Madness - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: In Concert, Hammersmith Odeon, London, Britain, 12-31-1985

It's time for the next volume of the British band Madness playing for the BBC. Like the last volume in the series, this is a full concert that was broadcast live.

Madness had a great run of singles and albums from 1979 to 1986. But by the time of this concert in late 1985, they were reaching the end. I recently did some reading about their career, and found they were tired in every way. From the beginning, their music was ska-based and energetic, and their image was of being "nutty" and wild. As they got older, they found it harder and harder to keep that going. 

Yet, in my opinion, many of their songs from 1985 or thereabouts were still as good as their earlier ones. In retrospect, they had increasing problems with bad production, which was all too typical in the mid-1980s. But that was far less of a problem in a concert setting like this one.

This concert serves as a kind of "best of" for the band's first phase. (They would later reunite, and unlike most bands from their time, they would have a lot of critical and commercial success in the 2000s.) There's not much else to say. Even though this concert remains officially unreleased, the sound quality is excellent, and there were no problems to fix.

Perhaps the only surprise here is the appearance of Feargal Sharkey on one of the songs. Sharkey was the lead singer of the British punk band the Undertones, but he left for a solo career in 1984. His first solo single, "Listen to Your Father," was written by Carl Smyth, a member of Madness, and was performed and produced by Madness. It was a minor hit in Britain. Madness also backed Sharkey when he performed the song for the BBC TV show "Top of the Pops," so it's not that surprising that they did the song together for this concert too.

This album is an hour and 17 minutes long.

I do like some of what Madness did after they later reunited, and they did more performances for the BBC then, so I'll have more to post in this series.

01 talk (Madness)
02 Keep Moving (Madness)
03 Samantha (Madness)
04 Take It or Leave It (Madness)
05 Michael Caine (Madness)
06 Mad Not Mad (Madness)
07 talk (Madness)
08 Grey Day (Madness)
09 My Girl (Madness)
10 Tomorrow's Dream (Madness)
11 talk (Madness)
12 House of Fun (Madness)
13 4 B.F. [For Bryan Ferry] (Madness)
14 Yesterday's Men (Madness)
15 Blue Skinned Beast (Madness)
16 talk (Madness)
17 Time (Madness)
18 It Must Be Love (Madness)
19 talk (Madness)
20 Burning the Boats (Madness)
21 Shut Up (Madness)
22 talk (Madness)
23 Uncle Sam (Madness)
24 talk (Madness)
25 Embarrassment (Madness)
26 talk (Madness)
27 I'll Compete (Madness)
28 talk (Madness)
29 Listen to Your Father (Madness & Feargal Sharkey)
30 One Step Beyond (Madness)
31 Baggy Trousers (Madness)
32 talk (Madness)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15603419/Madns_1985_BBSessionsVolume4InConcertHammrsmithOdeon__12-31-1985_atse.zip.html

I couldn't find any really good photos from 1985. The cover photo comes from an appearance on Saturday Night Live in April 1984.