(NOTE: The following is an edited and expanded update of a review I wrote for MIS in April 2012.)

Come and listen to my story ’bout a man named D.
A poor Madness fan, nary U.S. gigs to see.
And then one day, freakin’ crazy dreams came true,
When up from the web came the Coachella news:
Madness in ’Murica, that is!
And fIREHOSE reunited too!?!

Well the first thing you know, Coachella’s sold out,
But the bands’ own gigs was what D. was psyched about.
He said, “Californey is the place I oughtta be!”
So he booked a West Coast flight, for a music fantasy.
Thrills, that is!
Rental cars, In-N-Out!

The NUTTY BOY HILLBILLY!
(cue banjo breakdown duelling with Chrissy Boy)

Coachella 2012: What a historic convergence of fate it wrought upon me, even though I didn’t attend it. Madness had played the California festival just four years previous, and the year after that I saw my belated first show at Madstock 2009 in London. Their return to Coachella in 2012 coincided with a surprise one-shot reunion of fIREHOSE, my favorite band from my halcyon university days. 

My two favorite bands I’ve ever seen live, both drawn into the gravitational orbit of Coachella, and against astronomical odds performing within a few days and a few hundred miles of each other. This was too much synchronicity to ignore. I immediately resolved to head out west with a ticket to Coachella. 

But soon an even better option appeared: both Madness and fIREHOSE were going to play a few headlining shows during the two weeks of the festival. For the best logistical alignment, I could start with fIREHOSE in Fresno on April 13, and end with Madness in San Diego on the 17th. These dates set the foundation for my Lardapalooza tour: my own bespoke dream festival named for my then-active Lard Biscuit website. To fill the in-between days, I could attend the Japan Film Festival in Los Angeles. Late in the game, Madness announced an L.A. date on April 16, which easily slotted into my itinerary. And I’d be eating my fill at Fatburger and In-N-Out, fine restaurants I’d cherished since my first California trip in 1997. How could it get any better than that? As I put in on my old-timey wrestling-style Lardapalooza poster, “All the awesomeness of Coachella… 90% less hippies and hackeysack!”

Lardapalooza 2012 was a matter of cosmic destiny, a pilgrimage of spiritual obligation. The only real holdup was my fear of driving in unfamiliar places, particularly with heavy urban traffic. This would be my first time renting a car, and I’d have to motor some 350 miles from Fresno to Los Angeles to San Diego. But I had to man up, bought a Garmin GPS with the windshield suction cup, and screwed my courage to the sticking point. I am proud to report that D. Trull answered the call and fulfilled this momentous mission.

After kicking off the celebration with fIREHOSE in Fresno, I boldly headed south in my Alamo rental toward back-to-back Madness gigs. It was very much a tale of two cities. Los Angeles is intense and metropolitan, San Diego is laid-back and breezy. Club Nokia was downtown, Humphreys was down by the bay. To get to the L.A. show and back I had to take a crowded city bus and a cab, but in San Diego the gig was right next door to my hotel. Even the In-N-Out Burger experiences in the two towns were respectively chaotic and relaxed. But wherever you go, that Double-Double Animal Style is gonna be pure heaven on a bun. And whenever you find M-A-D-N-eeeee-S-S-yes! You know what you got.

The set list was identical at both gigs, in line with the band’s regulation template: the customary openers, a few relatively obscure treats (“Take It or Leave It,” “Shut Up”), the Dangermen standbys of “Taller” and “Ironshirt,” three Norton Folgate numbers debuting on U.S. soil (“NW5,” “Clerkenwell Polka” and “Forever Young”), the Showtime suite introduced by hip-hop extravaganzas from Chrissy Boy, and “Swan Lake” making a welcome preface to the encores. I’d also hoped for at least one of the then-new songs like “My Girl 2” or “Death of a Rude Boy,” the latter of which would have been a sure hit with the California ska crowd. But alas, Madness stuck to their recorded output instead of trusting us Yanks with any pre-release previews of Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da.

Club Nokia (now known as The Novo) is a fantastic but weird little concert venue. Tucked away in the middle of the downtown L.A. Live complex next to Crypto.com Arena (then the Staples Center), it’s oddly on the third floor of a building principally housing swanky restaurants. The audience was segregated into a front and center pit area, where I wore the requisite wristband, then a barred-off further standing section near the bar, and a reserved seating balcony area. Before the show they had a great DJ setting an appropriate atmosphere with the likes of The Specials, The Jam, The Beat and Ian Dury, prompting rousing singalongs. A local feel-good ska band opened, and by the time Madness took the stage, Club Nokia was ready to explode.

Suggs and Chas strode out putting on an atypical tough-guy routine before “One Step Beyond,” scowling menacingly at the frenzied crowd and striking “You talkin’ to me?” gestures. That was so awesome. Then the music commenced and it was LOUD and powerful and demanded the respect of all in attendance. On a technical level Club Nokia was the best I’ve ever heard Madness sound live. And it was a visceral experience as well. Being that we were in the improbable situation of a Madness gig upstairs, the floor was perceptibly flexing under our pounding feet almost like a hardwood trampoline. Despite fleeting visions of the evening news reporting on the tragic floor collapse at a downtown concert, I bounced right along with the architecture.

Adding some degree of local color to the show was a strangely costumed interloper who danced across the stage repeatedly. A lanky, long-haired hippie in a turquoise spandex bodysuit and a fluffy white marching band major’s cap, looking like a human Q-Tip on acid. This oddball hugged and fondled the band and even crawled between Suggs’s legs at one point. I figured his “support” must have been planned, but Suggs made some testy comments about his antics, and Lee later called for security to haul him out. Only in L.A.

There’s an excellent soundboard bootleg of the Club Nokia gig knocking around on the interwebs, one of my favorite live Madness recordings (and not just because I was there). It’s fun to hear the very American reactions to Suggs and Chas’s routine stage patter. While the crowd finds Cathal’s “All the ladies in the house say ‘Oh!’” bit hilarious, they’re not so amused when, after ten songs, Suggs declares, “I think we’ve got time for one more.” The crowd murmurs and grumbles and one red-blooded American yells, “That’s fuckin’ bullshit!” Priceless.

Suggs himself had some choice words for the spectators up in the balcony who somehow remained seated throughout the structurally threatening chaos being perpetrated before them. “Get up, you lazy bastards!” he admonished. And who could blame him? But don’t get the impression Suggs was having a bad night, between the idle slackers and the dancing spandex Q-Tip. Before the encore break, he warmly thanked the audience and said, “I should like to dedicate this show to the little kid who’s on his bald dad’s shoulders there in the checked shirt, man. The whole thing was for you, my boy!” I was just a short distance from the dad and son, and it was heartwarming to see the audience’s appreciation of that moment.

One night later we did it again in San Diego. Humphreys Concerts by the Bay is quite a different animal from Club Nokia, and I must say it was a soothing relief after escaping the glitz and hustle of La-La Land. I’d fallen in love with the photos of the outdoor amphitheater surrounded by a scenic marina and palm trees, so much so that I photoshopped the above image of Madness on the stage. The very thought of seeing the boys play in such an idyllic setting seemed like paradise. 

In the afternoon I hung out in the parking lot and watched roadies carrying in gear. I spotted Mike Barson and guest bassist Graham Bush coming and going, and later got to hear the band soundchecking “Take It or Leave it” and “Taller.” What a thrill it was to finally enter the venue that evening, though the reality proved to be colder and windier than what I had imagined. I was concerned about the seating arrangements, the crown being corralled into rows of white plastic folding chairs that didn’t quite seem a match for the rigors of a Madness performance.

There was no opening band at Humphreys, just a direct launch into the main event, which incidentally made for an early evening. Any thoughts of a sedate and seated crowd were abated right away, when the audience rose for “One Step Beyond” and remained upright and dancing in our orderly rows of chairs for the duration. Midway through, Suggs related an anecdote about the first time the Dave Clark Five played in America. The crowd ended up tearing all the seats out the the theatre, he noted suggestively. When it came time for the “Night Boat to Cairo” finale, a girl in the row behind me made a valiant effort knock aside the chairs for more dancing room, but the plastic pull-ties binding the seats together proved too implacable to overcome. So much for teenage rebellion.

Suggs also had fun remarking on the stage’s proximity outside the Humphreys hotel. In his pre-“NW5” band intro, he said, “In case you’ve wandered out your hotel room and have no idea what’s happening here, we are… Madness.” Indeed, hotels guests were able to view the show quite fully from their balconies, which would be either a very good blessing or a very unwelcome intrusion, depending on how clueless one might have while booking a room. Suggs had lots of fun heckling a portly gentlemen watching from his room, noting when the looky-loo was joined by a “smaller person” and warning her to be wary of any potential bedroom advances in store. It was a whole new realm of concert banter for Suggs, to be sure.

Deserving of special mention is a little local salute Madness added in each of the gigs. At the end of “Taller,” the brass section eased into the refrain from “California Girls.” It was a lovely moment and you could actually hear the urbane sophisticates of the Club Nokia crowd gush “Awwww…” At the Humphreys show, the horns changed it up to the chorus of “Hotel California,” which wasn’t quite as poignant as the Beach Boys but still nice. I wonder if they did “Viva Las Vegas” at the House of Blues, and “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” at the Warfield?

Truly, my Lardapalooza experience was an unforgettable one, and how very impressive it is to see Madness put out such a top-caliber performance two nights straight. It gives me a true appreciation for what talented professionals our beloved fellows are. The music may be lighthearted and nutty, but the skill and hard work required to bring this troubadour act from one town to the next is all serious business. At the time I remember hoping it wouldn’t be another seven years before the band graced the Colonies again, unaware it would take 12 years instead.

One postscript anecdote: I saw a number of ostentatiously British Madness fans at these two shows, big, burly but benign skinhead fellows in 2-tone checkered pants, bowler hats, Doc Martens and sleeveless shirts bearing slogans such as “Rude Boys England.” I swear I spotted some of these very same blokes at Madstock in 2009. Anyway, the day after the San Diego show, I’m at the airport when I see one of these Buster Bloodvessel lookalikes up ahead of me going through security. I laughed and thought how a massive foreign “hooligan” like that was going to warrant special attention from the TSA. Once we were in the terminal, I caught up to him and exchanged pleasant words about the show. 

Then when I boarded my flight, there he was on my plane! But on closer examination, it was actually yet another of the nearly identical big bald laddie brigade. I sat a few rows behind this fellow with a perfect view of his bowler hat bobbing along at 35,000 feet. I took great comfort in seeing that on my way back home. And to top it off, what song did I hear in the DFW concourse as I made my way to my connecting flight to Raleigh-Durham? “Our House.”

There’s magic in the air. There’s Madness everywhere.

More Mad Memories