Madness @ Irving Plaza, NYC
Live Reviews | Apr 30th, 1999
Opening Bands: Pilfers
Date: April 30th 1999
Venue: Irving Plaza, NYC
What a show this was! I thought the whole show just plain kicked ass! We get there and there’s like 50 to a 100 people in line, and we got there an hour before the doors opened. Good thing there was no traffic on the westside highway or Joe Dimaggio Highway now I guess. While on line, there was some scalpers and some bums, the usual.
Then VH1 showed up and was interviewing fans. They interviewed this one girl and they were like name some madness songs that weren’t on the charts, and she was stuck on like the second one so since I was right next to her; I told her “House of Fun” and she looked at me and smiled and said it. I hope that’s on TV. So we got in and I never been to Irving Plaza and I didn’t know if I should go upstairs or not, but I did anyway and got a good spot. This show was good because I saw a bunch of people I haven’t seen in awhile from different areas that don’t go to shows around this area..
So Pilfers came up and for some reason they started off with a slow one, which was “One Day”. I don’t know why they started off slow, maybe because it’s a Madness crowd and they don’t want to get to heavy for them but most of the crowd was there to see them as well. They played a lot of old songs as well as some new ones like “Lay,” which is a very fast and good song. Plus they played old songs like “Dr. K,” “Show No Fear,” “Hypnotized.” Coolie was funny as usual with the crowd participation.
They got off and Madness took the stage. They took the stage one by one with the crowd going nuts and then they went into “Hey you- One Step Beyond.” It’s great to see old and young dancing their hearts out to Madness. They played other songs like “Embarrassment,” “House of Fun,” (one of my favorite) “Shut Up,” “It Must Be Love,” and they ended their set with an 80’s classic “Our House.” I remember seeing that video on MTV when I was a child. I thought they were excellent and great performers. During the set, I had to get stuck next to a big meathead who probably was a football player and he had a little too many and he kept bumping me. I was ready to fucking elbow him in the face but then he would have picked me up by one arm and threw me over the balcony into the sold out crowd. So Madness came back on for an encore and they played “Night Boat in Cairo,” which they played on Conan O Brien’s show. Then they played I think “Madness” then a new one. And That was it for Madness. Who knows if they’ll play any more shows again but they certainly rock the house in NYC that night.
