49

It's my birthday today- the number above.

Madness were a lot of fun on Friday night. I won precisely nothing betting on the horses. Suggs and saxophonist Lee Thompson are a great pair of frontmen (Chas Smash left a few years ago). The set was as you'd expect heavy on the hits, a run of songs pretty much unparalleled in British popular music plus a couple from their more recent albums, a mass singalong for It Must be Love and an encore of Madness (the song) and Night Boat To Cairo which saw outbreaks of pandemonium in the crowd. I was going to post this on Friday but didn't so here it is as a bonus, a deliciously skanking, dubby Andrew Weatherall remix of Madness from 2012. I'm sure that there was a second version of this, a dubbier one, that's never been released that Weatherall played on one of his radio shows.

Death Of A Rude Boy (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

Looking for songs with 49 in the title I fond this one from The Jazz Butcher, released on Creation in 1988, a spiky, ramshackle, catchy indie guitar song from Pat Fish that rattles along breathlessly, surfacing for the 'you make me want to carry on' line. This sort of thing seemed ten a penny in 1988 but like genuine moments of mini- greatness now. I first heard it on the Creation compilation Doing It For The Kids, a brilliant example of the art of the compilation album (The Jasmine Minks, The House Of Love, My Bloody Valentine, Felt, Primal Scream, Pacific, The Times, Nikki Sudden and The Weather Prophets plus several others showing Creation had an embarrassment of riches at the time). The Jazz Butcher's Lot 49 references a novel by Thomas Pynchon which I feel like I should have read but haven't.

Lot 49

Take Time For Your Pleasure

I'm off to Aintree Racecourse tonight, not a sentence I use very often- or ever before. This is a work team night out, an evening of horse racing, gambling (remember kids- stop when the fun stops) and Madness. As in, Madness, the Nutty Boys, the Los Palmas 7, Suggs and co. Back in 1983 as a callow thirteen year old the first gig I ever attended was Madness and The JoBoxers at Manchester Apollo and I haven't seen them since so there will be a nice completing of the circle. I've never been to the races before either and have a history of occasionally getting dress codes wrong at events where the words 'smart' and 'casual' are used in the same sentence.

The Wings Of A Dove was a standalone single in 1983, a time when even the now lesser known Madness songs were huge hits. One of my younger brothers was a Madness obsessive as a kid and still knows all their UK chart positions by heart. I use Google. This one reached number two.

The Wings Of A Dove

One Step Beyond

One Step Beyond was the B-side to Prince Buster's 1964 single Al Capone and has the staccato ska-ska-ska guitar sound from which the entire genre got its name. Well, that's one theory anyway. Prince Buster's original is ace, the horn line snaking about, impossibly jiggy.

In 1979 Madness, newly signed to Stiff having left 2 Tone, released it with an extended spoken intro by Chas Smash. Suggs does not appear on the record at all but when I hear it, it's him I think of first. I found this mp3 on the net where someone has put the two versions together, compare and contrast style, Prince Buster first and Madness second.

One Step Beyond/One Step Beyond

Summer Remix Madness

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, summer is not over yet... Andrew Weatherall remixes Madness (Death Of A Rude Boy). I think this could be the best thing I've heard since...whenever. Very Sabres-esque,  bass heavy, dub horns, Suggs. Seriously good. Keep hitting repeat while we wait for a vinyl release. There will be a vinyl release won't there?

First Gig

The first gig I ever went to was Madness at the Apollo, which is pretty good as first gigs go. This was 1982 or '83. The place was half full of schoolkids and teenagers, which I imagine at the time must have pissed off Madness' older, skinhead following and I remember there being a large amount of threatening looking people there. We were up in the seats somewhere near the top; myself, two of my brothers (one of whom was a Madness obsessive, who can still list Madness singles chart entries and weeks on the chart), a friend and his Mum. It was exciting and in truth all a bit of a blur. Madness were introduced by Radio 1 dj Peter Powell, careered on stage and bounced for however long the gig was. It felt about ten minutes but must have been longer. Memory tells me they'd just had a number one single with House Of Fun but I don't know if this is right.

This also means though that Madness weren't the first band I saw play live- that honour falls to the support band, JoBoxers. We were entranced by them as well and their Dexys influenced, uptempo soul stomp. JoBoxers contained two former members of Subway Sect (I didn't know this until recently), an American singer called Dig Wayne (previously in a psychobilly band Buzz and The Flyers) and drummer Sean McClusky, who would go on to be a face and promoter on the London acid house scene. They looked great, played this uptempo punky-soul pop music and would have two hit singles, the debut 45 Boxerbeat (number 3 in the UK chart) and follow-up Just Got Lucky (number 6). At some level they must have made a deep impression on me-their look of boots, turn-ups, tanktops, donkey jackets and woollen coats, and flat caps not being a totally unknown look around Bagging Area Towers, although I've never worn braces over a tanktop. I'd forgotten about them until recently and rediscovering them has been fun. The early-to-mid 80s truly were a fertile time for pop music.

Boxerbeat

P.S. My good gig strike rate fell at the second hurdle. A friend could find no-one to go to Howard Jones with him, also at the Apollo. I went. That man did his chained up mime thing. Howard played his hits. Thanks Alex.

P.P.S. I've just found out (after writing this post) in a weird moment of synchronicity they've got a reissued and expanded album coming out in January 2012. More info here.