The Return Of The Los Palmas 7: Madness in Mallorca

It’s odd that a quintessentially English group like Madness should attract interest from the natives. But they do. Probably because they are a “name”, a known act to the Spanish, unlike many of the British artists who have been playing Magalluf’s Mallorca Rocks this summer. The Spanish will be out in force as much as the Brits.

The nutty boys are playing Mallorca Rocks on Tuesday, the penultimate gig of a season that at one point had looked as though it might have been scuppered by legal challenges to the Fiesta hotel venue. To the rescue, finally, came the tourism ministry which discovered that it could grant the necessary permissions where before it had said it couldn’t. If there was something, how can one put it, convenient about the decision taken by new tourism minister Carlos Delgado who, as mayor of Calvia, had previously given the hotel the initial go-ahead, then let’s be thankful for convenience.

The opposition to Mallorca Rocks was petty. Despite its having been led by the tourist businesses association Acotur, no one was in any doubt as to where the inspiration for the opposition was coming from. A bit of competition should have hurt no one. Indeed, the arrival of Mallorca Rocks should have been applauded by everyone, competitors included (even those who hadn’t thought of doing something similar), in boosting Magalluf and Mallorca’s reputation.

So much for the political background, and back to Madness. Their appearance, more so than Norman Cook earlier in the summer, gives the Mallorca Rocks season a seal of internationally recognised approval; hence the interest shown among the Spanish. It’s good that they are playing, but I shan’t be going. It’s not that middle-aged men shouldn’t still be performing, it’s just that this is the same Madness of some thirty years ago, when they were mad.

Attending a Madness gig back in the day was not something you did without some thought and trepidation if you happened not to be a skinhead. The group’s appearance and their embracing of ska and bluebeat made them the darlings of the boys with no hair and Dr. Martens. There was also a concern that the group themselves were politically far from correct, a reputation at the time that they initially did little to deflect and which also brought them into conflict with The Specials.

Though there was a commonality with the music, Madness’s short involvement with The Specials’ 2 Tone label seemed incongruous. The Specials, as with others on the label, The Selecter and The Beat, were fiercely anti-racist. With Madness, you weren’t quite sure, and the National Front association they acquired, almost totally because of skins who were part of the NF and who turned up at their gigs, made you distinctly wary. It was only when they disassociated themselves from the skinhead movement and also moved away from the ska roots that they shook off the reputation.

The other incongruity between Madness and 2 Tone was that Madness, despite their tribute to Prince Buster which launched them on 2 Tone, were very “London”. Their music, or rather their style, came to reflect this and it was, to some extent, a continuation of the London pub scene of the seventies, of Eddie And The Hot Rods, Dr. Feelgood and more obviously Kilburn And The High Roads (and later Ian Dury And The Blockheads).

The mainstays of 2 Tone were all Midlands-based, and even one group that wasn’t part of 2 Tone but which formed at the same time and had its own reggae and multi-ethnic mix, UB40, was from Birmingham. And Madness weren’t multi-ethnic. They were uniformly white, and their musical direction steered them towards a very white, very English sound and towards very English lyrics, when lyrics were actually used. One of their best “songs” was not a song at all, but the instrumental “Return Of The Los Palmas 7”, a weirdly infectious ballroom-lounge tune that could just as easily have been put out some years before by The Bonzo Dog Band in one of their saner moments.

Madness were always a cracking band and a cracking live act. They churned out hit after hit and were permanently in the charts. They seemed as though they would go on and on, having found a commercial formula, as did UB40, that suggested a longevity that had eluded The Specials. It didn’t happen, though, and by the mid-1980s they had split.

But they’re back and they’re playing Mallorca Rocks. Madness? It probably won’t be. Not as it was. But if you’re going, enjoy it. Waiter!

 

 

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Happy Hour Again: Mallorca Rocks

Mr. Zoë Ball, aka Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim will be one of the star attractions during this summer’s season of concerts at Magalluf’s Mallorca Rocks. A midsummer night’s dream on 21 June. But not a dream for everyone.

In its second year of operation, the Mallorca Rocks’ diverse programme will range from the old school of the Madness nutty boys through the rap of Dizzee Rascal, Plan B and Tinie Tempah, to the rock of Biffy Clyro and the dance-punk of Friendly Fires. It is an ambitious schedule of some of the leading names in British music and some very much at the cutting-edge from what has arguably been the most ambitious development in Mallorca for years. Its very ambitiousness and innovativeness are what has caused not everyone to be happy.

The unhappy ones have been the association of tourist businesses, Acotur. Last December, it sought a meeting with the hotel association in Palmanova and Magalluf. It was questioning the legality of Mallorca Rocks, while it considered its very presence to be unfair competition for bars and other entertainment establishments. The hotel association disagreed, describing Mallorca Rocks as innovative and as adding value. Acotur had previously denounced the concerts at the hotel.

The hotel association was absolutely right. While Acotur may or may not have had legitimate grounds for complaining, one had the strong sense that behind the objections was more than just a feeling that it had been caught on the hop, and not just the hip-hop, by a development that was bold and new.

Mallorca doesn’t generally do bold and new. It likes to hold onto the status quo, so much so that Status Quo might be considered to be innovative. The geriatric rockers have of course played in Palma, if playing is the right word. They were symbolic of the has-been nature of Mallorca; tired, formulaic, worn-out and not very good. Mallorca Rocks has come along and smashed that image, like punk tearing down the dinosaurs of prog and replacing them with the remarkably named Orlando Higginbottom, aka Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, who will be supporting Fatboy Slim.

Mallorca Rocks has been a case of catch-up, most obviously with its progenitor, Ibiza Rocks. Following in the foot and dance steps of Ibiza, Mallorca stumbles towards more of a club scene that, despite BCM and its own Pachas, has long been the domain of the island to the south. Mallorca has never had the chic cachet associated with the likes of the Café del Mar or Ibizan clubs that helped to create the British dance scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The boldness of both Rocks has been to make live music a facet of the summer season; live music which is genuine, star quality, international and new, as opposed to bands doing covers, trib acts and the embarrassment of playback. The other boldness has been to re-invent the hotel with a theme. In the case of the Fiesta Trópico, it has become the Mallorca Rocks hotel. Just one reason why Acotur in Magalluf and Palmanova has been getting agitated is because other hotels have been eyeing up the success of the theme and contemplating their own.

Impact on bars and clubs from Mallorca Rocks there may well be. It could be both positive and negative, but most importantly, the arrival of Mallorca Rocks has represented wholly new directions in terms both of entertainment and hotel style. But the island’s tourism industry is suspicious of new directions. It finds it hard to adapt or to change, so when something comes along that creates an upheaval, it holds up its hands and cries foul.

And the specifically youthful direction that Mallorca Rocks has taken is one that many within the industry fail to acknowledge or to want. Yet, youthful or more mature, live music accords with what surveys have been telling us – that tourists, of different ages, like having nights out. It’s a message that gets lost because the industry prefers that it is lost, amidst the inane clamour for alternative tourism, one that suggests a holidaymaker should suffer for his holidaying art, rather than actually enjoy it.

The midsummer night’s dream of Norman Cook in Magalluf should be an occasion for everyone to celebrate and on which they should be happy. Happy that here is the future, and not the past. They should revel in a night and not just a happy hour of the Housemartins’ one-time bassist, but they won’t, because they’d rather it wasn’t happening.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.