One Step Beyond – MADNESS****

One Step Beyond/My Girl/Night Boat To Cairo/Believe Me/Land Of Hope & Glory/The Prince/Tarzan's Nuts/In The Middle Of The Night/Bed & Breakfast/Razor Blade Alley/Swan Lake/Rockin' In A/Mummy's Boy/Madness/Chipmunks Are Go

The North London group Madness started their recording career as a 2 Tone band, but soon became a successful mainstream pop group, albeit with a zany image. One Step Beyond was their debut and features the excellent UK No. 3 hit My Girl. (US:128 UK:2)

“Musically speaking, the album is quite daring. There is a bit of reggae, a bit of east European music, a bit of punk, some rock steady beats, and in Swan Lake they even make a cracking version of a classical music piece. It's daring in the sense that it's never stiff, never boring. There is always something that fills it with restless exuberance, and that is no doubt what makes them so appealing.”

“A truly remarkable debut album. Being in my early teens at the time of release you had to know all the lyrics, and had mastered the moves, or else you were a total loser. That's the power this album wielded over impressionable youth.”

“Madness connected with British people in all kinds of ways, their zany image, the fun and sheer bright eyed enthusiasm they brought to ska tunes, and of course the songwriting. Listen to My Girl and Bed & Breakfast and appreciate the very classic English flavour that runs through their work.”

“Their influences were clearly ska, reggae and rock steady, but they also took from punk a frenetic musical delivery. They had a schoolboy cheeky, grinning humour and a penchant for the madcap.”

“At heart, for at least this release, Madness were a pop band masquerading as a ska band because, well, it would have been foolish not to ride the 2-Tone wave. An astonishing debut, considering the band’s working class image, providing a lyrical counterpoint to their more serious 2-Tone brethren.”

“Perhaps the purest expression of Madness's original 2-Tone sound, One Step Beyond brings a variety of good-natured, good-humoured pop-ska to bear and marks one of those occasions where the band's distinctive sense of humour doesn't become cloying. It's by no means perfect and there's some filler here and there, but at its best it places Madness at the absolute peak of the late 1970s British ska revival.”