I'm on the back half of my 80's Madness journey, and so far, things have been pretty good.
By October 1983, founding member, Mike Barson informed his bandmates that he was leaving the band. The keyboard player stated he was tired of the music business, and wanted to spend more time with his wife, but agreed to finish work on their current album, Keep Moving before leaving. James Mackie would appear with the band as their keyboardist for their Saturday Night Live appearance, and Paul Carrack would fill in for their US shows. However, the band would remain a six piece for the next, and last album (at the time), 1985's Mad Not Mad.
Keep moving was one of those albums that, depending on where you got it, would dictate the tracks. The UK pressings featured the tracks, Waltz Into Mischief, and Time For Tea. While US pressing replaced these with Wings Of A Dove, and The Sun And The Rain. Ironically, both US tracks were released as non-album singles in the UK, and both charted there. Additionally, depending on what region your album came from, the remaining tracks were in very different orders.
I own the US pressing, so that's the version I'll be playing through.
As it starts up, I can definitely tell right away that Madness was continuing down the road of a more pop oriented group than Ska, still striving for that mainstream commercial sound. For me, it doesn't really work. The thing that drew me to them was how different they were from other acts of the early 80's. While ska style tracks do appear here and there, it's fairly sparse.
I dug the peppy hits, Wings Of The Dove, and The Sun And The Rain, and I can understand why they ended up being included on the US cut of the album. Without them, there's not much to really get excited about. I'd like to say that March Of The Gherkins stood out. However, if I'm being truthful, I don't even remember how the tune went at this point. Maybe because it was fresher in my mind, Give Me A Reason also stood out.
I also found myself invested in the story of the Stiff Records label, which Madness had been signed to from their debut through this current album. They left shortly thereafter to form their own label, Zarjazz. Stiff, on the other hand, found itself in a 50% control merge with Island Records. However, that deal would quickly go South, and Dave Robinson, co-founder of Stiff would regain full control.
As for Madness, they remained on a steady decline in both sales and popularity. Thing internally were also coming to a head, but we'll dive into that tomorrow.
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| THIS WEEK ON THE CHARTS November 13, 1982 |
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