MUSIC: Strummerville

As originally published in the Daily Telegraph:

Madness Live Review

Palace Theatre, Bridgwater, Somerset (Tue 8 Jan)

“My hand’s going in here… pink!” You’re listening to the sound of Alan Yentob calling the raffle. “81!” He stands onstage beneath a high vaulted ceiling, overlooked by a large rear balcony, surrounded by purple walls, like Brixton Academy made over by a youth club. Though, if memory serves, the Academy doesn’t have a test your strength punch bag on the way in. Welcome to Strummerville. They do things differently here.

Three weeks before his death, Joe Strummer played the Palace himself. Five years on, friends – celebrity and otherwise – are raising money for the Engine Room, a charity set up in his honour to help aspiring musicians from – and infrastructure of - his adopted hometown. “There are 500 Tauntons across the South West, but only one Bridgwater!” cries patron, Julien Temple, another to fall for the historically arty charms of a place often written off as an impoverished urban blot on the dramatically sweeping West Country landscape. He’s about to introduce an act that some refuse to believe are here at all. “We sold all 800 tickets in 10 minutes,” he told me earlier, “but they were arguing in the street: ‘No, it must be a tribute band’.”

Madness are a step ahead of Bridgwater Town Hall in their regeneration plans. Last month they were the other band to pack out the O2 Arena. On Monday they’ll release new single ‘NW5’; in half an hour they’ll drop it into tonight’s greatest hits set and it will sound utterly seamless.

Roxy Music ace Andy Mackay (charcoal suit by Armani, yellow tie by Biggins) adds gratuitous sax to ‘One Step Beyond’, and so begins an hour of unremitting joy. Eight men and 20sq ft of stage means seven have to stand still. The other makes up for them. Patenting that stiff, animatronic dance style in his youth is paying big dividends for Suggs now – he could keep this up for years. The charm, longer still: “I knew it was going to be a lovely evening the moment I stepped into your fair town.”

‘Baggy Trousers’ strikes up. Balding men share knowing smiles and break into the time-honoured jogging on the spot dance. The rest of the room follows, and the Palace looks like the happiest all-ages gym in the world. ‘London Calling’ announces the encore and dancing continues through misty eyes. Next up at the Palace, says a brimming collection of adjectives on the door, is ‘the brilliant fantastic My Winehouse’. For tonight, though, the tribute bands can wait.