Madness, Azzano Decimo July 14, 2012

So how can you possibly describe attending a Madness concert?  What else, but pure madness!   Yes, the Camden Town, London band touched down at the wild and crazy Azzano Decimo International Music Festival with their own joyful mixture of ska, rock steady, beat, reggae and pop music (band members themselves have defined their type of original music as “nutty sound”).  And indeed a nutty evening it was with band members also dressed up as gondoliers as slightly more than 1,000 fans jumped and danced the evening away to their whacky music along with the odd Skinhead too (given the fact that the band’s name has in some way been associated with Britain’s National Front party). 

Madness was formed back in 1976 and continues to perform, to the joy of worldwide fans, with their most recognized line-up of seven members.  The band’s name was originally inspired by a song by Prince Buster, known also as the “King of Ska/Reggae” (Prince Buster’s name has also appeared in the recent film-documentary on the life of the late, great Bob Marley).

The band’s debut album was “One Step Beyond”, the very same song with which they opened their Italian concert. By November 1982 Madness released their fourth studio album, “The Rise & Fall”, which was well received in the UK, but did not get an American release. Instead, many of its songs were included on the U.S. compilation including "Our House", which was their most internationally successful single to date. "Our House" reached number 5 in the UK music charts and number 7 in the US charts. 

Their concerts have also been equated to small earth tremors, as was also witnessed at the Azzano Decimo concert with fans jumping constantly up and down:

“One of the most bizarre investigations conducted by BGS using its seismic network, was in connection with an earthquake reported to be felt strongly in North London in August 1992 when three blocks of flats (8-9-storeys) were evacuated following minor damage that included cracked windows and a cracked balcony. Our seismic network showed that there had not been an earthquake or an explosion, and we were able to deduce that the cause was resonance set up by dancers at a Madness rock concert in nearby Finsbury Park”.

To top off the mad evening the show ended with Monty Python’s epic jingle from the final scene of perhaps their greatest movie ever, “Life Of Brian” and Eric Idle’s song, “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life” (the same jingle is also used by Iron Maiden at the end of their terrific shows)!

Truly an honor for this band as in June 2012 they performed at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee concert at Buckingham Palace. The band performed "Our House" and "It Must Be Love" from the roof of the palace with accompanying animations projected onto the palace front.   It remains to be seen though if Queen Elisabeth was also seen jumping up and down to the zany and mad tunes of Madness…