Duff Review: Madness' New, Anti-Tory/Boris Johnson Single, "The Bullingdon Boys"

(Review by Steve Shafer)

After a three-year break from recording (their last album was the excellent Can't Touch Us Now--though they have been playing gigs/festivals and have just released a book, "Before We Was We: Madness by Madness"), Madness are back on the beat with the explicitly anti-Boris Johnson/Tory/Trump track, "The Bullingdon Boys," just in time for the UK's high-stakes general election coming up later this month. For non-Brits, the Bullingdon reference is to an elite/exclusive club for rich Oxford University students (one not officially recognized by that institution) who have been educated at "public" (meaning private in the US) schools, such as Eton. Members of the Bullingdon Club include the former British Prime Minister David Cameron, former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, the Minister of State for Northern Ireland Nick Hurd, and the current PM Boris Johnson (Tories/Conservatives, all). And this song's about how the 1% (see the aforementioned Eton alum) maintain their cold, dead grip on political power and wealth through a rigged system of predatory capitalism/governance that benefits them at the expense of everyone else (in a similar vein--times never change--see The Jam's "Eton Rifles": "What chance have you got against a tie and a crest?").

In "The Bullingdon Boys" lyrics below, note the MAGA reference and Johnson's similar, Trumpian ploy of appealing to the anti-immigrant/racist crowd in order to lure them into voting against their own interests (buh-bye NHS) for the party that will gladly pick their bones after they've fleeced the nation.

"The Eton Boys are undefiled
The Bullingdon Boys, running wild
And England slides into the mist
No hope they'll cease nor desist

They're making England great again
Make way for the bagmen
And when everything's been sold and bought
We'll soon be off the life support

This is an English public school
This is where Britain raised its empire
Rulers of yesterday
And still trains the leaders of tomorrow"

"The Bullingdon Boys" opens with the discordant, careening car crash final crescendo of sounds (an orchestral glissando) from Lennon and McCartney's/The Beatles' "A Day in the Life," (in the "Bullingdon" music video, it looks like we're about to crash into the cliffs of Dover) and transitions quickly into Madness' classic music hall-pop-ska sound, with Suggs serving as our reliable (if bitter) guide through the nation's "comedy horror show." The music video for "The Bullingdon Boys" features clips from movies like "A Clockwork Orange," "A Christmas Carol" (highlighting the pre-reformed Scrooge, of course), "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," "Bonnie and Clyde," one of the spaghetti Westerns (don't have time to watch them now), and the disturbing satire of English public school life (also starring droog Malcolm McDowell), "...if," among others.

At the moment, there is no physical release of this song--it's a digital single, available from the usual outlets. But a protest track like this--so sharply relevant to what may be democracy's end times--cries out for a physical release (that artwork's made to be on the picture sleeve for a 45!) to race up the charts and give notice/pause to the powers that be (and hope to the resistors) that not everyone's been duped by their authoritarian gaslighting or co-opted via their insidious, bread and circuses-like schemes.

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Duff Review: Heavyball "Black Eye Diaries"

Magnetic North Melodies
CD/LP/digital
2015

(Review by Steve Shafer)

Heavyball's second album When Can You Start? was one of our favorite albums of 2017 (read The Duff Guide to Ska review of it here) and is still in frequent rotation on our turntable. So, when we learned through Kevin Flowerdew's essential Do The Dog Skazine that Heavyball's debut album Black Eye Diaries (Ten Uplifting Songs About Death and Disappointment) was back in print, we got our hands on a copy as soon as the Royal Mail could deliver it to our lair in New York City. Whereas When Can You Start? is a brilliant mod-ska-Brit pop opera of sorts about a week in lives of workers both high and low in the UK, Black Eye Diaries focuses on the indignities of living in the middle of nowhere, stuck in an existence with not much good going on, and of life (and people) letting you down badly. Sounds like a bummer of a record, but as the subtitle of the album states, it delivers as advertised: these are terrific, upbeat songs about life's hard truths.

The tension and limits of living in lesser metro areas are conveyed in tracks like the no future of "Small Time Hero" ("Your girlfriend is still in detention/You park up and smoke by the gates/Her song is playing so she can hear/Her teacher wishes you'd disappear...And you're never gonna leave this town/Where you can't afford to buy a round/And you're never gonna get too far/Flipping burgers in a fast food bar/And you're never gonna leave this place/Non-starter in the human race/And you're never gonna leave this town/'Cos you didn't even last the round") and a fantastic ska cover of Bronski Beat's mid-'80s synth-pop hit "Smalltown Boy," about a gay teen's experience with homophobia, gay-bashing, and familial rejection leading him to abandon his home town for the (hopefully) more tolerant (or anonymous) big city. "Another Country" expresses disgust at the increasing economic inequality between the very rich in London versus everyone else outside its city limits ("It's like living in another country/It's all ugly and it's all for show/Too many folk with too much money/Looking down on the one's below...Now I'm home I feel much better/So much better than I did before/It may be cold, I know it's wetter/I'll never be a city boy...Home sweet home/We're not wanted").

Then there are songs of bad decisions and dashed expectations. The top of that list is the hilarious, self-aware/regretful, still-in-love with your ex/drunk bar fight song "Black Eye Friday" that manages to work in a bit of Toots and the Maytals' "54-46 (Was My Number)": "I hit him one time/He hit me three times/I was talking, when I should've been listening..." (that last bit is something that singer/guitarist Bigface heard during a stint in the army: "I stole that quote from a corporal I worked with in the army. When the lads turned up for first parade on Monday morning, at least one would always have a black eye. He’d taunt them in a broad Sunderland accent 'Ah! You was talking when you should have been listening, eh?'"). Or the tale in "Wanted" of how she's left her boyfriend/husband and is literally running off with you, but it's changed the dynamics of everything in ways you didn't expect: "You got what you wanted/But you lost what you had/And if you got all that you wanted/Why do you look so sad?" (Which reminds me of this admittedly nerdy, but apt Star Trek quote spoken by Spock's character in "Amok Time": "After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.") The bitter, but completely rocking mod track "Lost Heroes" expresses the sting and anger of learning that the people you looked up to--pop stars and politicians alike--are complete frauds ("And I have seen everything I need/And I don't need anything I've seen"); there's an incredible live acoustic version of it here! The eerie ska cut "Hands Up" is (I think) about managing to survive the horrors of war and making it back home (which was all you wanted), but being so damaged by the experience that you end up taking your own life.

The album ends with "Unhappy Now," an extraordinary Revolver-era Beatles/Sound Affects-era Jam-influenced song about (guiltily) having to leave a dead-end town and a good friend mired in a rut: "No money to pay the rent/Now the money's all been spent/Because life is hard in our town/Being home just dragged him down...Moved deep down south for a life in the sun/I'm sorry that I'm the only one to go/People so unhappy now/Everyone's so unhappy now/And deep down I still miss him/But I've made my choice/And now I've got to go."

It's relatively rare to come across such a powerful collection of songs that ring so true and real in their depiction of--and ambivalence toward--modern life. Heavyball's Black Eye Diaries is a phenomenal ska-mod soundtrack for one's less-than-hoped-for existence.

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Duff Interview: Heavyball!

[Editor's note: Thanks to the members of Heavyball for taking the time to answer our questions (and to their manager Ed for arranging everything)! If you haven't heard about their brilliant new album "When Can You Start?," read The Duff Guide to Ska review of it here!]

The Duff Guide to Ska: What inspired you to write "When Can You Start?" as a concept album about a week in the life of British workers? Were any of the songs based on some of your actual work experiences? (Do you all have day jobs?)

Iball: "All the band have jobs. I guess it's just part of the music scene now; having to do a day job when you have another passion. It ends up highlighting the both of them. It doesn't matter what I am doing at work, sometimes you can't help but think about the band and the music that you would rather be doing. In lots of ways it's good to have a job, as the characters you meet inform a lot of what we do and write about. The album is about the grind that so many people go through."

Bigface: "I think it would have been a difficult album to get right if we didn't have day jobs - at least it's authentic art! 'Retail is Detail' was inspired by eating a ropey pasty in my car, on a lunch break, in the carpark of an 'out of town shopping village.' Really fucking depressing."

Frosty: "We can only write about what we know and the day job is something we all have in common. It’s one of those difficult situations where we don’t want to sound like tortured artists because we are forced to work the 9-5 and our lives are terrible, but at the same time we want to talk about the monotony of the 9-5."

The Duff Guide to Ska: What were you listening to, watching, or reading when writing these songs? 

Iball: "I can't really think of anything in particular, but possibly the way I have been consuming things is different than it used to be and informed what I wanted to bring to the album. I know there is a tendency to assume times have changed and it's all about the immediate, but I love podcasts like 'Serial' and 'Shit Town.' They aren't quick. They take a story and investigate it over a number of weeks. We wanted to tell a story rather than a collection of 'singles.' The hope is that people will listen to it as an album."

Bigface: "A lot of the Beatles/WHO/Kinks, quite a bit of Two-Tone, and a dash of Country 'n' Western!"

Frosty: "We recorded the album over a long period of time and wrote it over an even longer period, so it changed a lot. No doubt I had a lot of The Clash and Jimi Hendrix for most of it. I was listening to a lot of The Smiths around the time we wrote and recorded 'After Dark,' which definitely influenced how the riff ended up sounding."

The Duff Guide to Ska: I think of "When Can You Start?" as kind of a mod-ska-Britpop opera (kind of like The Who's "Tommy" or "Quadrophenia"). Is that on the mark? Are you playing the album in its entirety live? Are their plans to make a long form video or do something else with this cycle of songs? 

Iball: "To be mentioned alongside those albums is as good as it gets! We all listen to The Who. It's great that they were ambitious with the music they did. Personally, some the of the slower songs on our album are the ones I like the best, but we get to play them the least. Our live set tends to be more high tempo and we bring a few slower ones in as we go. Maybe as the album gets out there and better known it might give us more licence to play 'Yesterday's Man' for example. I would love to play the album live in its entirety at some point! We work with the film director Sameer Patel and he has done a great job with our videos. I know if we had the time and budget he would love to pull the album together into one video/film."

Bigface: "I'd actually listened to a great deal of 'Tommy' on vinyl, and that kind of interconnected journey is what we were going for. Something good about the resurgence of vinyl in the digital age, which means you can go back to a collection of joined up songs, rather than random singles on your phone. Suppose it's easy to disappear up your own arse with a concept album, so glad you like it!"

Frosty: "We haven’t been able to play the whole set live so far, but we are looking into how we can start bringing parts of the slower songs in. It really feels like we have just started with this album and are still exploring the full possibilities and potential of what we can do with it, so I wouldn’t rule anything out yet. We tried songs like 'No More 9 to 5' live a few times, but the reception can be hit and miss. Now the album is out and people have had a chance to hear it then we might be able to start bringing it out again."

The Duff Guide to Ska: I love the track "After Dark" and how it describes how London "breathes" at the end of the workday--and suggests that there's another way to live and work. Overall, the album is critical of Western capitalism--what do you think is the better alternative to aspire to?

Iball: "'After Dark' has a different feel to the rest. I think it means different things to different members of the band. For me, I see a late night/early morning walk home at that cross over time where you pass people coming home on a night out and people heading to work. I imagine the lads will all have something else it means to them. They way we live and the system we are in is fucked. It functions, but only a few really get what they want out of it. I love London and love living here. However, it is a huge beast that sucks the money out of people and pushes people hard in the process."

Bigface: "We're not Communists or anything, but I suppose a lot of people feel trapped in the system. I suppose Capitalism is the worst system there is, apart from all the other ones we've tried!"

Habs: "There is something about the city being a living thing...maybe even a monster for some. There is a history of London by Peter Ackroyd called 'London the Biography,' which talks about the city as a living thing with each area having its own distinct personality. I think there is a sense of that in 'After Dark.'"

The Duff Guide to Ska: The album closer "No More 9 to 5" is both defiant and defeated--death is the only way out. Why did you chose to end the album in that fashion? 

Iball: "We originally recorded this track in Leeds and in a classic rock and roll story, that we can't go into, the whole session was lost. It was written and recorded just after the band lost someone close to us and there is no doubt that it made the song what it is. It is defiant and takes the end of the world head on. If the world was going to end tomorrow, you wouldn't be going to work. That shows you how important work really is."

Bigface: "It was inspired by the death of someone very close to the band, and it was a kind of black swan event that shows you how these unexpected, catastrophic moments can hit you out of the blue. Makes you realise how pointless working a shit job you hate, to pay off a shiny car you don't need is - in the grand scheme of things!"

The Duff Guide to Ska: What does the name Heavyball mean or refer to? 

Iball: "I am not answering this question! Ha!"

Bigface: "Ask Johnny."

Habs: "It was the name of a family dog Bigface and I had when we were young. Think it was a Bedlington terrier."

The Duff Guide to Ska: What's next for the band?

Iball: "We just want to get the album out there to as many people as possible. I can't tell you how proud I am to have been part of the process and to do it with my best mates makes me feel honored."

Bigface: "Keep playing, keep writing - have some fun. What more could you ask?!"

Frosty: "Hopefully, anything and everything. We are looking forward to a year of festivals, tours and anything else that comes with being in a rock band."

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Duff Review: Super Hi-Fi "I'm Only Sleeping" b/w "Hole In My Life"

Electric Cowbell Records
Vinyl single with picture sleeve
2018

(Review by Steve Shafer)

On this incredible single, Super Hi-Fi cover "I'm Only Sleeping," which, of course, is a John Lennon-penned tune from what is probably one of the greatest rock albums of all time--The Beatles' Revolver. In this version, dual trombones take on the vocal lines, often harmonizing--and this instrument is a perfect choice to express the lethargy (and rejection of the world outside) of Lennon's song. Super Hi-Fi's "I'm Only Sleeping" weaves back and forth from a 60s AM pop instrumental with the classic horn arrangements of that time (see The Beatles' "Got to Get You Into My Life"--an ode to pot, not a woman) to a stripped-down, dubby reggae skank with the t-bones floating drowsily on top. (The bits of backwards guitar in the middle of the track are a particularly sweet touch and tribute/link to the original.) The flip side is a wildly good free-form jazz/rock/reggae interpretation of The Police's "Hole In My Life" that appears on their Blue and White album (which we reviewed)--and has a Beatles connection tucked in there, too.

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Duff Review: Phoenix City All-Stars "Skatisfaction"

Hotshot and Scorcher
CD/LP
2013

(Review by Steve Shafer)

As a kid--we're talking elementary and middle school years here--I was a Beatles guy, drawn to their perfectly constructed, catchy pop and rock songs (for the record, I was a much bigger fan of John's than Paul's--I liked my Beatles songs to have a bit of an edge, like "She Said, She Said," "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," and "Strawberry Fields").  I certainly was aware of The Rolling Stones--they were inescapable in the realm of pop culture--and heard them often on NYC's classic rock radio station WNEW in the 1970s (as well as the oldies station WCBS), but I just wasn't that much into their shambling, bluesy rock.

But the advent of MTV in the early 80s started to change my stance on the Stones. I had to visit my friend Johnny in the Inwood section of upper Manhattan to watch MTV, which we did obsessively (my parents' house in nearby Yonkers didn't have cable yet and even if we did, the local cable company didn't carry MTV yet). In between all of the British New Wave music videos I was devouring, I was exposed to a number of Rolling Stones videos, including "Waiting on a Friend" (watch it and time travel back to NYC's East Village in the early 80s and see Mick and Keith hanging on a St. Mark's Place stoop with Peter Tosh), and begrudgingly found that I liked their New York centric New Wave and disco tracks from Some Girls and Tattoo You (see a tune like "Shattered": Don't you know the crime rate/Is going up, up, up, up, up/To live in this town you must be/Tough, tough, tough, tough, tough/You got rats on the West Side, bed bugs uptown/What a mess, this town's in tatters/I've been shattered, my brain's been battered/Splattered all over Manhattan").

While the Phoenix City All-stars Skatisfaction tribute album doesn't mine the late 70s/early 80s Stones output that wormed its way into my brain, I'm happily surprised to find that I really dig their stellar vintage ska take on a slew of Rolling Stones hits and deep album cuts from the 1960s and early 70s. Skatisfaction follows the Phoenix City All-stars' tremendously great tribute to 2 Tone, Two Tone Gone Ska, where the band interpreted, arranged, and performed material by The Specials, The Selecter, The Beat, Madness, and Specials producer/2 Tone fan Elvis Costello as if they were The Skatalites back at Studio One in 1965 (honoring both the originators and the revivalists). And it seems especially appropriate that the Phoenix City All-stars (comprised of members of Pama International, The Sidewalk Doctors, Kasabian, Intensified, Dub Vendor All-stars, The Loafers, Big Boss Man, The Bongolian, and The Delegators) are channelling The Skatalites on Skastisfaction, since The Skatalites tended to cover--even commandeer--the pop hits of the day (see The Beatles' "I Should Have Known Better" repurposed as "Independence Anniversary Ska" or Henry Mancini's "Mambo Parisienne" versioned as "Ska La Parisienne") and The Rolling Stones were their musical contemporaries (!). As a music fan, it may be heretical to admit this, but I prefer these songs in a ska setting rather than a blues-based one--and the fact that many of the Stones' songs were written in minor keys works to the Phoenix City All-stars' advantage, since so many of The Skatalites' best tunes are in those scales ("Reburial," "Confucius," "A Shot in the Dark," "Determination," "Exodus," etc.).

Skatisfaction starts with a killer, driving instrumental version of the menacing, I-can't-be-bought-off 1965 B-side "Play with Fire" ("Well, you've got your diamonds/And you've got your pretty clothes/And the chauffeur drives your cars/You let everybody know/But don't play with me/'Cause you're playing with fire") that was originally recorded just by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards with Phil Spector producing (and playing bass). I wasn't familiar with the original cut until looking it up on YouTube--but this version really holds up quite well against the original (and may even best it). Guest vocalist Freddie Notes (who, according to the album liner notes, sang at Mick and Bianca Jagger's wedding--and is known for his world-wide 1970 Trojan smash "Montego Bay") gives a soulful reading to "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," shedding the youthful urgency and angry sexual frustration of the original for the wisdom that comes with age (sure he still wants it, and will keep trying to get it--but experience has taught him that life doesn't own you a damn thing and will often leave your wants and desires unsated, just like it did when you were young) .

The terrific, edgy instrumental version of "Under My Thumb" features a vocal line taken on by a Jackie Mittoo organ and guitar work very reminiscent of Ernest Ranglin or Lynn Taitt. I was never a fan of the Stones' sluggish ballad "Wild Horses," but completely love the Phoenix City All-stars' crisp rocksteady version, which still retains the original's sadness, regret, and longing through The Sidewalk Doctors' Nathan Thomas' superb vocals (this might very well be my favorite track on this album).

I've never heard Robert Johnson's "Love in Vain" until now (covered by The Rolling Stones on their 1969 album Let It Bleed--I prefer Johnson's direct and stripped down version), but this blues standard is almost completely transformed into a great Skatalites dancefloor stormer by the Phoenix City All-stars. "Paint It Black" sounds like newly rediscovered spaghetti Western reggae gem, with Oxman toasting on top (listen to it below). Willie Dixon's "Little Red Rooster" (recorded by Howlin' Wolf in 1961 and Sam Cooke in 1963--the Stones based their version on Cooke's and it reached #1 on the British charts in 1964) with Freddie Notes on vocals sounds very much like an early 60s ska track, when ska's rhythm and blues and early rock 'n' roll roots were still very evident. The country track "Sweet Virginia" (from Exile on Main Street) is rendered here as a sprightly ska track (greatly improving the song, in my opinion), with a sweet saxophone covering the vocal line.

The Phoenix City All-stars take on "Time Is On My Side" perfectly conveys the cool confidence, swagger, and cockiness of the original ("...you'll come running back to me"), with the horns delivering the vocal line. Nathan Thomas closes the album with a less boastful/more sober version of (the kinda skanky, as in nasty) "Honky Tonk Woman" that doesn't seem to revel in trolling for prostitutes and "fallen" women as much as the original (but I always found the Stones' in yer face, bad boy, sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll pose/lifestyle kind of tiresome to begin with). It's a nice touch--it an album full of them--that they keep the cowbell intro to this song and that the song fades out at the end, as if the band and Thomas drift off into a blurry night of drinking and debauchery.

People who happen to be fans of both The Rolling Stones and ska will immediately take to the Phoenix City All-stars' Skatisfaction (and they should--it's fantastic!). But the greater triumph may be its ability to win over those ska fans ambivalent (maybe even hostile!) towards the Stones--which just goes to prove that really well-crafted songs can be introduced into a new musical genre and, in the right hands, sound just as good--or even better--than the originals.

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Duff Review: Madness "Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da"

Cooking Vinyl
2012
CD/LP

(Review by Steve Shafer)

If Madness had opted to close up shop after releasing the magnificent The Liberty of Norton Folgate (read my thoughts on this album at Reggae Steady Ska, but essentially its theme is twofold: how the geography and history of a place influences generations of people who live there, and that people can only be truly free to be themselves in a diverse, multicultural, urban environment), I don't think anyone would have blamed them for going out on such an extraordinarily high note. But now comes the follow-up to that wonderfully complex concept album, Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da, whose approach is much more back-to-basics for the band: turning out masterful ska and pop gems--and the results are pretty spectacular.

The album opens with "My Girl 2," an obvious nod to the "My Girl" from the band's debut album back in 1979. Even though the 2012 version isn't anywhere near as melancholy--in fact, it's a fantastic, upbeat Motown-ish cut in the spirit of The Temptations song of the same name--the misunderstandings (and doubts) between the sexes continue 33 years on (and on):

"Lately, I've been wondering about you
and the things you do
I'm in love
But you drive me mad
Be so sad to be losing you
Last night, when had that fight
in your car, left me at the bar
And I see her talking to her friends
Acting like she just don't care...

My girl
She's done with books
My girl
She gives dirty looks
I'm going to be what she want me to be
I'm her man, doing all I can
My girl
She's above the rest
My girl
She's sure the best"

Name the person who claims not to have complicated and conflicting feelings about the person that they're deeply in love with/committed to--and I'll show you a liar. (I've been married nearly two decades now and I'll be the first to admit that my incredible wife drives me crazy in every good and bad sense of that word; and on a good day, she would probably say the same thing about me!)

A good number of the songs on Oui Oui... are concerned with love (not shocking, given Madness' past output), which makes me kind of wish that they'd named the album "The 10 Commandments" (one of the titles considered, but discarded--see the album artwork by Sgt. Pepper's designer Sir Peter Blake) in what surely would have been a(nother) nod to Prince Buster, as well as his over-the-top (and even then, incredibly misogynistic) "Ten Commandments of Man to Woman." (See The Duff Guide to Ska review of Prince Buster Sings His Hit Song "Ten Commandments" here.)

But here the Nutty Boys' advice on love and how one might go about leading a happy and contented life is much more sane and practical. They may be middle-aged, international pop stars, but (obviously) they're only human and still have the same kinds of feelings and profound issues in their lives as we all do. Lest you think this album solely consists of love songs, it's equally as much about aging--and looming mortality--and the knowledge/perspective that comes with all that life experience (good and bad) that you want to use yourself or pass along before they're putting pennies on your eyes.

In the opening verse of the magnificent ska-pop track "How Can I Tell You," Suggs sings, "Communication is a skill you must acquire/it will help you through your life/It is essential..." And then expands on this point:

"How can I tell you
You have to open up your heart
How can I tell you
Be honest from the very start
How I feel
Take a stand for what is true
Try to be decent in all that you do

How can I tell you
You've got to give to get support
How can I tell you
Check the wonder in all that you see
You've got to get loving unconditionally

You're gonna have to walk that hard road
You're gonna bear some heavy load
You'll make mistakes and you'll come close"

And in later verses, Suggs essentially posits that conveying the enormity and completeness of his love is an almost impossible task, but yet can be expressed and celebrated in everything he does for his woman, particularly the small, almost throwaway, everyday gestures:

"How can I tell you
The laughter on a crowded bus
How can I tell you
Making space when you're being crushed
How I feel
A letter I receive from you
A hug and a kiss when you're feeling blue
How can I tell you
The last chocolate in the box
How can I tell you
A pair of mittens and some cotton socks
How I feel
I'll make a fire when you are cold
Don't worry darling
I'll love you when you grow old"

(The implicit message also seems to be that these little moments of kindness/love are what makes love work in the long haul.)

Then there are the less successful attempts at making a love connection, as depicted in "Never Knew Your Name." The song starts out very much like "Embarrassment," but then kicks into "CHiPs"/"Love Boat" era schmaltzy 70s disco (dig those strings, baby!) that's all sleek, shiny surface, but full of great sadness and emptiness beneath (think Studio 54). It's perfect for this tale of failing to be brave or foolish enough take a risk at happiness and love (and hating yourself for it).

"It was very late in the discotheque
I was feeling blue as I sometimes do
I turned around, it was time to go
A face in the crowd, a face I didn't know
We got to talking for a little while
You said it's not the sort of thing you usually do
Talking to strangers so late in the night
These days, you never know

Well I thought you were nice, I even told you so
But you smiled so shyly and said to me
I bet you say that to all the girls you meet
But it isn't so

Yes, the club was closing, so we had to leave
We walked out together just a little ill at ease
I would have liked to have walked you home
But you said you'd catch the bus, so I ended up alone

I never knew your name nor your telephone number
Will I ever see you again? I wonder?

It wasn't any longer than an hour or two
That lonely street, I said goodbye to you
You glanced back at me as I turned the corner
Was the last I saw of you

Oh, I wanted to call, call out your name
But stupid pride and idiot shame
Hesitated, scared of playing the fool
So you walked away, from Mr. Cool

I never knew your name nor your telephone number
Will I ever see you again? I wonder?
No, I never knew your name nor your telephone number
Will I see you again? Oh girl I wonder?

It was very late in the discotheque
I was feeling blue as I sometimes do
I thought you were nice, I told you so
But I ended up alone"

(This must have been written about an episode from a pre-internet/Facebook time--had it been now, he at least had her name and could have looked her up, right?) Few pop bands do pain felt down to your soul as well as Madness.

In other dysfunctional relationships, the slinky reggae of "Kitchen Floor" strongly suggests that the all the talk about doing "it" in various spots around the house is sexual in nature, but a close reading of the lyrics reveals that the "it" refers to crying--she's crying for the singer, who knows that he has great power and completely possesses her (even though she strays from him, she always comes back).

If you haven't already gotten there yet, one of the strange things about aging is that there comes a time in your life when all the landmarks of your youth are still immediately familiar, but it's you that feels terribly out of place. Even though you feel the same inside (I'm perpetually stuck somewhere around 23 years old, about half of my chronological age), it seems like your teens and twenties were a lifetime ago. And now it's almost like you're walking around carrying someone else's life memories in your head. The chipper and defiant ska song "Black and Blue" illustrates this kind of alienation from one's former self that comes with age, as the singer takes up with an old girlfriend. The passage of time has beat him up a bit, but he keeps on moving forward with the knowledge that change is constant in life ("fresh wind's on the street") and there's no going back:

"Hanging round your house again

I feel so out of place

Going to the corner shop

The man from outer space

Seems so very long ago

When we stayed up through the night

Like those days would never end

And all them things would never mend

And I'm feeling kind of black and blue

But the fresh wind's on the street

Free falling through the years

But I'm still on my feet"

Yet another minor AM radio pop masterpiece in Madness' cannon is "Leon" (a story of reform school bleakness in the vein of "Land of Hope and Glory") about an alienated, institutionalized, and possibly autistic kid longing for a one-way ticket out of town to freedom. With its "Got to Get You Into My Life" horn arrangements and lush harmonies, this wouldn't be out of place on The Beatles' Revolver or Rubber Soul. Really stellar.

"Bleach, and corridors
And cold, and drafty windows
Smells that drift along
From dinner hall up his nose

Under lock, and key
His dreams, his aspirations,
One day, one man, one way
One bag, and one station

He is stuck inside his head, and in a whirl
He feels like running out, and owning all the world"



"Death of a Rude Boy" is a tribute/elegy to a real (the mention of a "stepping razor" could imply that it's about  Peter Tosh) or imagined true believer (and will probably end up being played at many a fan's funeral in future years). While it's an amazing reggae track with a UB40-ish, computer-sounding rhythm section, it's also quite unusual in that it wanders far from Madness' British, music-hall approach to ska. (So much so, that the rap/toast in the middle of the song reminds me a bit of the Gorillaz's/Del Tha Funkee Homosapien's collaboration "Clint Eastwood" or "Feel Good, Inc.") I really dig this song, but it was a strange choice for the advance teaser for the album.

"He had is own kind of flavor

He walked like a stepping razor
Man could drop a killer move
Never failed to bust a groove
He always keep a cool, cool head
Hear me when I tell you dread
Hear me when I say this friend
This man was a rude boy

It was the death of a rude boy

He told me when you feel you want to run
You have to learn to stand and fight
He told me son when all is said and done
You must stand up for what is right
Stay on the side of conscious
Make sure you live in light
Don't go down, don't fool around
Hold your ground
Don't be proud
Make sure that love is in your life"



Sounding like a cross between Prince Buster's/The Specials' cover of "Enjoy Yourself" (music by Carl Sigman and lyrics by Herb Magidson) and Monty Python's "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life," "Misery" is a tremendous, rollicking sing-along track that probably should have closed the album instead of the remix of "My Girl 2." Its message is similar to those aforementioned songs, too: put yourself in the right frame of mind and enjoy and appreciate it all while you can--because one day you'll be six feet under, cremated, or your body donated to science, and it's all done. As Suggs sings:

"Misery loves company
That's what the wise man said
Don't come to me for sympathy
If you can't raise your head
Stand up and see
What your life could be
If you wore a smile instead
If you keep misery as your company
Then you might as well be dead"

I've written it before, but it's worth repeating for those who haven't yet taken note. While many of their 2 Tone era peers are content to mine the ska nostalgia circuit (not that there is anything wrong with that--within some limits), Madness continue to move boldly and brilliantly ahead. May their nerve stand fast and their creative well never run dry!