1999 collection on Virgin featuring the first six albums by the original nutty boys, England's hit late '70s ska revivalists Madness. Each album has been digitally remastered & contains all of the original audio track... more »s, plus four CD-ROM videos per disc added as a bonus! Comes packaged as three gatefold slipcases (with two CD albums per slipcase) inside of a black card slipcase with familiar gold Doc Martens boots on the cover. Also contains a 36 page booklet with interviews & quotes from 1999. A grand total of 76 audio tracks & 24 CD-ROM videos, including 'One Step Beyond', 'Our House', 'My Girl', 'House Of Fun', 'Bed And Breakfast Man', 'Baggy Trousers', 'Embarrassment', 'Return Of The Los Palmos 7', 'Grey Day', 'Cardiac Arrest', 'It Must Be Love', 'Wings Of A Dove' and 'Waiting For The Ghost Train'. The outer package is a full color CD-sized slipcase box. 1999 release.« less
1999 collection on Virgin featuring the first six albums by the original nutty boys, England's hit late '70s ska revivalists Madness. Each album has been digitally remastered & contains all of the original audio tracks, plus four CD-ROM videos per disc added as a bonus! Comes packaged as three gatefold slipcases (with two CD albums per slipcase) inside of a black card slipcase with familiar gold Doc Martens boots on the cover. Also contains a 36 page booklet with interviews & quotes from 1999. A grand total of 76 audio tracks & 24 CD-ROM videos, including 'One Step Beyond', 'Our House', 'My Girl', 'House Of Fun', 'Bed And Breakfast Man', 'Baggy Trousers', 'Embarrassment', 'Return Of The Los Palmos 7', 'Grey Day', 'Cardiac Arrest', 'It Must Be Love', 'Wings Of A Dove' and 'Waiting For The Ghost Train'. The outer package is a full color CD-sized slipcase box. 1999 release.
CD Reviews
All Six Madness Albums -- plus the videos!
Marc Szeftel | Seattle, Washington | 01/16/2000
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This set includes all six Madness albums: One Step Beyond, Absolutely, Seven, The Rise and Fall, Keep Moving, and Mad not Mad. In addition, all 24 music videos are included --- there are no instructions, but they played beautifully on my Windows PC (no indication if they play on Mac). Although I owned four of the six albums, it was worth the extra purchase for these superb videos. In the early days of MTV you could see creative, intelligent stuff like this; but that was a long time ago. These videos are as good as the songs they illustrate.This is a must purchase for any Madness fan."
Madness? Yes, please!
Roger Ruthberg | Philadelphia PA | 06/08/2000
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I owned all six albums in this collection from previous individual releases, and I _still_ bought it. Review: worth every penny! The remastering has done wonders for the sound, especially on "One Step Beyond" (the first album), and when they throw in 24 videos as well, along with a booklet, and unleash it on an unsuspecting public at bargain price, hell, what's to complain about? Well, maybe the booklet, which is a tad skimpy in terms of the notes, but hey at this price, that's nitpicking.Pick up this boxed set, get yourself a pair of sunglasses, and enjoy that crazy old Nutty sound!"
Less than what you expect
DJ Jimmy D | San Francisco, CA | 06/07/2006
(3 out of 5 stars)
"the good news: this is a really nice box set from a great band.
the bad news: although all the tracks represented in the track line up are technically on the physical CDs - they are not all in CD audio, therefore not playable on a CD player... and some of these are the BEST singles.
these CDs combine CD audio with CD-ROM data, enabling the ability to view the videos on a computer.
however, many of the videos included in the CD-ROM section are omitted from the CD audio. The result: an incomplete reissue of these great albums. when you listen to this on your CD player, you will NOT hear: house of fun, driving in my car, it must be love, the sun and the rain, wings of dove, waiting for the ghost train.
if you are a fan who wants to purchase a CD version of all these great albums convienantly: this ain't it. the highly compressed computer videos are cute, but the sound utterly sucks and you can only experience them on your computer.
it's too bad amazon didn't catch this and take these songs out of the track line up.
the record company (virgin) took a GREAT idea ("the lot") and made it kind of suck. too bad."
Quality Album Material Often Overlooked
Brian Frazier | Manchester, Maryland United States | 05/07/2002
(5 out of 5 stars)
"In this collection of the first six 'original' Madness albums, you get a lot of material heretofore missing from American releases. The tracks from "Rise and Fall" and "Seven" are worth the full price of the box set alone. A lot of these tracks have often been hard to track down in the US (especially the RaF material) and are greatly improved on with remastering. While Madness is often viewed as a simple cog in the Ska-revival wheel, the tracks on discs 3-6 prove that they were quality songwriters in their own right and even the overproduced, far too depressing "Mad Not Mad" tracks turn out to be good material on a 5th or 6th listen. Combine this with "The Business" CD set and you have all the Madness your heart could desire."
Could have gone another step beyond...
Brian Frazier | 08/17/2001
(5 out of 5 stars)
"on the packaging. Great tunes and contains many videos that I haven't seen before. My only complaint is the packaging. While the cardboard cd sleeves look great, they tend to be abrade the hard to remove cd's. The liner notes seemed skimpy as well."
Track Listings (83) - Disc #1