I was never hugely enamoured with Madness when I was young. Even though their peak years coincided with my own passage from childhood, through uneasy adolesence to slightly more composed late teenage times. Madness made as good a soundtrack to these years as any for they matured as a nation of British boys did - I'd maintain they were primarily a boys band - got older, wiser, more reflective and in some ways slightly sadder.
Perhaps it was because I thought them a bit childish at their peak and was looking for something slightly more grown up, whether it were The Bunnymen, XTC or Associates. They were also very Laandon, and although I spent those years in London too, or at least at the edges of it, in Richmond and then Teddington, I was never really a Londoner,
I was perhaps more suburban in essence, and The Cure and The Banshees made more sense to me in the leafy, trimmed hedged avenues I grew up in rather than the cockney knees up round the old joanna sensibility that Madness embodied. They reeked of ''pubs and Wormwood Scrubs' as another fellow traveller put it, and I was slightly scared of all that.
I'm long, long since past all that now and can really appreciate just how remarkable they were. They were barely out of baggy trousers themselves, yet put out a set of singles and albums that rank with anything any British band put out before or since. So, on a bleak December day in Newcastle yesterday, masked and gloved in RPM, my favourite record shop in town I came across a copy of The Rise & Fall for four quid and didn't hesitate. I've been listening to it on repeat since.
The Rise & Fall may mark Madness' commercial, critical and artistic peak. It's probably when they started the shift from being 45' to 33' artists, although they had a couple of years hanging on as regular Top Ten single specialists before their top placings began to drop from single figures.
In terms of quality, they never beat the two culled from this particular album, Our House and Tomorrow's (Just Another Day). There are plenty of others on the record that would have graced single status too. The band didn't need to stoop to a third single. They were in excelsis. Living their imperial dream.
The album is brimming with their mordant wit and swagger. Madness were masters of gallows humour like few others before or since. The Kinks their obvious forefathers, The Specials their sole contemporaries. Ten years on we got Blur. But their credentials for this kind of working class flair were far from impeccable. They owed Madness more than is generally acknowledged. This album particularly seems a virtual prototype for Modern Life is Rubbish and Parklife. I don't think either is as good.
Madness were wise beyond their years from the start but they never quite pulled off the 'Sunday joint of bread and honey,' card trick with such panache as here, They were versed in Hancock's Half Hour, Steptoe & Son, Michael Caine's peak period Sixties films, Oliver!, the England 1966 World Cup win, Tales of the Raj and the realisation that dawned on many in London at that point of time that there was no better soundtrack than Motown, Soul and Ska and nothing better than having West Indian friends. They had older brothers and they learned from them.
The album is possibly slightly too long, but the band were blessed with riches at this point in time and there's little immediate fat that needs trimming. New Delhi perhaps, with its It Ain't Half Hot Mum mockery of Indian accents might not be missed much. There's black face on the cover which probably wouldn't even be countenanced now. It's not quite racism, is very much of its time, it was a fine line between being a good old lad and turning nasty back in those days, opting for the Right and threatening and beating up black and asian kids who you'd been friends in the playground with just a few years earlier. . You generally feel you're in safe hands with Madness, they lay their own cards on the table a few years later with (Waiting For) The Ghost Train, which lamented the tight dead grip of Apartheid. All the same there's a definite sense throughout that some of us might not end up on the right side of the fence.
Madness themselves did. They're still here, forty years on. Chas Smash is taking a break from the band as we speak but you can't help but think he'll be back in the fold at some point. They're a British institution now, really they were right from the off . Eastenders before Eastenders. The band played Our House at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. Then again on the roof of Buckingham Palace for the Queens Silver Jubilee. Their legacy is a long and distinguished one. There are worse places to start than here. Within twenty four hours it's already become one of my favourite records.
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