It’s been five years since director Shane Meadows and his long-term on screen collaborator Paddy Considine last worked together. That was for Dead Man’s Shoes, a violent revenge drama that took Considine’s natural, wired intensity and amped it up to an uncomfortable degree. Considine tends to specialise – for Meadows, at least – in charismatic, explosive figures and while his run of movies together with Meadows has proved thrilling and memorable, you might have cause to wonder where they could take their collaborations next.
The last time I saw Simone Felice anywhere near a London stage, he was hanging above it, wild-eyed and shirtless, from a monitor in the ceiling of the 100 Club, from which precarious position he was leading a boisterous crowd through a rowdy version of a song called “Ruby Mae” from the recently-released new album by The Felice Brothers, who were at the time roaring towards the climax of a typically rambunctious show.
MADNESS/WHITE DENIM/EVAN DANDO - Various venues, Shoreditch, 21/5/09
“Thanks for coming to see a washed-up Eighties pop band,” deadpans Suggs as MADNESS take the stage. We’re in The Light Bar, a 300 capacity venue on Norton Folgate, a thin stretch of street that separates Shoreditch from the City. The band are here to celebrate their new album, The Liberty Of Norton Folgate, which is currently sitting at No 5 in the midweek album charts. Not bad, certainly, for a washed-up Eighties pop band.
