Madness “One Step Beyond” at Hammerstein Ballroom on 30th May 2024 (Live)

Madness are an English ska and pop band from Camden Town, north London, who formed in 1976. One of the most prominent bands of the late 1970s and early 1980s two-tone ska revival, they continue to perform with six of the seven members of their original line-up.[1] Madness's most successful period was from 1980 to 1986, when the band's songs spent a total of 214 weeks on the UK Singles Chart.[Wikipedia]

Returning to NYC after a 12 year drought, the band wisely chose to play only three songs from their new album, Theatre of the Absurd presents C’est La Vie, and went with a string of their career hits. Nice one, lads! There was one BIG fly in the ointment… drummer Woody was replaced by Mr Noname drummer who didn’t do much to quicken the pulse of Mrs Geezer who has been a lifelong Woody fan, and regularly bunked off school to stalk Woody and the rest of the band in the pubs of Camden Town back in the early ‘80s. That resulted in my incurring significant amounts of earache for the rest of the evening. Other than that the nutty boys put on a great show, even allowing for the fact that Lee Thompson seemed to be very drunk or possibly high on euphoria, so that the sax-heavy tracks seems to meander around the traditional tune quite a bit. Bedders on bass came across as the most accomplished musician of the night, while frontman Suggs did his very best to whip the aging crowd into a frenzy. A good time was had by all and T-shirts would have been purchased at the exit except for the fact that they had none left!

This show was part of the week-long Brit fest in NYC at which the musical planets truly aligned: Sunday, The Rolling Stones; Thursday, Madness; and, Friday, Herman’s Hermits. An NYC geezer couldn’t ask for any better than that.

Lyrics:
https://genius.com/Madness-one-step-beyond-lyrics

Setlist:
https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/madness/2024/hammerstein-ballroom-new-york-ny-53a85b09.html

Madness Facts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madness_(band)


Music:
https://soundcloud.com/madnessofficial
https://open.spotify.com/artist/4AYkFtEBnNnGuoo8HaHErd
https://mtotapclve.bandcamp.com/album/theatre-of-the-absurd-presents-cest-la-vie-explicit
https://music.apple.com/us/artist/madness/362303


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#madness #hammersteinballroom