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(LOVELY!) ALTHOUGH people are snobby about just about everything except disease, I can think of no one who is snobby about the great and not yet late Madness. Madness have few equals in the hard-headed pop world as regards their sheer likeability.
If this makes them sound boring, let's put it another way. Madness, with decent diffidence, have transcended the putrid vagaries of fashion and spurious favour, just got on with doing what they pleased, and invented a mixture of penetrating comment, pop accuracy, shabby fantasy, verbal magic, a certain kind of richness and elated mischievousness that is calculated to do nothing but refresh the spirits. Madness have combined the priceless enthusiasm of the freshest pop group with something of the heroic, melancholy insistence of the most alarming comedian. Madness have, in these complex times, struck upon a valuable purity. If this makes them sound boring, let's put it another way. You only have to look at Madness to see that they're startlingly SANE! (Ironic)
(Funny!) You only have to look at Madness – it's incredible how seven clowns with a touch of the hoodlum about them can blend so smoothly into a subtle but complex prankster act. Whatever it is that comes to Madness, wherever it comes from, it comes naturally and with a wonderful warmth. If this makes them sound boring, let's put it another way. Madness have proved that ingenuity need not be incompatible with buffoonery, and that kind words, sad tales, nonsense knees-up and anxious moments can somehow all be conveyed with aggressive charm. (Confident!)
There's nothing obviously angry or bitter or satirical or irascible about Madness, but there is something worth mentioning that the group – what with all the coloured. balloons, the stripey underwear, the silly walks, the scrawny knee-caps and the zealous over-confidence – are not renowned for: a love for humanity. This and their indisputable friendliness, their ability to inspire happiness and relaxation, a quizzical attitude towards life in even its harshest aspects, and a sincere belief in the bizarre ingredients of showmanship accounts for their universal appeal. This could make them sound boring, so let's put it another way.
Madness are insolent, innocent, wise, weary and delighted to know you, and they blend a number of conservative musical components into something contagiously fresh. They sing of being a victim, of being tormented, against a seedy realist background. They locate the beauty and pathos of commonplace feelings even while they wreak havoc with fashionable or tiresome expressions of those feelings. Not everyone their age is capable of seeing the odd wonders and eccentricities that colour the human and social landscape of contemporary England. All this talk could make me sound boring, so let's just say that the songs of Madness are as independent and as incomparable as any written since mid-'60s Beatles. They can be delicate, unwashed, skilful, compassionate, sophisticated...Madness have just shown in their own brilliant way that it was as simple as covering a Labi Siffre song to exclaim that excitement need never leave pop music: music that makes you feel happy even while the words often tell you to feel sad. Nothing shocking: if there's anything radical it's Madness' revision of sentiment.
Madness: something for everyone – a little hat for the ten year old, sharp attack for the adult. If this makes them sound boring, let's put it another way.
Side One: 'Embarrassment'/'Shut Up'/'My Girl'/'Baggy Trousers'/'It Must Be Love'/'The Prince'/'Bed And Breakfast Man'/'Night Boat To Cairo'.
Side Two: 'House Of Fun'/'One Step Beyond'/'Cardiac Arrest'/'Grey Day'/'Take It Or Leave It'/'In The City'/'Madness'/'The Return Of Los Palmas 7'.
Complete Madness is one of the least boring records ever released.
© Paul Morley, 1982
- Contributed by Lee 'Loobyloo' Buckley
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