Video Surprise

Popping in a new remastered copy of the second Madness album, Absolutely, I got a really nice surprise. The CD immediately cued up four Madness music videos --- three I'd never seen before. Madness came across my radar screen like a lot of early 1980's bands from England. They were wildly popular in the U.K. but Americans were completely ignorant of Madness and ska music in general. That was until Madness' "Our House" video started getting played in heavy rotation on MTV.

Madness got videos right. Videos are supposed to make an image of a band and project the one thing you can't get off an audio recording --- images of the band plying their craft. In the case of Madness, the videos all featured the band bashing on their instruments in some working class section of London. The videos almost always featured Madness members sporting short hair cuts, mirror sunglasses while performing wacky jerky caucasion-style dancing. At some point during the video, Lee "Thommo" Thompson would always jump up on top of a table and play a tiny plastic saxophone. The videos were always fun. And they must still be having an effect on me because I chopped all of my hair off earlier this year so I could look more like Graham "Suggs" McPherson, the bands lead singer.

Suggs is now on a BBC Channel 4 show called Salvage Squad. He and a group of other people meet up with owners of messed up machinery, like a 1931 Morgan car, and restore those items. Not as cool as if he starred in "Bastard Squad" the favorite show of the flatmates on The Young Ones. Suggs and Madness once appeared in a Young Ones episode in which they performed "House of Fun" in bar. When Rik asked Madness if they'd play a Cliff Richard song, Suggs threatened to punch him in the face. "I'll just go sit over there then," Rik replied.