Madness

This collection contains videos for almost all of the songs from the 1982 "best of" compilation Complete Madness. Clearly Madness was pouring considerable energy into their videos well before the advent of MTV. The One Step Beyond videos, like "My Girl," "The Prince," "One Step Beyond," and "Bed and Breakfast Man" are given an unimaginative band-playing-in-a-studio treatment. But with the videos from the 1980 album Absolutely, the boys hit upon a brand of inspired silliness that was to characterize their videos for the rest of their career. For "Baggy Trousers," Lee Thompson plays his saxophone solo suspended in mid-air above the rest of the band. On "It Must Be Love" Chris Foreman plays guitar on the bottom of a swimming pool. "Cardiac Arrest," the best video in the set, casts Mike Barson as a corporate commuter with a xylophone in his briefcase. Complete Madness has all the polish -- and all the rambunctious energy --of a video made by a bunch of high school kids horsing around with their father's camera. This isn't too surprising, considering that these visuals were shot when the band members were only a little older than a high school senior. The videos are bookended on this collection by short introductory clips (including their Japanese commercials for Honda) that demonstrate both the nutty sense of humor of the band and their apparent lack of acting ability. They also reveal how cheaply these videos were made. The sound quality on the clips is ridiculously low and the film quality throughout the tape is about as high as a family movie from the early '70s. Yet these things only serve to enhance the charm of a video compilation made by a band whose appeal lies largely in their juvenile enthusiasm. ~ Evan Cater, All Music Guide