884. British Music: Madness (with James) | Luke's ENGLISH Podcast - Learn British English with Luke Thompson

You're listening to Luke's English podcast. For more information visit teacherloop.co.uk.

Hello listeners, welcome back to Luke's English podcast. Now let me kind of introduce this episode for you.

I'm wondering what you're going to think of this one. This episode might just be for the fans of British music

or fans of episodes of this podcast where I talk about British music and stuff, maybe just for the fans of episodes with my brother.

Anyway, I don't know what you're going to think of this. But it's a slightly specific topic this time.

It's about music. I've been doing episodes about music sort of ever since I started this podcast really.

And James has always been a guest that has talked to me about British bands, British music and stuff.

So this is one of those episodes. This particular one has been a bit of a labour of love really for me over the past few weeks

because I've been working on this one in certain little clips and things to help to illustrate the things that we're talking about.

So let me just tell you a little bit about my school days and my childhood because in a way this episode is a bit of a nostalgic one.

So let me just tell you a few things about when I was a kid at school. So probably when I was about 13, 14, 15 years old,

I used to have a Sony Walkman, one of those old portable cassette players. Of course these days it's, you know, everyone just streams their music.

And before we streamed our music on our phones and stuff we had MP3 players, iPods and things. But the Sony Walkman was the original portable music player.

So I had, so I was at school in the early 90s. I grew up in the 80s and the early 90s. And so I had a Walkman, right?

And so no streaming. And I just had a few cassettes really. This is how we listen to our music. You put the cassette in, click and play the cassette, right?

So I just had a, all I had was a few cassettes, normally about 90 minutes long like C90 cassettes. And they would be loaded up with songs recorded from CDs, recorded from the radio,

or recorded from my parents record collection. And I'd take the Walkman with me to school and I'd listen to it on the bus, on the way to school, and on the way back, on family holidays. I'd listen to it in the back of the car.

The cassettes I had were things like, a lot of older bands like the stranglers, the sex pistols, the police, the who, and also some more up-to-date stuff that I'd probably recorded off the radio.

And also a band called Madness, who my brother and I were big fans of, and we'd been fans of Madness since we were little kids, and we'd seen them on TV, on shows like Top of the Pops, and we'd heard their songs on the radio, our parents liked them too.

And we still are big fans of Madness. The Madness cassette that I had was one of my favorite cassettes to listen to. It was a collection of their best songs, and it fit almost perfectly onto a 90-minute tape.

And I used to listen to that tape over and over and over again. In those days, when you left the house with your Walkman, you'd only be able to take one or two cassettes with you, depending on how many pockets you had, perhaps in your jacket.

You'd have to carry the tapes in your pocket, right? So often I'd leave the house with just one tape in the Walkman, and I would just listen to that one collection of songs all day or all week.

And I remember once I went on a ski trip with my school when I was about 15, I think. Right?

So we traveled from Coventry in the UK, or just near Coventry in the UK in the Midlands, all the way to a ski resort in Switzerland for a kind of like five-day schooled ski trip.

And it was one very long coach journey, right? On one of those kind of buses. It's not technically not a bus. It's a coach, the sort of large, more comfortable bus that you would travel along distance like that.

So one very long coach journey. And I, for entertainment, I had my Walkman and a few tapes, including this madness tape.

And the journey was ridiculously long and just seemed to never end. But I realised that I could divide the journey by the time it took to listen to my madness tape one time.

So the journey was something like 10 hours, 15 hours, something like that, which seemed to be a never ending length of time.

But I realised that I could, yeah, take that, let's say 15 hours and divide it by a certain number of times I could listen to my madness tape from one side all the way back to the beginning again. Right?

It was something like seven times. Right? I worked out that all I needed to do was listen to this tape seven times and then we would, by the end of the end of the seventh.

And then we would ultimately arrive at our destination. And that made the journey a lot more bearable for me. I just had to listen to each song seven times and we'd be there, which was not a bad thing because I loved listening to those songs.

So in the end, I just really enjoyed the journey listening to my favourite songs and watching the scenery go by.

My friends were on the coach too, but a lot of people were sleeping and reading and stuff. Most of the, we weren't allowed to leave our seats. We had to stay in our seats.

So basically, I just listened to this tape seven times. And that's just an example of how I heard those madness songs so many times and somehow they never got boring.

And even now, I can listen to those songs and get the same amount of enjoyment from them. And I'm not the only one.

Madness are known as one of the most popular bands of all time. So this is a kind of preface to this episode, which is called British Music with James.

And it's a conversation with my brother about one of our favourite British bands. I feel like I just need to say one or two things to set your expectations for this episode slightly.

First of all, there isn't really any English teaching in this one, which is often the case in these free episodes.

A lot of my episodes are here just to give you something to listen to in English because obviously regularly listening to English and just trying to understand it is an important thing for you to do for your English in general.

So I often, as you know, publish episodes where the main idea, the main aim is just for me to present things to you, which I hope are interesting for you to listen to just so you get lots of English into your life.

How do I choose topics to talk about? Well, one of the ways is that I pick topics that I'm particularly interested in and enthusiastic about.

And I just hope that that kind of interest and enthusiasm will kind of rub off on you and make the listening experience enjoyable and you will find it as sort of motivating, interesting experience to listen to it.

So this is one of those episodes. It's a bit specific, but I hope you like it. James is my guest, my brother. He's probably been on this podcast more than any other guest over the years.

Together we're going to talk about who madness are, where they're from, what kind of music they made, how they fit into the story of British music, what we love about them, some of their best songs, we'll talk about some of their lyrics, tell a few stories about the band, there's a couple of tangents, one about why James perhaps understandably would never want to jump out of an airplane.

And whether or not our lives are real or we're living in a simulation. So it's strange tangents, but really this is supposed to be a sort of history of madness and a kind of fan-made documentary of sorts in the form of a conversation about this great British band madness.

You'll find a playlist of songs and videos on the page for this episode on my website. If you want to check them out, we'll be referring to those during the conversation. You'll hear a few little clips as we go.

But it's worth watching the videos and also watch the film that madness made in 1981, which is called Take It Or Leave It. It's a sort of documentary. It's a sort of like a dramatized version of their own story. It's great.

Leave a comment if you are a fan of madness and tell us if they were or still are popular in your country. If you've never heard of madness in your life, but you love music, then maybe you'll discover a band that you can enjoy listening to.

After we finish this conversation, I'll just mention a few other things that I forgot to say during the conversation, just a couple of other things.

But that's it then. That's it for this introduction. So without further ado, let's get started. And here we go.

Hello, congratulations. By the way, I'm reaching a million flipping people like what?

Yeah, who are these people? What's wrong with them?

No, it's amazing. How does that happen?

I don't know, I think just consistently making episodes and then it's probably thanks to a few specific episodes, you know, like certain ones that get a lot more attention than others.

What's the number one episode?

It's a short story episode.

Right. So they just like bad time with Luke. Yeah, they're just like basically listen to stuff that will help them fall asleep. I get a lot of comments saying, oh, you know,

I fell asleep listening to this. A lot of people fall asleep listening to this podcast, including you, maybe in this episode.

Anyway, Ben, German on you got you got a Ben Sherman shirt on. What's the significance of that?

Because it's a kind of skin-heady type thing, isn't it?

It's sort of British mod fast-slash skinhead. It's a brand, a clothing brand that's associated with sort of British mod culture.

And sort of skin-head clothing, right? Button down Ben, Sherman, shirts and stuff.

Not so much these days. It's a bit more sort of generic now, but yeah, it used to be seen as the kind of smart skin-head skirt.

Skirt. Skirt. Skirt. Skirt.

Skinheads didn't wear skirts. Yeah, Scottish heads.

In shirts. Right. Do you think any skinheads wear skirts in Scotland? Kills.

That's good. A killer's an Oscar. Isn't it? Kills are kill.

Okay. Well, yeah, got to get that right.

Anyway, so what we're going to do in this episode?

So this episode is going to continue the tradition of episodes that we used to do.

We still do from the first time. What we're doing now.

We're doing what now, exactly. And that's episodes where we talk about music or British culture and stuff.

We talk about films and music and things. We've done lots of episodes about music in the past, including conversations about lots of bands and about musical movements and things.

So this is something that we've been doing on this podcast for years and years actually.

British bands and music. And we have sort of certain listeners who love these sorts of episodes, you know, the people who are the fans of British music.

What are we going to talk about today?

Madness. Yeah. Sorry. That was just my impression of just smashing into the madness intro.

I should start. Should I not start by something? Hey, you don't watch that watch this. This is the heavy, heavy monster sound.

The nutty sound around. If you're coming off the street and you beginning to feel the heat. Well, listen, Buster. You better start to move your feet to the rock in his rock steady beat.

Hey, you don't watch that watch this. This is the heavy, heavy monster sound. The nutty sound around. So if you're coming off the street and you're beginning to feel the heat. Well, listen, Buster. You better start to move your feet to the rock in his rock steady beat.

A madness. One step forward.

Yeah, we're doing our madness. The scar pop act of the 80s. Yeah, that's right. Madness.

So what James did was the intro to one of their most famous songs called One Step Beyond.

Yeah, okay. So madness. Right. Now madness were or are one of the biggest bands of all time. Actually. And I wonder how famous they are around the world.

I think they're wonderful. Yeah. They're big in Japan. They did get big in Japan. And actually, I know that they were famous in France because recently in a, in a, not in episode in a lesson in a classroom.

The lesson was about school days. Right. And in the lesson plan, it said your teacher will play you a clip from a song about school days. Yeah. And in the lesson plan, it gave me options of like all these different options of these different songs about school days. And none of them were baggy trousers by madness.

So I was like, I'm not going to play them any of these. I'm going to play them baggy trousers. He went rogue. You didn't follow the course guide. That's all. Yeah, that's right. I went rogue. I went rogue. Yeah. Like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible 4 or whatever it is. Yeah.

And it, which was quite nice because that was one of the very first things I ever did as a teacher. Actually, when I was training to, to be a teacher, one of our assignments was to find a video that we could play to our students and then find a way of using that to learn English to teach them English. And the video I chose was, was baggy trousers by madness.

And my French students, they all knew it. Like all of all of the new writers. And they knew that so long. They they, yeah, I think so. I think so. And I mean, it was a small group. There was like about six, seven students in there. And they were all a little bit older.

Sometimes I get kind of like university students, sort of teenagers or in their twenties. They probably wouldn't have known madness. But these, these sort of middle age people in the room, they all knew the band.

So I think they're pretty famous in Europe, pretty famous in France. And certainly known in Japan. And probably other places too. So listeners, if you know about this band, if you heard of madness, if they were popular in your country, let us know.

Should I, should I give a basic sort of summary of who madness are? Yes. Okay. So conversation. Yes. This is a conversation. Yes.

So madness are a British pop and scar band formed in 1976 in Camdentown in London in England. Right. So formed in the mid to late 1970s. But they became popular in the late 70s. And then in the 80s. The 80s was when they had most of their hits from Camdentown in London. That's kind of an important thing about the bad.

Right. They're from Camden. And they were all from the Camden area, which is a part of London that's changed quite a lot. But it's a, it's a well known. North London.

Exactly. It's a place that lots of people go these days. Lots of tourists go and visit Camden. It's a kind of cool interesting place to go to.

Scar band. So scar. We need to explain what scar is.

Jamaican 60s music.

This pre-cursor to rock study and then reggae rock steady and for a gay.

Who an old brum. Rock study.

So it's like a fast R&B style music on the offbeat.

Something to do with the mentor rhythm of the Jamaican people's, I believe.

It's like an offbeat rhythm and they kind of played American R&B kind of standards in that style.

Quite fast. Very fast a lot of it.

And it's kind of an infectious dance group. And it became very popular in the UK, most other places because we do like a bit of a dance about.

Yeah. And also of course the Jamaican communities in England as well as brought all that music over with them.

Yeah. But it was the charts and it was a popular music and there was a kind of revival for it in the 70s.

So kind of like a second wave of popularity and English bands or mainly London.

That's not true. Mainly English bands adopted it and started playing it themselves.

Like the specials, the selector.

What other ones are there? Maladness.

Who did mirror in the bathroom? Who was that?

That is the beat. Right. Although known as the English beat, they're really good. I like them a lot.

Too nice to talk to by the beat.

Yeah. But anyway, so Madness is for one of these groups that kind of adopted Skars part of their style.

And yeah, they became part of that kind of Skar revival movement along with the specials, the selector and a few other bands.

Specials were from Coventry in the middle of this.

Yes. I think they kind of spearheaded it to a large extent.

They were kind of the prime movers on the scene I think.

And responsible for a lot of other bands starting I should imagine.

I think Madness actually saw the specials perform and they were suddenly given a lot of inspiration by them.

Yeah. And they realized that they could do it too kind of thing. There was another other bands out there that were doing what they were doing.

And I think the specials had moved towards setting up their own label or they were involved with...

Yeah, the two-time label.

Right. So they were moving into publishing and stuff like that and having a record label.

So I think Madness kind of like, you know, were really inspired by the progress that the specials have made.

Yeah, because I think Madness started out doing a bit of everything. I think the first song they did was see a later alligator.

It was like 50s rock and roll number.

There was a 50s revival on as well at the time.

But they went to Skar route.

That's how they started out. Their first few records were definitely in that style.

But then they changed sort of after a few years. They kind of changed their style a bit and went into more...

More pop, broadly speaking, pop music with, you know, quite a few eclectic, diverse influences.

So they're recognizable for having seven members of the group.

Okay, they've been slight variations over the years. I think these days there's just six of them.

Because Chaz Smash isn't in the group anymore. But seven members, known for their kind of nutty humor, their cheeky humor.

And they're known as nutty boys or the fans are known as nutty boys.

Right. And their musical diversity.

Yeah. So late 70s, two-tone Skar movement. Madness emerged as one of the prominent artists.

But as their career evolved, they transitioned into more conventional pop music.

Ultimately becoming one of the most successful British bands of all time.

Their peak success occurred in the 80s attracting different fans, like new wave fans who appreciated their eclectic sound.

They had some success in the USA. I think their song, Our House, was their most successful song over there.

I think they toured with the bangles. Did they really? They toured with the bangles.

They did.

And Madness spent a total of 214 weeks on the UK singles Charts, which means they had songs in the Charts for 214 weeks between 1980 and 1989,

which is the record for the most weeks by a group in those charts.

And it's a shared record, right James? They share that record of the most number of weeks in the charts.

With which band? Can you guess?

Abba.

No. It's a British band.

Debitals. No. From Birmingham.

The Roland Stalls. No. No. From Birmingham.

From Birmingham. You be 40. You be 40, yeah.

Nice. Nice reference.

So notable hits from their repertoire, Madness, include One Step Beyond, as we mentioned, Our House. House of Fun.

It must be love and plenty of others, all right?

Yeah.

They were huge when we were kids, weren't they?

Yes.

That's the first band that I ever really going to, as a child, those are basically about eight. And I thought they were amazing, because they were on Telly on top of the pop, being really funny.

The songs were really catchy and fun, memorable.

I had to go like very sing along kind of lyrics.

I would just really immediately like them. I mean, they definitely appealed to kids. I think they were quite silly and, you know, quite visual.

And they just made like being a sort of young adult, look really fun.

You know, like they were having a really good time.

And not taking themselves too seriously and also making this brilliant music.

And I went to the library and got a couple of Madness tapes out from the library room.

That was something you could do and became a big fan, man. Well, a big fan.

I mean, there's probably a few native English speakers watching this, such as Imagine Who are proper Madness fans and know all about who.

I'm a sort of a fan, but I'm not a diehard expert.

No, no, but definitely a fan and me too.

Yeah, I just remember seeing them on top of the pops.

When I was, I guess I must have been about four or something.

We had a VHS. We'd copied.

I guess our parents had copied some songs from top of the pops, including Adam and stand and deliver.

And so House of Fun. We had that video. We had those two songs on video.

Yeah, I think that they'd recorded an episode of top of the pops.

And in that particular episode, they showed stand and deliver.

And then they showed House of Fun. And I was an Adam Ant fan at that time for some reason.

I was only about four. I think I was named more than anything else.

Yeah, maybe.

And so when you went to school, I would still be at home. And every morning, I would watch those two videos.

I remember it.

Really every morning.

Every morning, I'd watch those two videos. I'd watch the Adam Ant video and then I'd watch House of Fun,

which was them on roller coasters in a fun fair.

Welcome to the House of Fun. Welcome to the Lions and Tiltations on its way. Welcome to the House of Fun. Welcome to the House of Fun. Now I'll come up.

So that's one of my earliest memories. But I also remember you getting those tapes.

And I remember one of the songs was Michael Cain.

Yeah. And before I even knew who Michael Cain was, I remember hearing on your tape player, my name is Michael Cain.

I remember the song.

My name is Michael Cain.

In the song, I remember that.

I sang a song. I listened to it the other day because I listened to it. I watched all the videos again just to refresh my memory.

And I still don't really know what that's about unless it's about an abstract sort of atmosphere of Michael Cain films.

Like there's a bit of a goes he can't remember his own name.

That's from the Ippquest file.

Right at the end, they try and brainwash him when he thinks it's in Albania and he's actually in London.

Yeah.

And he's subjected to some weird torture technique where they brainwash you and wipe your memory and he, he, he, anyway, I want to know the whole story of the Ippquest file.

But that thing there's a reference to that in the song.

But apart from that, I don't know what the hell it's on about.

Yeah. So the song Michael Cain, which is one of their 80s hits.

One of the rare ones that's got Chad Smashers, the lead vocalist on it.

That's it's a song called Michael Cain. It's got a sample of Michael Cain saying my name is Michael Cain in it.

And yeah, what the lyrics are about it seems that they're about sort of some kind of mystery film with Michael Cain in it or something.

I don't know, maybe the Ippquest file or one of those similar films that he made.

So yeah, I remember all that stuff.

And then we had like our parents had a couple of vinyl records.

I think didn't they have complete madness, the compilation album?

And they had madness seven as well.

Yeah.

So I remember putting on putting on one of those albums and then running around the living room, listening to shut up.

Yeah.

And putting all the cushions on the floor and running around the living room, jumping from one cushion to the next.

That's one of the favorite things to do actually.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's definitely like as you say kid friendly music because there's a it's quite sort of jaunty and high energy and lots of fun.

And I played it. I introduced my daughter to madness the other day.

We were just having dinner and I said, right, listen to this.

And I played her.

Backie trousers, nightboat to Cairo.

Yeah.

And she was she really got into shut up because there's the bit in the song where it goes, just close your eyes and count to three.

One, two, three.

Three.

Just close your eyes and count to three.

And so she was singing along to that.

And then I played her our house and she started singing along to it.

You know, she got into it.

So it's definitely like, I don't know if it's just our family, a family thing or what or if it's just kids that they they really pick up on that.

Not that they are a kind of.

They're fun.

There's humor and they do appeal to kids, but there's also a lot of depth in in the songs as well, isn't there?

I mean, considering they're all relatively.

I wouldn't say untrained, but they're not like professional musicians when they started, they're kind of they're kind of mostly self taught.

I don't know about all of them.

I don't know about the piano player, but I think some of them, you know, more trained than others, but generally they kind of made it all up as they went along.

Yeah.

So certainly, I don't know, you just kind of came into his oven with his lyrics.

I mean, I don't know where that came from, but he was he just started with a group because he thought it would be a laugh and then started writing better and better songs.

Spare about lyrics.

Let's mention the different members of the group.

So Sugs is probably the most recognizable one.

He's the lead singer, right? Sugs is his that is nickname.

His actual name is Graham McPherson.

Yeah.

He joined the band.

He wasn't one of the founding members at the beginning.

He joined the band a little bit later.

Took over from someone else.

But he was actually at one point.

He was kicked out of the band.

Do you know why?

I should know this.

Before they made it and sort of became famous because he didn't make a gig because he had something better to do.

He kept not turning up to band practice rehearsals because he was watching football instead.

That was it.

So he kept watching Chelsea play football instead of coming to rehearsals.

So he got kicked out of the band.

They got him back in again.

But then later on he came back when the replacement singer couldn't make it.

So he came back in and thank goodness because he's kind of like, as I said, a really recognizable part of the band.

His vocal style, the way he looks.

And also his kind of like funny dance moves that he does.

So that was him.

So there was a different podcast live.

Rich Daring's podcast, which we've mentioned a few times probably.

Yeah.

I went to see that at the Leicester Square Theatre and Sugs was on the guests.

I've seen it relatively recently doing a little interview.

How was he as a guest?

Very entertaining.

Very funny.

Yeah.

It's a funny guy.

And he was basically saying how a lot of the band were sort of borderline criminals when they started.

Yeah.

They were, you know, I mean, he was really into graffiti.

This was only in the 70s, but he was into that thing of getting your name up everywhere.

And he reckons that he used to write Sugs a lot.

You know, all over the streets and stuff.

And he said that was partly what helped him get in the band because people had heard of him.

Right.

Are you all that Sugs guy?

You write Sugs everywhere.

That's quite interesting.

And I think a couple of the others were into graffiti as well.

Like really early days of graffiti.

We now, you've got like 10 foot and few and tocks and all these guys in London.

They're in absolutely everywhere.

But I think Sugs was into that a long time ago.

Yeah.

They were just sort of local kids from the area that were probably involved.

Drafts.

Drafts that were involved in all sorts of naughty behaviour, like kind of petty crime stuff.

Yeah.

I mean, in the film, take it all over, you can see them trying to steal records.

In fact, they do most steal records from the record shop.

So we're talking about shoplifting and trespassing and stuff like that.

Yeah.

All this kind of stuff goes on.

And I think they all had pretty crappy jobs and they were kind of, you know,

not particularly front of the queue and most likely to make it internationally, if you know what I mean.

Yeah.

It's the story of a lot of British bands really, you know, bands everywhere, I suppose,

that kids who ordinarily wouldn't have really become that successful in the way you'd imagine.

Just sort of like working class kids who had a pretty normal future ahead of them,

just working, you know, meanial jobs or whatever, end up forming a band and then making it in a hugely successful way,

touring the world and becoming famous and getting into the city.

I mean, it is amazing.

I mean, you know how hard it is to arrange anything in a band.

You know, to get anyone together at the same time and playing the same thing without making a mistake is a huge task,

even with three people.

Yeah.

So I managed to get seven people all on all aligned.

I'm sure they went all aligned all the time, but just making it happen logistically is a nightmare.

Getting a band that works, I think it's a lot of it's down to chance as much as anything else.

Yeah.

Just chemistry as they call it.

Right, the dynamic in the group and just in some cases it just works, it just things fall into place and it just kind of works.

And then, you know, they get a really good dynamic on stage.

The music sounds really tight.

They all sort of end up playing in the same direction.

They all have a similar vision.

And good bands can make that last for a while.

You know, they can hold that together and keep producing music and making it work for a while until ultimately different sort of pressures or different forces will just break the group up.

It's really hard for a group to stay together.

It is really hard and it's a really unusual art form sort of pop music because most art forms are solo.

There's very few art forms that are a group, like a regular group of four people creating or more people creating a form of art.

It's hard to think of many other ways, I mean, far from theatre.

Yeah, but even in theatre you've got like a director.

Director, yeah.

And stuff, you know, there's definitely a hierarchy in terms of that.

But bands are like these weird things where they sort of evolve as they go along and the power structure inside the band is undefined and it just sort of like shifts and changes.

And sometimes that will pull the band apart like what happened with the Beatles and so many other groups.

And at other times, yeah, you just manage to keep the balance going.

And you know, making music, making new songs and hits.

I think that's what happened with Madness.

The fact that there were seven of them meant that they were able to draw from the different members.

You know, all of them wrote to an extent.

Yeah, I think they wrote the lyric here and there probably.

Yeah, so to go through the other members of the group, there was, as we said, Sugs that the lead singer then we should probably start with Mike Barson, who was the keyboard player.

He seems to be one of the main songwriters.

Yeah, I think so, especially in the early days.

I think Mike was the one who had the musical talent at the start.

He was an original member of the group, played the piano and keyboards.

And he was the one who could, I think he had musical talent at the beginning from the very start.

And he was the one who was kind of like trying to whip the others into shape, I think.

I think so, if you watch Take It Or Leave It, which is the Madness film, which is a block of film about their origins.

He's kind of the sort of the boss kind of bullying them around a bit and nagging them if they don't do things properly.

Uh-huh.

Yeah, it was a role.

So him, an amazing pianist, like a really naturally talented musician.

And you just hear some of his piano parts like in, for example, Shut Up.

The piano playing is really great. In fact, throughout the whole song, it's got those incredible like chromatic scales at the beginning.

He really hammers the piano and it sounds like a really good piano and it's really well recorded because it's the 80s by then.

And that sound along with that really rich like P bass with a bass player with the piano could just sound so good.

That's a production. There are productions fantastic in a lot of, a lot of the tracks.

Yeah, really good. I mean, they're really musical.

We talked about them sort of making it up as they went along and not really knowing what they were doing and not being train musicians.

But when you hear like their best songs, yeah, they're excellent. They're like really musical and they're so tight.

And there are so many different interesting elements going on at the same time, but they all work really, really well together.

Really just really sit so tightly together. It's brilliant.

So yeah, Mike Basin on the piano, Chris Foreman on guitar.

Also, you know, excellent guitarist and yeah, they worked really well as a team.

None of them tried to dominate the sound. You know, they were just really like a good R&B group.

And I like the guitarist got kind of a sort of surf element to it in some ways or a kind of cowboy.

Yeah, there's something a little bit westerny about it in places.

He's playing as well as this gas stuff. He does kind of kind of quite nice surfy kind of vibes.

He's got a, in some of the songs he's playing offender Stratocaster with a tremolo bar.

And so he twangs the tremolo on some of them. So it does have that kind of shadows kind of sound.

Yeah, yeah, something like that.

Which is like surf music or kind of country and western music or something like that.

Which would you think it would be out of place in a kind of sky pop band, but it all works brilliantly.

Yeah, it does, yeah.

Lee Thompson on saxophone. There had to be a Thompson in there somewhere.

Brilliant. I mean, he's the one that, he intake it or leave it.

He turns up to some saxophone lessons and the teacher goes,

he's got a nice, quite nice looking sax. Can I have a look at that? And then he goes,

oh, that's a strange. The identification number has been scratched off.

Where did you get this from? And he goes, oh, I got it from a shop.

Well, not a shop. I bloke in a shop. I bloke sometimes in the shop.

And the guy goes, well, when you get your ID number,

and you play paperwork, come back and I'll teach you then, you know, basically tells me to piss off.

The saxophone was a stolen one.

Well, so, what's your name?

Kicks.

Right, Kicks, have you played the saxophone before?

Oh, yeah, I know a few notes.

Right, if you'd like to play us the scale of C.

Scale of C?

I can't, yeah, I can't really play the scale of C.

At the moment, that's why I sort of come here.

Oh, I can feel that. Well, give us the sax, I'll show you.

Show you the fingering for that. This is nice.

Yeah, it's nice, really nice.

Oh, hello.

Things are happening, does.

Number scenes have been scratched off.

Oh, yeah, right. Yeah, when I bought it, it was already scratched off it.

Really?

Yeah.

Where did you get it this time?

Warren Street.

Down Warren Street, shop, down Warren Street.

And I sold you a saxophone down the number one.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Come on.

It's unusual.

It was sort of off a friend, you know, I bought it.

I wasn't in a shop.

I was in a shop, but off a friend.

He was in the shop. Yeah.

And he just out in the other sax.

Yeah. Well, you better touch it up there.

Yeah. I'll tell you what, do you sit and listen to me

going through this with the legs and next time you come in,

bring the bill of sound, you know?

Okay, yeah, yeah, I'll do that.

Lovely. I'll bring in more.

That's it. Yeah.

He said he didn't know how to play in tune for age.

For ages, he was playing completely wrong.

But no one really knew any better.

And he definitely learned as he went.

But he's a brilliant player, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. Some of the solos that he does, especially on,

I mean, embarrassment, that song, the solos and their are just like,

they send a chill down your spine, especially in the context of the whole song.

So, yeah, and Lee Thompson as well, was kind of,

one of the funniest members of the group.

You see him in videos and on those top of the pop's appearances,

just clowning around.

He became known for flying on with wireless saxes,

doing his sax solos. So, the baggy trousers video,

he's just playing sax and then suddenly he just lifts off the ground and starts flying around over his head.

Because he's on the...

He took that to some of extremes.

Yeah, he's on wires, but you can't say the wires.

It's pretty well done.

Yeah, but this is floating around in the sky, spinning around in the air,

playing your saxophone and the others are looking up at him.

Yeah.

Do you remember when the last video was actually jumped out of a plane with a plastic sax?

Oh, yeah.

And he's trying to play it and he's just like,

I only can't because he's, you know,

I was terrified I had to jump out of a plane, but...

Would you really? I don't know, I quite like to do it.

Oh God, but...

What's so terrifying?

I don't find it.

Just spinning through space towards the ground.

Hurtly towards earth.

It's just not natural.

It's just not meant to be.

And like...

It's not natural.

If it's a bungee jump, say the bungee fails and breaks for something.

You're not really going to know about it.

It's going to be all over before you realize what's happened.

But with the, if your parachute fails, you've got like...

20 minutes of...

Ah!

No, it's 20 minutes of...

Ah!

Struggling to like make the parachute work.

Ah!

As the world spins slowly to closer and closer.

Oh, no.

Yeah.

He does that in one of the videos, which I thought was quite impressive.

I think it's the same with a plastic saxophone.

Yeah, it's pretty entertaining.

Definitely.

He's full of high jinks, lots of jumping around and clowning and...

and other things.

So yeah, really good, really entertaining stuff.

And what else happens to him and take it or leave it?

Well, there's one.

So Lee Thompson, yeah, this character, this saxophone player.

You keep mentioning Take It Or Leave It, which as you said is a film that madness made some point in the 80s.

And it's a film they made about their own history.

And they all play themselves.

And it shows their origin stories.

It shows how the band got together and sort of early days and stuff.

Definitely, definitely recommend everyone watches it.

It's really good, yeah.

It's really, really good.

And so one scene with Lee Thompson, which kind of demonstrates just the different odd jobs they had

at the time, the way they would move from one crap job to another crap job.

And they never really had any permanent work until the band made it, you know.

But so one of these scenes is Lee turns up to some sort of yard somewhere

where there's like work being done, like a sort of a working like...

Builders yard, or something.

That's it, a builder's yard.

And he's been...

He's coming to do a truck driving job, like a Laurie Driving job.

A van driving job, really. Driving some like stuff across town, basically.

He'll like scaffolding poles.

And he says, load all the ease into here.

Take them to this to dress, you know, an orc in an hour, whatever.

Yeah.

And along with these scaffolding poles sticking out the front of the van.

The van back is only so big.

So they're actually sticking out the front, out the top of the roof, basically.

Yeah. So it's like it's like this kind of old-school guy that you wouldn't meet anymore.

This sort of like builder from the Vaughman, whatever.

From the 1970s.

All right. So you're the new driver, all right.

Come over here. So what we want you to do, see all that stuff over there.

All that all loaded up into the van.

Right. And take it to this address.

And I'll see you there. No funny business.

All right. No time wasting.

You know, that sort of thing. Yeah. Right. You are.

We'll do it. Yeah. All right. And then they load it all in.

And boom, they're driving the van through London.

Some streets in North London or something.

And they keep going under these railway bridges.

So as you say, they're going lower and lower.

Yeah. So the van is loaded up with all of these metal poles and things.

And the metal poles are sticking out of the roof of the van.

Sticking up into the air.

And yeah, they keep going under these railway bridges, which keep going lower and lower.

There's a warning under on the on the front of each one, which shows the height.

And they pass through one final bridge.

And you see that it's going to be too short.

And as they're leaving the bridge, the metal poles smash into it.

No, it says they go into the bridge, right?

The metal poles smash into the into the bridge itself.

And the whole top of the van comes flying off the roof and the concertinas off.

Yeah.

And it squashes and flies off.

And all the metal poles go flying into the air.

And they just keep driving because Lee's driving the van with some other guy.

And they're like, did you hear something? No, I don't think so.

And they keep going.

And like, you know, 20 minutes later, they get to this other yard, park the van.

And the former said, all right, so what's going on here?

There's nothing in the van.

And Lee comes round to have a look and sort of like jumps as he sees the way the whole roof has come off.

And he's just promptly, he's promptly just quits, doesn't he?

He's like, well, well, well, tell you what, you can take your job, you can stuff it.

I quit and just runs away.

Just literally runs off.

You haven't seen that new driver of you?

No.

You've Thompson and you driver?

Yeah.

It's a light.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

Should've been here an hour ago.

I know, yeah, I was so far away.

First time that you're open your light?

Yeah, sorry.

I'm going to carry on this way.

All right.

I'll get the van out there.

Keys on the neck right, back it in.

Stephen, you know, want all this scaffolding on?

All right.

Rees bluffs, drain web pipes and 400 flattens.

All right.

Okay.

I'll see you at the site.

Stephen knows the way you show it.

Okay.

Okay, sorry about that.

All right.

Where's Steve?

What are flattens?

Yeah, the entrance here.

All right.

Is that a lot?

It should be done on left, did you think?

I don't know.

Should I bring?

I'll take this one.

Do you know, Siria?

Sorry?

Do you know, Siria?

Well, a bit.

Not as much as an old flander, no?

How long have you been walking in?

About a year.

Yeah.

What's that form of life?

He's okay, but he's got a thing about being on time.

Yeah, yeah, I know.

Yeah, do right here.

What, there?

Come.

What was that?

What?

About bloody time.

Where you've been, Johnna Grotes?

Come on, let's get it unloaded.

Yeah, it was a bit of traffic.

Bye!

What happened?

Yeah.

I'll tell you what.

You can stick your job.

It's too dangerous.

Push me, pay onto us.

Which, it's a true story, I think.

Apparently.

Yeah.

Things I, what gets me is they did it again for the film.

Like, did they do that?

Like, officially did they get it?

Stunt coordinator, or did they just do it?

I reckon they probably just did it.

Yeah.

But who knows?

It's good, though.

It's a great moment in the film.

So that's Lee Thompson.

Then there's Chaz Smash.

Who?

Yeah, he's there.

Hey, you don't watch that.

Watch this.

He's kind of the dancer.

Slash, hype man.

Like some of the DJ's days.

Backing vocals, Trumpet as well.

And dancer.

And the guy who would sort of like,

yeah, he said, he said, he said hype man.

Hype man.

I think that's what they call it.

Like, kind of a bit like, bez.

But not, you know, I don't know.

Just a guy over there to get the crowd excited.

Yeah, a dancer, a bit like a, a bit like,

a bit like, bez in the happy Mondays.

But he also was kind of like, good looking and really stylish.

He looked cool.

He's a dance on stage.

And I think they had him for a while.

Then they got rid of him.

He don't need this car on stage with us.

He doesn't really do anything.

And then the crowd should miss him.

And they're like, where's that guy?

They used to dance and do the intro and stuff.

And he's like the spirit of madness in a way.

The way he used to dance and stuff.

Yeah.

And actually, a really important member of the group, I think.

Because he brought that, yeah, just brought the spirit to the band

and added this other element.

Yeah.

I've put a finger on what it is, but it's just like the guy there going,

look, like, I'm like the, uh,

I don't know, I'm going to say the spirit,

the spirit animal of the group kind of thing.

Yeah.

Okay.

We'll go with that.

And yeah, just like really good dance moves and really good clothes.

And also just that meant that there were seven of them.

And for some reason, seven is the kind of a magic number, isn't it, for a band?

When you get seven people, it's kind of,

just a good dynamic.

But he was originally the bass player.

Yeah, I didn't know that.

Yeah, and put he left and then, and then he came back as the dancer and stuff.

And then Suggs as well.

And then the drummer and the bass player.

So the drummer is Dan Woodgate, otherwise known as Woody.

And I always look really young.

Oh, he's looked ridiculously young in the story of the early video.

He's in the beard school or something.

And the ones, and also in intake it, I believe he's the one that missed their first recording

session because he got lost on his mo pet.

Right.

And he's supposed to be following the van and he gets lost to cannot find a recording studio.

And they're all there waiting for him.

And it's like, they think this is their one big chance and he's blown it.

So they're pretty pissed off with it, nothing.

Yeah, that's like, gives you an idea of what it used to be like in the days before mobile phones

and the internet.

That sort of thing could happen that if everyone's going to a recording studio in a part of town

that you've never been to before, you don't know, you don't have the address and you don't

have the telephone number.

So you just have to try and follow the van with everyone else in it.

And if you get lost, if you lose the van, then you're stuffed and you have to ask people,

you won't be able to find that place that they're going to.

You're going to be going around asking people, excuse me mate, you know what, so and so roaders.

Or even if you don't know the road, if like, do you know where like North end studios is?

Well, they're saying that the things with studios, studios don't actually advertise their presence on the street.

You expect them to have a big golden sign outside saying, you know, golden studios, you know, whatever it is, you know.

But don't because that advertises the fact that everyone is full of expensive equipment.

So most studios, you actually find a very hidden.

And there'll be a little gate, a little side gate down the side street somewhere or you know, there'll be a big gate and a small tiny little sign

that you can barely read that says, you know, so and so studios.

No, he couldn't find it.

Yeah, that's their first recording session or something.

But what do you think of say you're a drummer, I'm a drummer.

What do you think of Woody as a drummer?

He's great. He does discard stuff. The sub reggae beats really well. He does the kind of more stomping stuff really well.

Very good drummer.

Yeah, they say that a band is as good as its drummer, right?

Yeah.

And he's brilliant. He's kind of not flashy, but very, very solid.

Some good fills and some good intros.

Yeah, just simple but effective, really solid, kept time really, really well, which obviously is vital for a drummer.

He played the song. He didn't try and show off everything he did was appropriate for the song.

And he plays a mean one handed 16 beat on the high hat.

You know what I mean? You know what I mean by that, don't you?

How does that go?

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

So four beats to the bar would be...

No, four beats is...

Oh, it's... When he's... Yeah, I do not know.

Right, that's four beats to the bar. Eight is...

Yeah.

That's eight. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

But he can do 16 beats with one hand.

Not often when you do 16 beats, you end up using two hands.

Yeah, that's hard to do. Yeah, but he can do that with one hand.

A lot of drummers can do it with one hand, but he does it very well.

That...

And you can hear that on a couple of his songs.

He's doing these really good 16 beats with one hand on the high hat and the other hand playing the rim of the snare drum.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sounds so good when it's done well.

And he does that a couple of times.

And then there's the bass... He does my goal.

No, he does it in... It must be love and he does it in grey day.

And then there's the bass player.

The bass player, Mark Bedford.

So grey bass lines.

Iconic bass lines.

And really, I think a really underrated bass player that no one ever talks about, but they should because...

I think his bass playing is just brilliant. He's one of my favorite bass players. And if...

When I have fun and try and play the bass, I often try and copy his bass lines.

They're really good songs to play along too.

And again, just like really perfectly suited to the songs with a really good groove, but also really good melodic and catchy bass lines always sounded great.

And they're really thick bass tone, like it makes with that piano and those drums just sounded killer.

Really, really good solid rhythm section.

What do you think the listeners are thinking while listening to this episode?

I don't know. How they're getting bored? Do we need to live an outfit?

I don't know. How on earth can we live an it up a bit?

By doing a nutty dance.

What else are we going to talk about?

Favorite songs and their lyrics.

My girl's one of my favorites.

My girl, okay. Why do you like it?

It's just one of those kind of well-written relationship songs.

Yes.

It's about down to earth, down to earth sort of, you know.

My girl's pissed off with me, sort of song.

Yes.

The lyrics are quite ordinary.

It goes, my girl's mad at me. I didn't want to see the film tonight.

I found it hard to say. She thought I'd had enough of her.

Why can't she see? She's lovely to me.

But I like to stay in and watch TV on my own every now and then.

Yes. A situation where his girlfriend is pissed off with him because she wanted to go to the cinema

and he didn't want to come.

I just wanted to stay in.

And so she's angry.

But the situation sort of escalates and they end up having a phone call that lasts sort of hours and hours.

But they're on the phone to each other for ages and they hardly say anything.

So I saw a little video of Mike, Basin talking about this and talking about how it's based on a real phone call

that he made to his girlfriend at the time where she was angry with him.

And she was trying to kind of get through to him emotionally, try and work out what...

And he was being all sort of like...

Uncommunicative man, basically.

An uncommunicative man. And it is kind of typical, isn't it?

That a lot of the time men can be uncommunicative.

They just want to be left alone in their man cave or whatever.

And their significant other, their girlfriend, is just trying to engage with them emotionally.

And it's probably upset with them in some way.

And trying to have this heart to heart conversation, but the man is incapable of really expressing himself

and is being monosyllabic and uncommunicative.

And she's getting upset. And the conversation can't end because it can't be resolved.

And so it ends up being one of those phone calls that lasts for hours where nothing is really said.

And yet the phone can't be put down by either side.

Right. Right.

It's correct.

My girl's better than me.

Been on the telephone for an hour.

We only said a word.

I tried and tried but I could not be heard.

Why can't I explain?

Why do I feel this pain?

Because everything I sigh is she doesn't understand.

She doesn't believe in her.

She tights it all around.

Yeah, good one.

Very straightforward lyrics, as you said, sort of very down to earth,

just describing this kind of painful situation in this relationship, this painful moment.

And Baggy Krauzas is a good one, one of my fives.

Yeah, I mentioned it before.

What's it about?

The lyrics that it's about school days and sort of, you know, the rough and tumble of school life.

The weird thing was for, you know, the guys that wrote your socks.

They were looking back on their school life.

Whereas the where I was in life, I was kind of looking towards it.

You were in it.

I was in it.

I was in school.

And I was about to go to school and move schools in the Midlands and all sorts of things in that song are quite accurate, really.

Yeah, it just sort of describes what it's like being in a normal, sort of slightly rough, comprehensive school.

Yeah, a state school.

Well, anyway, it was quite reassuring that song.

Like, it's a load of shit, really, but don't worry about it.

It's actually the best time of life.

You can laugh about it one day.

And it's the best time of your life.

You don't realize it.

But it's actually in a way the best time of your life because you're young and you're just fooling around.

And, you know, I saw an interesting interview with Sugs where he talked about that song.

And he compared it to that pink Floyd song, you know, The Wall.

Yeah, which is a lot more serious.

It's like a totally different point of view. So the wall by pink Floyd is basically like, hey teacher, leave those kids alone.

Right, which is like the school is like this oppressive institution.

Well, you know, I'm not a big pink Floyd fan. I'm a bit of a skeptic.

A pink Floyd skeptic.

So, yeah, you're right. The wall is a very sort of ponderous education.

The teachers are, you know, trying to keep the kids down, man.

Yeah, trying to mold everyone into mold, mold everyone into these like units, these bricks that are going to form part of like this system.

Which stops you getting out as well, which is kind of like, I guess where he's coming from, but also education can save free.

I mean, that's my son naive, but it's, you know, it's not as simple as all education is bad teachers are evil.

You know, and like you say, what you are thinking about to say the madness thing is the opposite like the teachers are trapped.

Yeah, yeah, like the teachers aren't having a great time. You forget that when you're a kid.

You know, you think the teachers are just there to give you shit and teach you stuff that you don't really want to learn.

But when you realize hang on, they probably must have hated this.

Like it's no one's dream to be an English teacher with a rowdy classroom on a hard say when no one can be asked to do any work.

You know, they must hate it. Yeah. And so yeah, it's exactly that. That's what Suggs was saying.

He's saying in pink Floyd's song, it's like teacher leave those kids alone, but in the madness song, it's like kids leave those teachers alone.

And they're all in the pub at lunchtime getting pissed and sproking like mad just to kind of get a pass, get through the day.

Yeah, the teachers are just trying to survive each day and the headmaster is coming in to try and fix it and some kid throws a plastic cup at the back of his head.

And he can't, he doesn't know who it was. And just like trying to manage.

Hang on, I thought the plastic cup was the kid being hit by the plastic cup.

No, I always thought that it's, it's, okay, hold on, let me find the baggy trousers, lyrics.

Because I always thought it was the teacher hitting one of the kids over the back with the head with the plastic cup.

No, no, I think the teacher comes to break it up and someone throws a plastic cup at it.

Yeah, so lots of, so this is, these are some of the lyrics from baggy trousers.

Lots of girls and lots of boys, lots of smells and lots of noise playing football in the park kicking pushbikes after dark.

Baggy trousers, dirty shirts, pulling hair and eating dirt.

The teacher comes to break it up.

Meaning the teacher comes to stop the fight back of the head with the plastic cup.

I think that's, in my version of this, the teacher has come down to try and stop this fight.

And someone throws a plastic cup at the teacher's head from behind.

What I see is that the teacher comes to break up the fight with more violence.

I think that's the, the iron ironic funding thing.

But you wouldn't hit someone with a plastic cup.

No, you probably wouldn't, would you?

A teacher wouldn't grab a kid and say, stop that fighting and take a plastic cup and hit them on the head.

Well, I tell you why we could resolve this in the video.

There's actually a shot of a plastic cup being hit on a head.

Is it a teacher's head?

It's a teacher, it's a teacher, yeah.

It's a teacher comes in there and he gets hit on the back of the head with a plastic cup.

So some other kid, as the teacher is trying to deal with this situation,

some other kid has thrown a plastic cup at the back of the teacher's head.

And then the teacher doesn't know who's done it.

I'm certain I remember the video.

Okay, yeah, you could be right there.

I think you think in the video it is a teacher, yeah.

Hello everybody, this is me interrupting the episode.

I hope you're enjoying it by the way.

I know it's a bit specific this one, but still, I've just reviewed the video for this,

because obviously this is vitally important that we use the plastic cup.

Hello everybody, this is me interrupting the episode.

I hope you're enjoying it by the way.

Because obviously this is vitally important that we get this right.

This moment in the song where they talk about someone getting hit on the back of the head with a plastic cup.

Is it the teacher who comes along to try and stop a fight in the playground?

Or is it one of the kids?

And James said, well, the only way to decide this is to look at the video,

the video clip for the song, because in the video clip there is a quick moment

that someone has a cup, a plastic cup thrown at the back of their head.

And having checked the video, it appears not to be a teacher.

I don't think so anyway.

You can just see the back of their head and the shoulders of a person.

And I'm pretty sure that's not a teacher, because a teacher would be wearing a shirt,

maybe a jacket or something.

And this person appears to be wearing a t-shirt.

I think this is a kid.

This is a child.

But certainly the child is having a cup thrown at the back of their head.

Someone has thrown a plastic cup at the back of their head.

By the way, when we say a plastic cup, we mean one of those kind of disposable lightweight plastic cups.

So it's not like a serious attack or anything, not something that would cause an injury.

Just a kind of slightly naughty thing that a child would do, probably, is to throw a plastic cup at the back of someone's head.

But anyway, I think this is still inconclusive.

Certainly the video clip seems to show a child having a cup thrown at them.

But I feel like I've always felt that in the song it was a teacher having a plastic cup thrown at them.

You can imagine the teacher turning around and going, who did that?

Who was that?

You know, and never really getting to the bottom of it.

Or maybe I'm wrong, maybe it's just a child having a plastic cup thrown at them.

I don't know if it's a... I never thought that it would be a teacher using a plastic cup to beat a child over the back of the head,

because that doesn't really make sense.

But anyway, who knows?

I mean, that's again, that's one of the things about songs, isn't it?

You can interpret the lyrics in different ways.

Or maybe the lines, the two lines are not connected.

Teacher comes to break it up back of the head with a plastic cup.

Maybe those two lines aren't actually connected, because the song is a sort of a mishmash of lots of different images,

or repeated one after the other, just kind of like a list of different memories, or images, or typical things that would happen in a normal school day.

And so maybe the back of the head with a plastic cup is just the sort of thing that could happen to anyone,

and it's not necessarily the teacher.

Anyway, it doesn't really matter, does it? It's really not that important.

So I thought I would try to solve the mystery, but I'm afraid it's still unsolved.

It's just going to have to remain unsolved at this point.

Anyway, let's carry on with this fascinating conversation.

Here we go.

More lyrics.

The headmaster's had enough today. All the kids have gone away.

Gone to fight with next door's school.

Every term that is the rule.

He sits alone and bends his cane, the same old back sides again.

All the small ones tell tall tales, walking home and squashing snails.

So that bit where he sits alone and bends his cane,

the cane is something that doesn't happen anymore, doesn't exist anymore,

but it was a form of punishment.

So like a long, thin stick, and if a child had done something wrong,

they'd be sent to the headmaster's office, and the headmaster would hit them with the cane on the hands, or on the back.

Corporal punishment.

Yeah, so luckily we avoided that.

I think I might have been cained once.

I talked to mum about this, about whether it was a false memory or not,

but I seemed to remember going to a fight.

And I was dragged to the teacher's headmaster's office,

and told her I was going to receive the cane.

And I was very young, and I was crying my eyes out, like bawling,

because I was nearer at school, and I was, you know,

to know what the hell was going on.

This is why I remember, is this true or not?

And I went into the headmaster's office, and he looked at me,

and I looked so pathetic.

He literally touched my hand with the cane, like he didn't even put, you know,

like, in the old days, these two, I had the cane on your bottom, or on your hand.

And by the time I was at school, I think it was like the last year of Corporal punishment being legal.

And they'd do on the hand.

But I think he just literally, he just slightly, oh, I can't, this kid's already upset enough.

No, it was less than that.

Really?

It was like that.

You just touched the cane on your hand.

Yeah, because I was already majorly upset, and, you know, I was nearer at school,

I think, and I think you just thought, oh, I can't just hit this kid.

He obviously didn't agree with it, but it was the punishment, there was appropriate.

Yeah.

And I immediately, I was like, sort of stopped crying, I was like, what the fuck was that?

I was expecting agonizing pain, and I got nothing.

But is that a real memory of a false memory there?

Maybe I've got a false memory on top of your false memory, but I remember that as well.

I have a vague memory of it.

What happened to me?

Yeah.

Because Mum couldn't remember it, but maybe I didn't tell her.

I've got a vague memory of that, but again, maybe that's just me remembering the fact that you have a false memory of it.

Who knows?

I mean, who knows if any of this is Neil James?

Maybe this is all a simulation anyway.

Well, it is.

The chances of it being a simulation are much higher than it being real.

Yeah, I've never understood that.

How is that possible?

We've gone off on a tangent on whether reality is a simulation or not, based on whether or not James is memory

of being hit with a cane on the hand or touched with the cane on the hand, is a false memory or not.

Maybe this is all just, maybe you misremember that or maybe we're living in a simulation.

And then you say the chance away, the chances of us living in a simulation are higher than us living in reality.

Apparently.

But surely if we live in a simulation, then there is also a reality in which the simulation has been written.

Right? So if you live in a simulation, then you live in both a simulation and in a reality, which is a greater context in which that simulation was created.

So I haven't had nothing breakfast yet.

I'm not for this. I'm sorry.

I'm just reading called pro punishment was prohibited in all states supported education in 1986.

So it still could have happened.

We moved in 1986.

So I had a feeling it was the last year of it being.

You were the last case.

That was the last cany.

Maybe it wasn't a false memory then maybe it's real.

Maybe.

Why would you remember something like that though?

That's it.

But I mean, why would you just seem so archaic that you'd actually hit children, you know, as part of a state sponsored education?

Yeah. I mean, I don't find out. But people the kids are here, it's just as part of an official schooling.

On in those days they thought that was the right thing to do.

Yeah, maybe it was.

Maybe they should have hit you.

I think he should have.

It would have sold me out.

Maybe.

What's different path would your life have taken if he'd hit you a little bit harder do you think?

I don't think it would have changed anything at all.

But from maybe made me more upset.

On that particular day.

Yeah.

Yeah, who knows?

Hello, this is me interrupting again because I just can't help it.

I wanted to add something here.

What I meant to say just a moment ago was why would you misremember that?

And I was going to make the point that that is such a specific memory, such a strange and specific memory.

That why would he imagine that?

Why would he misremember it?

Why would this false memory be implanted in his head?

Normally we misremember things or we have false memories when let's say someone has told us a story about it happening.

And we have remembered the story, right?

Rather than actually remembering the event in itself.

But I feel like this is such a specific thing, no one ever told James that story because my parents didn't remember it.

It's just something that's in my brother's memory independently from anyone else.

So why would his mind just create this very specific thing?

I mean, obviously we'd have to then explore the mysteries of my brother's mind, which is, I mean, who has time for that?

But my point is that I think he hasn't misremembered it because it's so specific.

I think it actually happened.

I think he did go to the head teacher's office because he got into a fight and the head teacher instead of actually caning him properly, just tapped his hand with the cane.

And it lines up, it does make sense.

1986 was the year that we moved to this new place.

James started in a new school and he used to get into trouble quite a lot because he was the new kid in the school.

And it definitely lines up.

1986 was the last year that the cane was legal.

Maybe James genuinely was the last kid in the country to be cained, even though he was not properly cained.

And the other thing is if the teacher had hit James's hand more strongly with the cane, how would his life have turned out differently?

James thinks that it wouldn't have changed at all. I've got a feeling that if the teacher had really hit him strongly with that cane, I think he would have turned into a pink Floyd fan later on.

Right? Hey teacher, leave those kids alone.

Or in this case, hey teacher, leave that kid alone. Hey teacher, leave James alone.

I think that's what would have happened. Anyway, on with the episode.

We've gone on a tangent. So right, tangents are okay. Should we go back to favorite songs?

Yeah. Embarrassment I think is one of the best songs.

It's quite interesting lyrically, isn't it?

And it's also got a fantastic video, which looks like it was really cheaply made.

Yeah, there's a commentary track on the DVD video as well.

I've watched some of that and they're actually not that into that video. They're sort of saying it's too simple, but too basic.

But last saying, we love these videos, man. What do you want about? They're all great.

Yeah. And even Nibboto Kara, they're like, God, this is a cheap one, isn't it?

You know, and they're all dancing around in the little studio with the green screen.

Yeah. It's pretty, it's like, who cares? It's face.

And it's just them dancing around in a studio, as you say, with a green screen, which has got a projection of the pyramids behind it.

And it's got this kind of like, sort of Egyptian theme to it, the song.

It's not instrumental. There are lyrics, actually, in that.

I guess inspired by Easter, the River Nile by Augustus Pablo.

Could be. Do you want me to check?

Yes, Augustus Pablo.

Which I think wouldn't surprise me if they took some inspiration from that, because the Suffolk Hiro and, you know,

it was an idea to make a song about Egypt.

And they're all wearing those red, fes hats, and they're just dancing around in khaki uniforms.

And there's a dog runs across the studio on points.

And they're all quite drunk, apparently, in that video.

Yeah.

And it's just really entertaining. They were just an entertaining band to watch.

I saw them performing one of their songs on YouTube.

I just saw a YouTube video of them on French TV performing one of their songs, and they were just falling around so much,

just like constant movement on the screen.

Yeah.

Like, characters coming in, there's always someone stealing the show, always someone doing something really funny.

Yeah.

Just such an entertaining group.

But as I said, I think I said this before, as well as being kind of like a fun, lighthearted, funny band.

Some of their songs actually were quite serious and quite dark underneath the kind of high energy stuff.

Like embarrassment, which is a really good song in terms of just like the arrangement of the song,

a really good video, I think, especially the bits where the saxophone player is on the staircase

with all of that smoke, that dry ice smoke,

throwing behind him, and he's there's a spotlight on him, and there's all the smoke,

and he's emerging from the smoke and turning round and playing these great solos.

But the song itself is kind of an interesting one.

It's based, so the saxophone player wrote the lyrics for that.

Did he?

Yeah.

And it's all about his sister, because his sister became pregnant to a black guy.

Yeah, had a mixed-race child, basically, an imagination.

It's not really that much for Big Deal anymore.

In fact, it's not Big Deal at all, but in our generation or younger, when we were much younger, it was.

Yeah.

And the song, the lyrics, are all about the parents response to this.

So I think Lee, who's the saxophone player, received a letter from his parents when they found out.

And Lee is kind of like reading the letter to his sister.

And it's basically describing the extreme reaction that the parents and the family have had

to the news that his sister is not only pregnant, but pregnant to a black guy.

And it's all stuff like, yeah.

Well, they're just ridiculous, some of the things.

I mean, it's almost comic, some of the, you're a disgrace to the human race.

Just the level of, yeah, the level of racism.

I think Lee, again, saw an interview with him where he was saying, he expressed some regret about how harsh he made the lyrics.

And he feels a bit ashamed to have exposed his family in that way.

And I think the sort of, the happy ending of the story is that she had the child and the family completely fell in love with this kid.

And sort of took it all back and, you know, embraced them both into the family and everything was all right in the end.

You know, they kind of changed their minds and stuff.

But certainly the first reaction was so strong.

You know, the lyrics go like this, received a letter just the other day.

Don't seem they want to know you know more.

They've laid it down, given you their score within the first two lines.

It bluntly read, you're not to come and see us know more.

Keep away from our door. Don't come around here. No more.

What on earth did you do that for?

And this is, I really like this line.

It alludes to something, but doesn't say it specifically.

It says, our aunt, she don't want to know.

So this is kind of like colloquial English, right?

She don't want to know is she doesn't want to know.

Our aunt, she don't want to know. She says, what will the neighbors think?

They'll think we don't.

That's what they'll think we don't, but I will because I know they think I don't.

Don't what?

Don't think.

What?

What will the neighbors think?

They fail think we, they'll think we don't.

That's what they'll think we don't.

But I don't think you think it's that they will think that they don't think.

I don't know. I don't know what it means.

Because I felt like it's they'll think that the family doesn't bring up the kids properly or that doesn't.

That's what I mean, but we don't think like we don't, you know, with stupid.

But also that they don't treat the kids properly or, you know, they don't sort of have the kids under control.

They're still morals also.

Yeah, they don't sort of discipline the kids or something, but it's really well written that it's not specifically state.

And I like the rhythm of it when, when Suggs is singing it.

And it goes on, you know, our uncle, he don't want to know he says we're a disgrace to the human race.

How can you show your face when you're a disgrace to the human race?

It's actually kind of upsetting, you know, how his sister must have felt and the level of shame.

But the rhythm of the lyrics and song works really, really well.

Yeah. So it's really powerful, hard hitting lyrics actually.

And then punctuated by these really great saxophone solos, which are just full of, yeah, that feeling of shame, embarrassment, sort of anger, sadness, pain that he must have been feeling in the middle of all of this.

It's such a powerful song. It's not a comedy song, you know, that they're often dismissed as being a bit of a comedy band.

They're not. There's a lot more to them than that.

Yeah, for sure, man.

A great day is another one.

Now, one reminds me a bit of ghost town. I wonder which, I wonder if ghost town came out first and they kind of took a bit of that vibe.

Because it's not the same kind of subject or anything, but it's just got a feel similar kind of feel to it. So the specials ghost town.

This is the ghost town.

All the clouds are being closed down.

So ghost town and grey day were both released in 1981. Grey day came first. Grey day was released. Yeah. So grey day was released in April 1981.

And ghost town was released in June 1981. But it's not clear whether grey day influenced ghost town or not.

It might just be that they both came out of a similar kind of feeling of the time.

It was fear. Yeah.

But ghost town is a social comment that ghost town by the specials is a definitely a comment on the state of.

I think Coventry at the time, the fact that the place was really run down and yeah, you know, lots of lots of places were closing down and just like the depression and sort of what life was like in this sort of fairly ignored city.

But grey day is very much a personal song and it's yeah, Mike Basson. I knew it was written by the keyboard player because I think I remember him in interviews talking about how he'd suffered from depression.

Because the song is definitely about about being depressed and about almost like a clinical level of depression.

As far as I can tell describing the experience of someone who's just suffering from depression, if someone who needs to go and get help.

So when I get home, it's late at night, I'm black and bloody from my life. I haven't time to clean my hands.

Cuts will only sting me through my dreams. It's wealth past midnight as I lie in a semi-conscious state.

A dream of people fighting me without any reason I can see. In the morning I awake my arms, my legs, my body aches, the sky outside is wet and grey. So it begins another weary day.

It's not just what life is like in England, in like February. I think it's someone who's got a condition. In the park, I have to rest, I lie down and I do my best. The rain is falling on my face. I wish I could sink without a trace.

Quite a lot for a pop song, isn't it?

Yes, dark. But in a lot of people, really good video. And again, it's upbeat. It's like Matt is one of those groups where they play sad, often quite sad or dark songs.

But with a really upbeat rhythm.

Yes, they do. I feel like we haven't got across anything as usual.

No, I don't know.

Talking about music is just one of those things, isn't it? You can try and infuse, but nothing. There's no substitute to just listening to it.

Yeah, I mean, you know, you can't persuade someone to like some music. I think really this is just going to appeal to people who know the band and like them already.

Or people who just generally like to hear us talking about this sort of thing, people who might not know anything about it all, but might enjoy hearing sort of hearing, getting a little view into what it, what it's like or what it was like for us, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

If people can let us know, you know, how this was, did listeners, if you're still here, if you're still listening, then let us know, did you like madness? Did you ever listen to their stuff? Were they famous in your country? Which songs did you like of theirs?

Have you ever seen them live, Luke?

No, you have.

I have. I think 91 or 92. They had the first come back. You borrowed my jacket for that gig.

I did went with Alison Evans, my friend, bass player from my band. Yeah. And what was it? Very good.

Lippin' Brilliant, it was a Ace. Is it the only C in Birmingham, which is kind of a big venue. I saw Happy Mondays there as well, but.

Yeah, it was brilliant. Just hit after hit after hit. You know, there got so many hit songs.

They can play for two hours. I can't remember how long they played for. It seemed like a long time and just the keep on coming, you know. And the sax player did these flying around the air thing. You know, he was on wire and, you know, he was just brilliantly entertaining.

What was the crowd like?

Lots of sort of aging skinheads and sort of that bald men with beer and their fat bald wives.

You mentioned before, actually, that did you mention this before the back in the early days because they were all white. All the members of the group were white.

Yeah, they're the only one from the two-tone scene. Yeah, they were. We didn't have any black members. They sort of unfortunately attracted a bit of a sort of right wing audience.

Because this is one of the reasons they dropped the scar thing.

The skinhead movement is quite interesting because originally the original skinheads in the UK were, I think there were quite kind of open-minded and more diverse and broad-minded in there.

I mean, a lot of it.

Yeah, sorry. A lot of the fashion, the modern skinhead fashion was kind of trying to copy Jamaican dress because they were a lot more smart and smartly dressed when they come over with Jamaica.

Yeah, the Jamaicans had like a stay-pressed trousers and low-footed like kind of swayed loafers and kind of nice jackets and check shirts and stuff.

And the music, of course. There was a big influence on Jamaican culture, which is kind of weird when it later got kind of adopted by dry wing types.

Yeah.

And it was like, well, when we were growing up, even though it was two types of skinhead, wasn't there? It was like sort of nice skinheads and then NF skinheads.

NF mini national fronts, sort of the right wing knots.

They sort of f***ing fucken of them.

And they generally wear black jackets and the kind of okay ones where green jackets.

Although it wasn't completely clear.

Was it clear cut? Was it clear cut? I mean, the film, this is England, the Shane Meadows film is quite good at sort of showing this the way that in that film, you see this kid sort of like make friends with a group of local skinheads and they're kind of like the nice skinheads.

And you know, there's a bit of petty crime maybe, but they're basically good lads and they're into the Jamaican music and like one of them's black and stuff like that.

And then you see that the movement kind of changes as one of their circle comes back after having spent time in prison.

And he is kind of radicalized and he's really racist and he's kind of like a line with the national front and stuff like that.

And then national front used to actively recruit skinheads, gags and scargags and stuff and actually send people down to try and sign people up to this political.

Yeah, party. So when you talk about skinheads, a lot of people just associate that with kind of right wing neo Nazi thugs.

And that's also the case in other parts of the world like in parts of Europe and stuff.

Skinheads are that kind of skinhead, but it's important to say that the original skinheads weren't like that at all.

And that was kind of like a, that's just something that happened in the movement, which is just really a pity.

And madness, yeah, they attracted these guys to their shows and they in the early days in their live shows, there would always be some violence or something.

So constantly having to deal with violence in the audience because of this right wing hooligan element.

And they actually had to release like press releases to distance themselves from that and saying and say that, you know, they have no affiliation with those groups and that they are against that kind of thing.

You know, they had to do that. That's that's one of the reasons that they went pop as well.

And they kind of rejected that kind of skinhead scene and just said, OK, well, we're going to move on and they sell an element of it in their music, but it was less obvious and they weren't trying to kind of call that scene there.

We're going, OK, let's go pop. Let's, let's broaden our.

And I think also they needed to do that in order to kind of break new musical ground in order to stay fresh.

You know, they needed to branch out into other areas of music.

Yeah, and it helped them to stay it helped them to maintain their longevity.

All right.

I can totally go and eat something. Yeah, me too. Me too. Lunch is calling.

Listeners, thanks for listening all the way up to this point. As I said before, leave your comments and tell us what you think.

James, thanks for talking to us about madness and stuff. It's been fun.

So, right. I hope we've kind of got something out there, but I feel like the best way is just watch all the videos.

Yeah. And watch, take it or leave it.

Yes. I'll put some videos on the page for this episode on my website.

So you can just like enjoy some of the madness video moments.

Yeah. And I'll also put take it or leave it that film they made so you can enjoy that too.

Okay. Imagine a fan trying to find that picture of me in a madness T shirt aged seven as well.

Or whatever I am. That's right.

I actually actually collected coupons from the back of cornflakes packets or wheat or big packets to be able to send off for a madness T shirt.

And I wore that until it fell apart. I absolutely love that T shirt.

It had a kind of plastic or something like a print on the front of the all the guys in madness like standing there in a group.

So in the seven pose.

Yeah. And as it got washed again and again, that print kind of like shrunk and changed shape.

Yeah. And cracked and sort of stretched and it didn't really look like madness at the end.

It just looked like a sort of a blob or something a madness shaped blob on your T shirt.

But I still wore it.

I don't remember that T shirt. Yeah. There's a photo of that somewhere. We'll see if we can find that.

Okay. Thanks James. Have a nice lunch.

Can I plug this, please?

Yeah. Go on. You want to promote your latest musical release?

It's called Ambient Anthology. Tell us about it.

It's an anthology of ambient music.

Not really expecting to sell many, but I kind of wanted to have a few copies just for you know posterities.

Not the word or just to have something physical exist.

It's very relaxing.

Yeah.

Let me get to sleep.

Yeah. Ambient anthology. Where can people actually get it?

On Jim Thompson dot band camp dot com.

Jim Thompson dot band camp dot com.

That's where you can get the album. You can get a digital version.

Or you can actually get the CD version as well, which would be nice.

The digital one's actually free. If you want to get it for free, then you can make a donation or not.

You don't have to lovely ambient music soothing atmospheric ambient music.

Perfect for any occasion almost and crafted by me. Anyway, let's let's let's wrap it up.

Okay. All right. Well, have a nice lunch. Bon appétit.

Thank you.

Merci.

I was a monster.

All right. Cheers.

All right. Nice one. Bye. Bye.

So there you go. That was my conversation with James.

And just a couple of things I wanted to mention now, just a couple of things I missed, including

like things like influences that madness had.

I don't know why, but this feels very important for me to kind of add this at the end.

I have to mention Prince Buster.

Prince Buster was a Jamaican musician.

A Jamaican music star who was kind of known for making this scar music that influenced madness so much.

And all the guys in madness loved Prince Buster. They loved his music. He was a huge influence on them, especially in the early days.

He inspired their entire sound really at the start, that kind of scar sound.

And he also gave them their name.

Madness is actually a song recorded by Prince Buster and madness did a cover version of it.

And also one of their biggest hits, the instrumental song, one step beyond, is actually a Prince Buster track, which they did a cover version of.

And madness's first single called the Prince was a tribute to Prince Buster.

So it's important, I think, to mention Prince Buster and how important he was.

Another influence, I think, on madness is a group called The Kinks, which was a 1960s pop group.

One of those kinds of British invasion groups.

And when I say, when we say British invasion, we're talking about pop groups from the 1960s from Britain, who after the Beatles became a huge sensation, also became really popular in the UK.

And there was a whole movement in sort of pop and rock music, which was called The British Invasion.

So this is basically British bands, suddenly becoming very popular in the USA.

And The Kinks was one of those groups. The Kinks, also from North London, just like madness.

The interesting thing about The Kinks was that they wrote pop songs about ordinary people and their lives.

And madness followed in that tradition by talking about their immediate surroundings, describing their community, talking about local characters, describing their ways of life, just describing the world as they saw it.

And that was a very, it became a sort of very British sort of musical thing to do.

The Kinks madness. And then later on, other bands have done a similar thing, like for example, Blair.

Also, I should mention Ian Dury and the blockheads, although when madness, when the guys from madness were aware of them, I think they were called Killburn and the High Roads.

But Ian Dury, another big influence on madness. And Ian Dury's band, so Ian Dury was a musician from London.

And his band called The Blockheads, was really a kind of template for madness.

It was a sort of British R&B, British rhythm and blues, with a kind of punky edge, with some humour, a singing style that was a bit like talking.

So really, I think that I had to mention Prince Buster, The Kinks, and Ian Dury and The Blockheads, as big influences on madness.

Just before we end here, I wanted to add a couple of things about what happened to madness, kind of the rest of the story.

Because James and I were on a bit of a nostalgia trip in this episode, talking a lot about the kind of early days, the music and the band members, and how they got started and stuff like that.

So before we finish, I feel like if I'm going to do this properly, I need to give you a little bit of an overview of the history of the band.

Because this is what's interesting about bands, I think for me, is not just how they start and how they get successful.

And we talked about that kind of mysterious element of when all the right parts of a band will fall into place.

And when those things fall into place, then suddenly power. It all happens.

A bit like with the Beatles, when they finally got Ringo into the band, and then it just all seemed to align.

Everything seemed to align. The planets aligned. The gods of music just smiled upon them.

A similar thing with madness. I feel like when the bass player and the drummer joined the group, and we got that lineup, that seven member lineup,

that's when the proper formula was created. And that's when suddenly they quite quickly, I think, became a phenomenon at that time in the 1970s, in 1979.

And they got a record label, started releasing records and stuff. And then there was that most fruitful period, which was really the right at the end of the 1970s, and then the first few years of the 80s.

Okay, their first record was the Prince 1979. That was followed by an album from around the same period, which the album was called One Step Beyond, which had that big instrumental hit called One Step Beyond.

Definitely a commercial success. And those were the scar days, really. That's when madness were, for the most part, a scar band.

But then during the 80s, they released a few other albums, and their sound changed. They kind of evolved from just being a kind of scar act into a more diverse pop group, really, which had its roots in scar and rhythm and blues.

But had much more diverse elements, and their albums, the next album they released was in 1980. It was called Absolutely. After that, the next album was Madness 7, in 1981. That's the one that my parents had.

And then the Rise and Fall in 1982. And those three albums are just really good quality albums. And if you want to explore Madness's back catalog and really enjoy the best of their music, I think in my opinion, is probably those three albums. Absolutely seven. And the Rise and Fall.

And there are songs in there, which are not, you don't find in the kind of Spotify, this is Madness playlists or the kind of best of collections. But songs which are still really interesting, and you get a sense of the depth of musical talent in the group and the arrangements are really interesting.

And the musicianship is worth exploring. So I recommend those. Now what happened to the band? Did they break up? Did they get back together? Well, yes, basically.

In 1984, they released another album, which was called Keep Moving. But I think there were some problems inside the band, internal pressures, which is typical really of bands. You know, it's as I was saying earlier on in this conversation, it's very hard for a band to stay together. There are all sorts of pressures.

Personal ones, business-related ones, all sorts of things that can put bands under pressure. And I think I'm not entirely sure, but I think what happened is that Mike Barson, who was the piano player, and to an extent, the sort of musical director.

I mean, they all contributed songs, and all were responsible for the arrangement of songs to an extent. But I think that Mike, as the piano player, was a sort of centerpiece of the band musically. And I've heard members talking about this in interviews saying that the way it worked with Madness is that they would all gather around the piano. Right.

Mike was the most musically literate member of the band, I would say. And so they gathered around him. He was a sort of musical centerpiece. And you hear it in their best songs. You hear that there is this piano, or at least keyboard, led arrangement often.

And there were some very interesting arrangements that Mike Barson contributed. The others, as I said, did write songs. They wrote lyrics, they wrote the music and stuff. But Mike Barson, I think, was a really pivotal, pivotal, important member of the group.

I think having some personal issues, I'm not sure exactly what they were. I mentioned the song Gray Day, which I speculated was about his depression or some mental illness. I'm not sure really. I think I remember seeing a documentary about Madness where Mike Barson did talk about these things.

So in the mid 80s, he moved to Amsterdam. I think he got married as well. He moved to Amsterdam. So moved away from all the others. And essentially quit the band. I think he needed to do something else. He needed to get away from it all.

So the remaining six members carried on without him. And I think it's Suggs who said that they were basically fooling themselves, thinking that they could continue without Mike.

And really it wasn't quite the same. They lost something. I mean, the songs that they released in the mid 80s, songs from Keep Moving, and then from the 1986 album Mad Not Mad. They're not bad. I enjoyed them as well. But they lacked a certain spark that they'd had before when Mike Barson was in the band. And it didn't really work out.

So they had a business related issues as well. I think that the six remaining members decided to break away from their record company. Because bands are often struggling with these sorts of things, publishing issues, copyright issues, and management issues.

But band has made it successful. They've done it in collaboration with a record company, with the business people. And those record company people often take a lot of the money, basically, a lot of the ownership of the rights and a lot of the profits and stuff.

They go into the pockets of record company executives. And I think the madness wanted to take that step to control their business interests. So they set up their own record company.

Like with many bands, trying to manage all of these things was probably a bit too much, especially when they'd lost a key member of the group. And it probably became a case of diminishing returns. That's where the more work you put in, the less return you get from it.

And they did split up. They split up in 1986 after the release of that album, Mad Not Mad.

And that was the end of it. I mean, they did try some of the members got together again. I think four of them, Sugs, Chaz Smash, Lee Thompson, and Chris Foreman. I think tried to create another project, just the four of them, which was called The Madness. But it didn't go anywhere. It wasn't a success.

So essentially that was the end of madness then. But then in 1992, they reunited for a series of live performances. This is when my brother went to see them live.

And these live performances were called Mad Stock. That was I think the first big madness concert. It was called a Mad Stock. I can't remember what prompted them to get back together and do that.

Anyway, they did this big live show, Mad Stock in 1992. And it was a massive success. And apparently the crowd jumping up and down. Where was it? Was it at Wembley Stadium? No, it was in Finnsbury Park in London.

And then they were proud jumping up and down at the concert, sent shockwaves through the area, which registered as an earthquake. They created a small earthquake. That was the impact that they had.

And then they did a huge success live on stage again, playing all their hits. There was clearly a huge amount of affection for this band. And so they did more live performances in 1992. And then did that again, I think in 1994. Basically big live stage shows where they did all their hits and stuff.

And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a

huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And

they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live

show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they did a huge live show. And then they

did a group of lads from North London, just ordinary lads from Camden, probably from a basically a working class background starting out on the streets of Camden shoplifting, trespassing, right, starting up this band. And then 30 years later, they're performing to a huge crowd on the top of Buckingham Palace. Amazing. It's a real success story. Anyway, we've got to end this episode now because otherwise it'll go on forever.

But I really hope that you appreciate the, what's the word for it, the intention behind this episode, which was to provide you with something hopefully interesting to listen to, something that my brother and I are passionate about, a subject that we love.

And hopefully that came across and it made it sort of interesting for you to listen to as well. Again, if you are a fan of madness, if you know the group, let us know in the comments section.

Otherwise, you can maybe just check out their music and see if it appeals to you.

Okay, well, it's time to finish the episode now. Thank you so much for listening and I will speak to you next time. But for now, it's time to say goodbye. Bye.

Bye.

Thanks for listening to Luke's English podcast for more information, visit teacherlook.co.uk. If you enjoyed this episode of Luke's English podcast, consider signing up for Luke's English podcast premium.

You'll get regular premium episodes with stories, vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation teaching from me and the usual moments of humor and fun. Plus, with your subscription, you will be directly supporting my work and making this whole podcast project possible.

For more information about Luke's English podcast premium, go to teacherlook.co.uk slash premium info.

[British Music: A Nostalgic Deep Dive into the Band 'Madness']-[884. British Music: Madness (with James)]

📋 Summary

The Legacy of Madness: A British Pop Phenomenon

The Origins: From Camden Streets to Pop Stardom

The Anatomy of a Band

Lyrical Depth and Social Commentary

Cultural Context and Influences

Final Reflections

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[British Music: A Nostalgic Deep Dive into the Band 'Madness']-[884. British Music: Madness (with James)]

📋 Summary

The Legacy of Madness: A British Pop Phenomenon

The Origins: From Camden Streets to Pop Stardom

The Anatomy of a Band

Lyrical Depth and Social Commentary

Cultural Context and Influences

Final Reflections

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

ListenLeap Brings You Into Real Context Learning