Madness, madness I call it gladness But if this is madness Man, I know I'm filled with gladness It's gonna be rougher, it's gonna be tougher And I won't be the one who's gonna suffer
Stalwarts of British kids TV and Top of The Pops I always thought I had Madness pegged, purveyors of wacky gang dancing, brilliant hit singles and clowning around in videos; music guaranteed to break the ice at school discos*. They were mostly big before I started buying singles and so I never got around to buying anything by them, much as I liked it. Then I grew up into a big boy and my attention wandered.
Then about 20 years ago I inherited a supremely beaten-up and burned copy of One Step Beyond … (lord knows what action that LP must have seen) and I started to listen a little closer and realised Madness really weren’t quite what I thought they were at all.
Yup, One Step Beyond … comes front loaded with great energetic funny ska – find me a better LP opener/career kick starter than the title track and I’ll eat my pants live at half-time during the Superbowl. The sublime ‘Night Boat To Cairo’ isn’t far behind in my affections either, the lyrics are wonderfully and surprisingly poetic**. Fun though it is ‘Tarzan’s Nuts’ is an energetic also-ran in these stakes.
What really burns through for me these days is the utterly sublime pop smarts of ‘My Girl’, where the band spin pure gold from banality. Chrissy Boy’s delivery and the tune are just perfect and it is just a really sweet little tale; let the man stay home and watch TV for a night, love.
Add in Madness’ pronounced vaudeville music hall element in the likes of ‘Land Of Hope And Glory’, which is definitely influenced by Suggs’ professed taste for the Sensational Alex Harvey Band and we’re getting near to the full picture. Also file ‘Swan Lake’ and ‘Chipmunks Are Go!’ under this heading of general larking about and ‘Mummy’s Boy’ for its closing ‘knickers, knackers, knockers!’ closing refrain borrowed from Les Dawson.
A good half of One Step Beyond … is given to some well-crafted London-centric Kinksian songs. Side 2 opener ‘In The Middle Of the Night’ an upbeat tale about ‘jaunty old George’ newsagent and an underwear thief and a 1979 update on Pink Floyd’s ‘Arnold Layne’. Side 1’s rather lovely ‘Believe Me’, could almost be a 50’s prom closer if you squint, Mike Barson’s keys are great. The ace pop of ‘Bed And Breakfast Man’ is similarly elevated by Barson and saxophonist Lee Thompson’s playing. The puntastic ‘Rockin’ In Ab’^ adds a bit of R’n’R to proceedings.
One Step Beyond … boasts a hidden gem in ‘Razor Blade Alley’. Madness touch on More Specials turf here, with a laid-back sophisticated groove and Lee Thompson’s plaintive vocal creating a space unlike anything else on the LP. Of course that it’s all about VD, ‘pissing razors‘ in fact, that just makes it even better.
Which just leaves us with a great duo to send us on home. Madness’ tribute to the mighty Prince Buster ‘The Prince’ is a great rocksteady tune, perfect some slower skanking moves. Madness’ cover of the Prince Buster tune that named them, umm, ‘Madness’ (a hidden track on original copies of the LP) is just perfect, the rough and tough lyrics sitting atop an upbeat ska drive reminding us all that this was music from a volatile scene, real good times.
Madness are not quite the finished product on One Step Beyond … but it is a cracking debut LP, showing off the potent blend of pop, humour, ska and rocksteady that would fuel their own personal moonshot in the following years. There are also hints of the melancholy that came to flavour much of Madness’ later works, that grey London sky you can hear.
Overall though you get the sense of a band of mates, bound together by joy and circumstance who found something worthwhile to do. That’s bloody infectious. And doing the Nutty Train with your mates when drunk is fun beyond belief.
Knickers, knacker, knockers!
1010 Down.
*my first ever public ‘dancing’ involved doing slidey-s across a school hall floor in my socks to the sound of ‘Baggy Trousers’. Girls were and remain unimpressed by my sliding prowess, but hey what do they know about anything? eh?
**plus it wins for passing over into Cockney rhyming slang ‘Night boat to Cairo = Giro’. In a similar way, surely it can only be a matter of hours now before I do too? ‘1537 = Felon’.
^a pun which I’ve only just got, after about 22 years of owning this LP; rocking in a flat, you see! Ho-hum.