3. Madness - The Return of the Los Palmas 7
Robert Hutchinson's Harrington and Gerard Lynch's Crombie had nothing to do with Adam and the Ants, as you'd know if you're aware of the late 70s ska revival in Britain. They were part of the fashion that went with the other 7" single Robert brought along on the school trip to Somerset in 1981. Madness's The Return of the Los Palmas 7.
It's a strange song to have sparked what became a lifelong (so far) love of Madness, being instrumental for the most part and far more lounge music than the usual nutty dance bounciness that Madness became synonymous with. And it wasn't that I was unaware of Madness. Our neighbours, the Hodgekisses, had 4 boys of varying ages, the older ones had skinheads, Doctor Martins and ear-rings, the youngest used to sing Baggy Trousers ad nauseam when he wasn't eating worms, snotting all over the pavement and grassing me up for taking a dump behind the garages.
Madness were my second favourite band while I spent a year or more idolising Adam and the Ants. I couldn't turn up to school with a toothpaste stripe on my face, so to reflect my identification with Madness (or probably just to copy Robert Hutchinson) I asked my parents to buy me a Harrington. And we had a kind of Harrington gang in Junior 4, and we'd wear our jackets inside out with the tartan showing. For some reason the lining of my sleeves was bright green, which caused some consternation in the group and made me feel a little self-conscious.
Moving on to secondary school, I made friends with Kevin Keady (mostly because we had to sit alphabetically) who was also a big Madness fan and in a top band class with me. Robert and Gerard were stuck in the middle band and thus our friendship drifted. So too did my Adam and the Ants obsession. It was Madness all the way now. I bought everything they released in every format - LPs, tapes, singles, EPs, picture discs, 12" singles, foreign imports. I wrote their lyrics in a book along with facts about release dates and highest chart positions (and consequently can still recall most of those stats now, which is either admirable or pitiful, depending on where you sit on the geek spectrum). When, several years later, I took only the albums and singles to university, my brother decided that the rest of my collection was fair game and he sold it all. And, I daresay, spent the money on booze.
I matured from Look-In to Smash Hits and wall papered the bedroom with ANYTHING with Madness on it. I found out that Madness's record label, Stiff Records, had offices in Bayham Street, Camden Town and the 29 bus would take us to its door step from the junction near our house. So, Kevin and I shared a Red Bus Rover (an early 80s incarnation of a travelcard) to go down and buy each new single or album straight from Stiff, with the added advantage of free badges and posters from the friendly chaps in the office there.
Badge collecting became an obsession too. I had about a hundred Madness button badges which formed a cool-looking (but slightly impractical) square grid on the back of my Harrington.
I wasn't concert-going age until after Madness split up in 1986, by which point Kevin Keady had forsaken them, grown his hair into a New Romantic wedge, swapped allegiances for Duran Duran and discovered girls. That brought an end to our friendship. Though I did once go along with him to Enfield Town bus terminal one time to meet some of these girls, hoping he'd be a conduit to getting a girlfriend (at the start of a fairly crap and fruitless couple of years in pursuit of that goal), but the girls he introduced me to were pretty fucking horrible.
The highlight of this time was meeting Bedders (Madness's bassist, Mark Bedford) and two of the Belle Stars (associated girl band), one of whom was Bedders' girlfriend at the time and a bit of a crush of mine. Me and Kevin had been down to Carnaby Street and I'd bought a Madness mirror. We were upstairs on the 29, looking out of the window on Camden Road, only to be astounded to see the three of them get on the bus. They sat downstairs and we raced down to say hello and get autographs, the back of the mirror in my case. So touching a scene was it, that the conductor kindly ignored the conspicuous and clumsy manner in which I passed the Red Bus Rover ticket to Kevin behind my back. Luckily he let it go and saved us any (wait for it...) embarrassment.
It's a strange song to have sparked what became a lifelong (so far) love of Madness, being instrumental for the most part and far more lounge music than the usual nutty dance bounciness that Madness became synonymous with. And it wasn't that I was unaware of Madness. Our neighbours, the Hodgekisses, had 4 boys of varying ages, the older ones had skinheads, Doctor Martins and ear-rings, the youngest used to sing Baggy Trousers ad nauseam when he wasn't eating worms, snotting all over the pavement and grassing me up for taking a dump behind the garages.
Madness were my second favourite band while I spent a year or more idolising Adam and the Ants. I couldn't turn up to school with a toothpaste stripe on my face, so to reflect my identification with Madness (or probably just to copy Robert Hutchinson) I asked my parents to buy me a Harrington. And we had a kind of Harrington gang in Junior 4, and we'd wear our jackets inside out with the tartan showing. For some reason the lining of my sleeves was bright green, which caused some consternation in the group and made me feel a little self-conscious.
Moving on to secondary school, I made friends with Kevin Keady (mostly because we had to sit alphabetically) who was also a big Madness fan and in a top band class with me. Robert and Gerard were stuck in the middle band and thus our friendship drifted. So too did my Adam and the Ants obsession. It was Madness all the way now. I bought everything they released in every format - LPs, tapes, singles, EPs, picture discs, 12" singles, foreign imports. I wrote their lyrics in a book along with facts about release dates and highest chart positions (and consequently can still recall most of those stats now, which is either admirable or pitiful, depending on where you sit on the geek spectrum). When, several years later, I took only the albums and singles to university, my brother decided that the rest of my collection was fair game and he sold it all. And, I daresay, spent the money on booze.
I matured from Look-In to Smash Hits and wall papered the bedroom with ANYTHING with Madness on it. I found out that Madness's record label, Stiff Records, had offices in Bayham Street, Camden Town and the 29 bus would take us to its door step from the junction near our house. So, Kevin and I shared a Red Bus Rover (an early 80s incarnation of a travelcard) to go down and buy each new single or album straight from Stiff, with the added advantage of free badges and posters from the friendly chaps in the office there.
Badge collecting became an obsession too. I had about a hundred Madness button badges which formed a cool-looking (but slightly impractical) square grid on the back of my Harrington.
I wasn't concert-going age until after Madness split up in 1986, by which point Kevin Keady had forsaken them, grown his hair into a New Romantic wedge, swapped allegiances for Duran Duran and discovered girls. That brought an end to our friendship. Though I did once go along with him to Enfield Town bus terminal one time to meet some of these girls, hoping he'd be a conduit to getting a girlfriend (at the start of a fairly crap and fruitless couple of years in pursuit of that goal), but the girls he introduced me to were pretty fucking horrible.
The highlight of this time was meeting Bedders (Madness's bassist, Mark Bedford) and two of the Belle Stars (associated girl band), one of whom was Bedders' girlfriend at the time and a bit of a crush of mine. Me and Kevin had been down to Carnaby Street and I'd bought a Madness mirror. We were upstairs on the 29, looking out of the window on Camden Road, only to be astounded to see the three of them get on the bus. They sat downstairs and we raced down to say hello and get autographs, the back of the mirror in my case. So touching a scene was it, that the conductor kindly ignored the conspicuous and clumsy manner in which I passed the Red Bus Rover ticket to Kevin behind my back. Luckily he let it go and saved us any (wait for it...) embarrassment.
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