A friend of mine recently lent me a copy of some old Madness Greatest Hits. It got me thinking about the first Madness song I heard when I was a wee lass visiting my English family during the summer of 1982:

I have a soft spot for that track and even more so, for their earlier, more ska-inflected sound. (My sister had a great ska compilation that mixed “Night Boat to Cairo” into The Specials’ “Friday Night, Saturday Morning,” a one-two punch I always think of when I hear either of those songs. But I digress.)

Fast forward ten years or so to the next great Wave of English Working Class Rock, and you get songs like this:

In the early Aughts you can hear a semi-distant refrain, these guys taking the piss:

Help me connect the dots. Choose a band a decade earlier than Madness, one that celebrated the rich life of the English prols. Or can you think of their distant echo in, say, 2012 or beyond?