Madness: Glastonbury Festival - Pyramid Stage

Sunday 28th June 2009

This is a Crackerjack review of Madness. Do you agree? Rate and review this event.

Crackerjack rating: 8 / 10.

The Liberty of Norton Folgate was a small area of east London that, 200 years ago, was free from the laws of the rest of the capital. As a result it became home to lots of bohemian types as well as more than its fair share of drunks and addicts.

It’s fitting , then, that songs from the new album by Madness, which takes its name from that small part of the capital, should be given an airing at its modern day equivalent, Glastonbury.
Madness may be very much a city band but a field in rural Somerset is as good a place as any to listen to their hits. And what hits they’ve got.

Frankly, when you open with One Step Beyond and follow it with Embarrassment, you’ve got the crowd eating out of the palm of your hand from the off. And Suggs, for all his rubbish TV shows and fishfinger adverts, is still a very charismatic frontman.

Of course, when you’ve got a good new album in the shops, you’re bound to want to play a couple of tunes from it and they did, with Dust Devil and Forever Young good songs that didn’t get a huge reaction. What did get the crowd going was those chart-topping singles. There was House Of Fun, Wings Of A Dove, My Girl and Our House. Plus they brought their families on stage for Night Boat To Cairo and on Baggy Trousers, saxophone player Lee Thompson was suspended above the stage on wires, as in the classic video for the song.

If this festival was a battle between the two great 2-Tone bands, Madness and The Specials, then Madness didn’t quite manage to topple Terry Hall and friends. But they came very close.

PAUL DALLISON

This is a Crackerjack review of Madness. Do you agree? Rate and review this event.