I saw Madness live at The top rank in Cardiff. They started their set with Night boat to Cairo. The room was completely dark, couldn’t see a thing. The room was silent and then boom, blue spotlight onto the sax player. Dark again. Then blue spotlight, second sax note, then explosion of lights and music and the place erupted. Good times.

Madness are awesome 👍🏻 Night Boat To Cairo is my fave!

I love that it's an instrumental but Suggs is dancing with a mic like he's going to start singing any second now

They are one of the best bands to see live, still going too, love them ❤

Madness and Adam and the Ants were so massive early 80's for me. 10/11 year old at the time.

Love love love it!!

Every middle school dance…❤

Madness are an "Institution" you have to get it, I guess. They had so many hits and it's always slightly humorous.

The 'Two tone' period was interesting not only musically but also in the context of the social backdrop of Britain in the early 80's. Far right racist groups infiltrated youth communities, notably 'skinheads' who had an affiliation with ska music from the 60's. This led to problems by association for 'Two tone' especially for Madness who were the only all white band. Of course, the bands weren't racist, they were just caught in the middle. The same happened with football(soccer) whose younger fans were easy fodder for the far right. Anyway, back to the 'nutty boys', i.e. Madness, they became labelled as a fun, wacky bunch, largely due to the slapstick style videos which wore thin with me after a while. I know it's not a popular view but I think if you want to sing about serious matters why risk losing the message with silly antics. I still love their music though, especially their second album, 'Absolutely'! Rant over!