MADNESS @ MEN With Manchester Interview

The Wayfinder had a great night at the Manchester gig, full reivew from him in MIS on Sunday, along with a longer version of the below Suggs interveiw from Manchester News.

"Just got in... Was a big queue for CD's, they have told me they check the records and If I don't collect it they post it on. Well, the MEN was full- standing- all lower tiers, and 5 upper tiers open- so this was the biggest indoor Madness Manchester gig ever (approx 13,000) if I was them I would be sh*tting myself going on. I managed to blag my way to the sound desk side, but I couldn't see the screen. I went to another prime spot and sat down."

"I loved Mr.Dammer's 'Wheel's of Steel' (Suggs says he was sponsored by Sterident! - LOL!)

I can sum up his spot on my next line Jean Michael Jarre meets Ska. Of I course I loved it,"

"The Aggrolites where on top form. A very energetic visual band."

"Madness set was very much like the Glasgow gig, just the songs re-arranged.

Top night. They played well. my head hurts and my ears are buzzing!"

Simon

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SUGGS IS STILL MAD FOR IT

Could he ever envisage living anywhere but London?

"Some days I do. On a good day, people smile at you in the street. But then on a bad day, someone tells you to eff off and you think, 'What am I doing here?'" muses Suggs. "The great thing about living in a big city is that you meet every walk of life. Unfortunately the bad side is that somebody out there has less than you have and wants what you've got, and you'll bump into them one day."

Has that day come yet?

"Not so's you'd notice," says Suggs. "I came across a bunch of kids, and they were a bit off out-of-it. I got them all doing the hokey cokey on the forecourt of a garage, which was quite surreal."

"We made a film in 1980, and I looked at it recently. Camden was nothing but blokes falling out of pubs and a couple of Morris Minors," says Suggs. "The only food you could get was a ham or cheese sandwich out of one of those perspex things they used to have on the bars of pubs or the caff. I can remember a friend of my mum's having a pie-eating competition in a pie and mash shop. Perhaps there was less to do in those days. Of course London's changed, like Manchester's changed, a lot of it for the better, and a lot of it for the worse in terms of the homogenisation of every high street."

The band are half-way through recording a new album in the defiantly old-tech Toe Rag studio in Hackney.

"We wanted to go somewhere like where we started out to get that spontaneous energy without all the technology," says Suggs. "It's an exciting time for the band. We haven't done so much playing together for maybe ten years."

The crowds at Madness's upcoming UK dates will surely be up for a barmy singalong.

"People who come to our concerts do tend to know all the words," says Suggs. " It's interesting going round Europe and Japan. You get different reactions and expectations. A crowd in Japan is slightly different from a Glaswegian or a Mancunian audience."

Paul Taylor