showtime" I was gearing up for ACDC`s Highway to hell or the Beastie Boys hit instead we got treated to the Elvis Presley ballad Always on my mind.

It was now time for the showtime set of House of fun, Baggy trousers, Our House in which a Queen look-a-like was shown in the audience who later came on stage during Night boat to Cairo, It must be love in which I preceded to call my other half whilst It must be love and shout down the phone with Madness in the background.

Then the band went off for their regular encore the crowd making themselves heard then Madness returned to the stage performing Death of a Rudeboy, Madness and Night Boat to Cairo to finish an incredible gig and what seems to be a regular custom now Always look on the bright side of life as the fans sing and leave the arena.

Here`s to the next time.

[prende]

Glad you enjoyed the night mate, nothing quite like a MADNESS Gig, they seem to be getting better and better over the years

[tone1976]

They sure do....not many bands today can still give an audience an awesome show like that.

[Admin]

Madness o2 review london evening standard 17/12/12

4 stars

Like a shopping trolley that refuses to work when it leaves the vicinity of its supermarket, Madness’s appeal has always come to a grinding halt the moment they skank through United Kingdom passport control. After 36 years, it still rankles and when singer Graham “Suggs” McPherson announced “we’ve just got back from our world tour of Great Britain”, everybody understood that Madness is a strictly British institution. No matter: the world’s loss is Britain’s gain.

Half an hour late and taking an extra half hour to warm up, this threatened to be a few crinkled but amiable old duffers shrugging towards another pension top-up, rather than a reminder of past and current glories. But five songs in, as if they suddenly remembered their good-natured live act power, the evening began to soar with the double whammy My Girl and its new cousin My Girl 2, which sounded more like Tainted Love 2.

From there, aided by string and brass sections and an audience packed with erstwhile geezers and children, it was a slalom.

Most of the hits were aired but for an archetypal singles band they’ve become adept at albums of late and the newer fare, especially the jolly Misery and the unblinking Never Knew Your Name, slotted in seamlessly.

Grey Day proved again to be Madness’s great, underrated moment but a punked-up Shut Up ran it close, while the lachrymose but uplifting Our House was always all you could ever ask for from pop music.

When Suggs introduced Wings Of A Dove with “what’s wrong with a little peace, love and understanding?”, for a moment Madness had gone politically correct.

Madness play O2 Arena on Saturday: 0844 844 0444.

[Admin]

Madness o2 review the Independent 17/12/12

At some point between Madness performing at the Diamond Jubilee and as one of the redeeming features of the Olympics Closing Ceremony, the penny started to drop.

These always underestimated purveyors of bittersweet pop have again become one of Britain’s biggest and best bands. Excellent London concept album The Liberty of Norton Folgate (2009) helped hugely, pulling them partially free of what Suggs calls “the black hole of ‘80s nostalgia.” Its new follow-up,Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da, relaxes into further pop songs, as if their chart progress was never interrupted by the band’s exhausted 1986 split.

During this first of two nights at the O2 Arena, Madness’s south London peers Squeeze are under the same roof, at bijou sister venue Indigo2. You hope the last middle-aged white working-class Londoner to leave home tonight turned out the light. You might also wonder where the current equivalent is of such intelligent working-class pop bands, able to passionately unite and inspire the sort of families filling this arena. Elbow aside, a dangerous gap has opened in pop’s possibilities, triumphantly filled by Madness, just for tonight.

“Embarrassment”, about a mixed-race child, describes teenage hard knocks and melancholy they didn’t need to grow into. “Bed and Breakfast Man”, another youthfully experienced vignette, relishes a master “loafer” who “never showed his hand”. “The Sun and the Rain” sees umbrellas twirled in the crowd to a hit summing up English manic depression. “NW5”, a Norton Folgate song of enduring middle-aged love in which “people change just like the weather”, and the new “Never Knew Your Name”, about the displaced, faltering feeling of “going into a discotheque on your own, at our age”, take such stories on. Suggs, moving with almost athletic vigour, embodies the renewed confidence of a band bolstered by string and brass sections, and swaggering with slick power.

The set-list includes songs from Madness’s incremental, eccentric 1980s decline after crucial songwriter Mike Barson quit – basically fine, odd singles such as “Michael Caine”. The big hits are though, unusually, the best. “Baggy Trousers”’ schoolyard memoir is recognisable to the bouncing kids here tonight. “Our House”, the finest song outside of The Kinks about English family life, finds a perfect balance between the autobiographically specific and the universal. The second coming of the band who wrote it sees them finally claiming their dues.
Jim

[tone1976]

some great reviews there. It was an awesome gig by Madness