Madden Flies Again

I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be leaving the house in a week’s time. More than that, I’ll be leaving the safe warmth and familiarity of Clitheroe to head out on tour with Doves. Regular keyboard player Martin Rebelski is occupied with the endless touring schedule of Peter Hook and the Light so I’m literally the second best person for the job. It’s an involved job too, I’ve had to learn what Martin does with some accuracy. That’s the way it goes, last year I had to learn Bonehead’s Digsy’s Dinner solo. My life is varied, the challenges are many. I’ll go easy on the drink, there’s samples laid out all over the keyboard and some of them go on for up to a minute after a brief touch, an unforgiving eternity in music.

The tour is sold out. Almost sold out on closer inspection. If this is the first you’re hearing of it and you’re desperate to go I suppose you’d better start looking for an Airbnb in Nottingham. Come on Nottingham, pull your act together. We can’t call this a sold out tour till it is one so get your hands in your pockets. Doves are a great band, they always have been. They deserve to be playing full shows. They deserve to be celebrated.

As all the media surrounding this tour has confirmed, there’s a glaring absence on stage. Jimi isn’t coming out on these dates, it’s not the right thing for him to do right now. I love Jimi and I’d follow him over the top of the trench, he’s certainly the reason I’m linked to all of this. I wish he were coming along but there’s no dishonour in going out and representing the music he’s made with his friends over the years so I’ll be glad to do it. We’ll do the best job we can while he’s unable to join us. Jimi is the very best of this little Northern music scene of ours, he’s world class at everything he turns his hand to. He’s been a massively inspirational person for me to know and I look forward to seeing him on a stage again soon.

Jez and Andy have taken the job of singing and shared it between themselves, the more respectful way of tackling the problem, and they’re doing a great job of it. Fans who feel shortchanged in any way should thank their lucky stars that Sting hasn’t decided to jump in on bass and lead vocals as a like for like replacement. Rather than try and find a Jimi substitute they’ve brought in my old teammate from the Odludek touring band Jake Evans on guitar and backing vocals, with Nathan handling the bass. Nathan has been covering for all the illness and injury that has afflicted the bottom end of Manchester music for the last year, standing in on tours for Elbow and Everything Everything as well as Doves. The whole thing is a quality representation of the catalogue put together with love and care.

I’m looking forward to this one, if you’ve bought a ticket I’ll see you around. If not I’ll see you in Nottingham.

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The Worm Turned

The 19th February 2005 was when the NME decided to poke a stick into the Earlies cage. Check this out:

The Earlies: Bring It Back Again

Hello, is that the Only One Idea Police? Yup, we’ve got a live one. The Earlies’ ‘Bring It Back Again’. Yup, exactly the same as the last one, ‘Morning Wonder’, it was called, and get this- they put that one out twice. No shit. This is exactly the same shuffle-paced Texan psychedelia, but get this- the new version stops before it gets to the good bit and pretends your stereo’s broken. I know, shocking. What’s that? You’ll be round the minute you’re finished with LCD Soundsystem? Righto. MB

How’s about that? It’s pretty funny in a way but if I ever get the chance to talk to whoever MB is I’ve got a newsflash for them. Not only did we release Morning Wonder twice, we also released this one, Bring It Back Again, twice. You missed a trick there MB, I hope the fact that the main crime was under your nose all along gets back to you and ruins your day. Whatever you’re doing. I’m imagining you in an awful humdrum, soul-sapping administrative job. Who knows though? Maybe you skip through the corridors of power making life and death decisions that ruinously affect the rest of us. You got this one wrong though, the Earlies were recycling everything.

While we’re at it this second version of Bring It Back Again also had one thing you failed to mention.

It had Extra Synthesizers.

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Minor Corrections From the King

Kenny and me have been corresponding a little this week, he didn’t correct me as such but mentioned that at the time of our very first recording he was stopping with his friends Rob and Julie in Mossley with Beth in tow, not driving down on the day which now I think about it would be ridiculous. The trip to Chorlton was scheduled for the way back. He put unleaded petrol in his new diesel Peugot on the trip. The Madden of 2025 could comfortably tell him not to worry, you can dilute the unleaded with diesel, fill it up and just flush it through your tank, diesels are handy like that. Unfortunately the Madden of 2005 wouldn’t have known the difference between unleaded and diesel and would’ve stared blankly when being told the story. Gripper would’ve been all over it though.

Kenny said Stuarab and him were talking this week about how some of the diehard Fence fans decried the finished album, calling it ‘verging on pop’ and ‘no longer one man and his guitar’. They tended to do all this on the forum that Kenny hosted and paid for on his own website. Imagine that? Like inviting people to sit in your living room and watching them fling shit about. I wonder what they made of Bombshell?

If I’d have known that he’d read what I wrote last week maybe I’d have reigned it in a little. Probably not though, he really is that good and it really was that much fun to be a part of. It’s good to be back in touch, we might look at a little get together later in the year if you’re interested? Twenty years feels like it deserves something. A pint or two, perhaps a little sing song…

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Illustrious Company

Ever since Maz’s brother bought him a copy of the film Threads for a Christmas present I’ve been amused and impressed by yuletide gifts with unseasonable gravitas and despair. Nicky really pulled it out of the Christmas hat for me this year by presenting me with two books: Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen and Knife by Salman Rushdie. I’ve started the latter this week and it’s predictably fantastic. Anyone’s reflections on being the victim of an attempted murder would be interesting, but the most eloquently gifted and imaginative novelist of a generation taking stock after nearly forty years of bodyguards, safe houses, false identities and careful fear were pointlessly swept away by one knife wielding maniac, that deserves your time. After all those years in hiding, when he sees that dark shape rushing to him from his right his first though is “So It’s you. Here you are.”

On a lighter note though, Rushdie mentions meeting his wife Rachel Eliza Griffiths, noting that she preferred to go by her middle name Eliza. He had that in common with her, Ahmed Salman Rushdie also goes by his middle name, only his mother calls him Ahmed when she’s mad at him. Over the years he’s compiled a list of famous middle name users that he can whip out as a party trick: James Paul McCartney, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Robyn Rihanna Fentyn, F Murray Abraham, Lafayette Ron Hubbard, Joseph Rudyard Kipling, Edward Morgan Foster, Keith Rupert Murdoch, Thomas Sean Connery, Rachel Meghan Markle…

For a moment there John Christian Madden felt like he was keeping very illustrious company indeed. Didn’t get a mention though. If anyone knows him I’d be delighted to be added to his list.

Superspreaders

It’s hard to believe that five years have passed since this magical moment in Milan. I can remember thinking during the song “We will never have it this good again,” I felt almost overwhelmed with sadness. Liam turned round to me at the end of the song and held onto the keyboard box for stability, he said “I felt like I was levitating there…”

Over the course of the next week news of the new pandemic tearing through Northern Italy spread with its own king of virality. Within days of coming home I heard the government advice that if you’d been in Northern Italy at all you should probably be isolating. I’d already taken a class of primary school children on a trip to Clitheroe Castle by the time I heard that though. Had I picked it up during my couple of days in Italy? All I could think of was the 15,000 people who had faced us, embracing and singing at the tops of their voices without a care in the world.

It’s not that we wouldn’t have it this good again, but it would be a while. Long enough that it started to feel like a half remembered dream.