Madness

Madness were at the forefront of the UK ska revival at the end of the 70s. They ultimately shed the Two Tone image and became one of the most consistent UK chart groups of the Eighties. They were a motley crew, composed of  stubbly pub-rockers and baby-faced pop hopefuls, but their cheery pop and slapstick reggae made them a nation's favorite. 

The skinhead menace of their early days soon gave way to an image of diamond geezerdom, made believable by videos as witty as the hit singles they accompanied. If you think of Britpop in the longer term, then Madness were its early-80s standard-bearers, with their roots in music hall  rather than Jamaica. 

In 1976 in Kentish Town, north London, Lee Thompson, Mike Barson and Chris Foreman formed a trio called The Invaders to play the Bluebeat music they grew up listening to. Over the next couple of years, the line-up would expand to include Suggs (real name Graham McPherson), Carl Smyth, Mark Bedford and Daniel Woodgate, undergoing an osmosis into Madness.

Kicking off their recording career with the 2-Tone skank of The Prince in the autumn of 1979, they went on to produce 21 Top 30 hits that grew steadily in sophistication whilst retaining the sometimes silly, sometimes sad, always humorous English-ness. 

Madness made the classic transition from fizzy funsters to socially concerned grown-ups. Where once they wrote about Baggy Trousers, they moved to heart attacks and the situation in South Africa. They became more complex, but less energetic. 

By the time of House Of Fun and Our House the group really had no peers - They beautifully portrayed the English way of muddling through in memorable three-minute pop songs that owed as much to music hall traditions as anything else and which seemed to appeal to absolutely everybody. Fittingly, Our House (1982) bagged its composers an Ivor Novello award.

But like all good things it couldn't last, and the band began to show signs that it had grown weary of being the music hall clowns, and of a public who were game for a laugh and a knees-up but less ready to a accept the somber mood of songs like (Waiting For) The Ghost Train or Yesterday's Men.  A half-hearted return as The Madness proved as brief as it was ill-advised.

Madness were the most prolifically successful British singles band of the 1980s, chalking up 21 Top Twenty hits between 1979 and 1986.

TRIVIA NOTE
When Madness performed in Finsbury Park, London, in 1992, the dancing fans created a tremor that registered 4.2 on the Richter scale and local residents feared they were experiencing an earthquake.