Happy birthday to Cathal Smyth aka Chas Smash, born 14th January 1959.
Belated happy birthday to Graham McPherson aka Suggs, born 13th January 1961.
A highlight of 2022 was finally seeing Madness live in concert, also the first gig attended by Clan K in its entirety, which I enthused about here. Sadly, Cathal no longer performs with the band but for me growing up with Madness, the pair were inseparable.
Despite the (excuse the pun), embarrassment of riches in their 20-song set, several classic singles didn't make the cut so here are half a dozen for your listening pleasure accompanied of course by typically brilliant videos.
Have a good one, nutty boys!
Didn't know their birthdays were so close together, albeit two years apart.
ReplyDeleteI saw Madness live in 1979 (2 Tone Tour) and then when they came to our town in 2019 - 40 years apart but still the same old Madness complete with tea-towel on the head for Nightboat to Cairo. It doesn't feel right without Chas Smash nowadays but could he keep up the pace at age 64? Loved the whole showmanship and the dancing back in the day although definitely a bit of trouble amongst the crowd during the '79 show. They did sometimes attract the wrong element back then.
Long forgotten when it came to writing this post, but I probably knew the birthday connection back in the day, as I used to read all about Madness in Smash Hits. There was even a short-lived Madness comic strip in Look-In, which I used to get every week for a while.
DeleteYes, fantastic though Madness were last year, Chas' absence was felt. This was a much better behaved crowd than your 1979 experience, Alyson, though might have been the fact that the majority were considerably older! Lady K only joined us to bring the average age down ;-)