:: GussetBLOG ::

:: Sunday, June 19, 2005 ::

Gig Review: Madness, Westonbirt Arboretum, 18.06.05

My first live Madness experience. Very strange audience Madness attract. A lot of aging punks and pot bellied football hooligans gather along side women, children, skaters, and middle-aged couples. (I always find being so toughly surrounded in England flags quite disturbing.) The setting is beautiful, in Westonbirt's forest surrounds, but it is a shame that unlike the Eden Sessions, you don't get to walk around the gardens. But, amazingly, they are selling draft Worthington's for only two quid a pint! Cheaper than most pubs in Bristol. Bargain! Between the misses and me we also spend a tenner on some beautiful clotted cream fudge, which I would link to and recommend if I had any idea who made it.

Roland Gift, of Fine Young Cannibals fame, provides a great support set. His amazing cover of the Buzzcocks Ever Fallen In Love With Someone (You Shouldn't've Fallen In Love With)? being the highlight. Gifts band seems to have more non-Caucasian members that the whole of the several thousand strong audience. It's a shame that the audience is so predominantly white, I mean, really unusually so compared to any other event. Why is that?

Madness arrive with One Step Beyond and the ageing crowd suddenly come to life and start dancing like they're still in their teens and throwing beer around like its water. Well, it's the same price. It continues to rain beer throughout the evening and my hair feels like it has been glued to my head by the end.
Although I don't recognise a couple of the songs this is pretty much a greatest hits set, which is what I like to see, as there's nothing worse than an ageing band trying to force feed new material. So we get Driving in my Car, Wings of a Dove, My Girl, Embarrassment, Our House, It Must Be Love, House of Fun, Tomorrow's Just Another Day, etc etc. I have to say that Baggy Trousers is one of the best dancing songs ever written. I just could not help but jump around like a loon throughout it. They finish on Madness and a nice long rock ending (not heard one of those for a while) version of Night Boat To Cairo with their kids dancing on stage with them. Great entertainment. Nice to see beered up football hooligans so happy, even coming up to complete strangers, like me, and hugging them. Why can't they embrace everyone like this?

:: Dan 19.6.05 [Arc] [1 comments] [links to this post]    ::
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