Like a big American car but misspelt with a 'D'

Continuing my trip back through the 1981 album charts.

18/10/81 : Madness 7 - Madness

This is our third visit with Madness and currently we've experienced their first and last albums, which span a 44 year gap - this is going to be more like the former than the latter, I suspect.

It opens with "Cardiac Arrest" which was always one of my favourites of their singles (helped by the video where they play the xylophone section on a skeleton) and then it follows that with "Shut Up" which I'd completely forgotten about, so it was nice to reminded about that. "Grey Day" is the only other one I recognised, but the rest of the album is very much in the same vein - they're definitely getting to their "nutty boy" sound here. "Benny Bullfrog" was maybe a bit too nutty for me though, but most of it is some well-crafted fun which doesn't hang around long enough to get tiresome - I liked it.

We're at #7 in the charts this week on their third week of a decent 29 week run, with it having peaked at #5 in its second week. The top five this week were The Police, The Human League (a new entry), Shakin' Stevens, Super Hits Vol 1 & 2 (a new wave compilation with some cool and some very not cool tracks on it) and a Joy Division best-of, with the next highest new entry being U2's October (#11 - as high as it ever got).

Wikipedia tells us this is their third album and, considering how stereotypically English they are, it was obviously recorded in the Bahamas (well, why wouldn't you?). It was produced by Alan Winstanley who's done five of their albums including their debut, but he's done some interesting other albums including Dexy's Too-Rye-Ay, They Might Be Giants' Flood and Hothouse Flowers People. Critically, it was well reviewed with people liking the fact that they'd changed their sound up, on their way to becoming the band that people really loved - commercially, I was surprised to see it did so well in The Netherlands, getting to #5. 

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a version of this for four quid but if you want a Japanese cassette version (which actually looks really cool) it's going to cost you £95! This album is nicely of its time, but also nicely out of its time - there's never really been anyone quite like Madness and we are lucky to have them.

25/10/81 - Something a bit different


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