So here I am once more...(Hmmm, I feel a song coming on!) Yes, it's been a while since I've blogged, sorry about that. And even more sorry about this - what was originally conceived as part of a full review of Marillion's UK convention held in Wolverhampton in April of this year (to have been published in May...) has been reduced to this single post covering the first night only. Guess you could see this as my equivalent of the Eagles' The Long Run (originally touted as a brilliant double album to be released in 1978, that finally emerged a year later as a distinctly underwhelming single album).Oh well, life and other associated paraphernalia get in the way from time to time, don't they? At least I'm not too likely to break up on the subsequent tour! Anyway, on with the review...
At a Marillion weekend it's traditional to begin with 'album night' on a Friday and that held true for 2013, though unlike previous weekends, which
have featured quite a diverse range of themes, this time around every night was
album night. Friday belonged to Radiation (or Radiat10n as it’s spelt
on the album cover - and on *somebody’s* user name on most internet forums – on
account of it being the band’s 10th studio effort), widely regarded
as one of the band’s weaker releases. Whether this is fair is subject to
debate - personally I feel it does rank towards the bottom of the
Marillion catalogue, but is by no means a poor album (they only have one of
those, if you ask me – what do you mean you didn’t?! - and even that’s only
true if you consider Less is Moreto be a ‘proper’ album in the first place).
One thing Radiation certainly has in
its favour is its unusally high quotient (by Marillion standards, at
least!) of rockier numbers, so Under the
Sun (see below) and the unfairly-maligned Answering Machine certainly kicked things off with a bang. Fan
favourite (even amongst those who don’t care for the album as a whole) Three Minute Boy was up next, and by now
the party was in full flow. The fans ambushed the band with a mid-song ‘3
minute scream’ when it was played in 2011, so this time they were expecting it
and didn’t let it go on toooooo long, but it was still a fun moment.
Before the convention I’d
worried that the three consecutive slow numbers that follow (Now She’ll Never Know, These Chains and Born to Run) would prove to be both
atmosphere and momentum-killers, but this wasn’t the case. Now She’ll Never Know became the first number of the evening to get
the eyes turning all watery on me (and h's seemingly effortless switches in and out of falsetto were simply breathtaking), These
Chains is one of those songs that turns out to be far more powerful live,
and after being trotted out at two consecutive convention seasons, I have to
say that Born to Run has really grown
on me, though it will never be a contender for a spot in my 'favourite 100 Marillion songs' list.
Nonetheless the killer intro of Cathedral
Wall came at just the right time to pick the energy up again, although in
truth it’s not exactly a fast song either, though it is ‘heavy’. Both it and album closer A Few Words for the Dead are certainly amongst the
album’s highlights and the ‘or you could love’ section of the latter provided
one of the surprises of the night, as, seemingly from nowhere, large-stemmed
flowers appeared in the hands of fans throughout the hall. Knowing the event
was being filmed (more on the DVD release a bit later) some brightly-coloured
attire, sunglasses and suchlike had been suggested as the dress code (you know, to
‘sort of’ reflect the radiation theme). Sensible folk like myself ignored this
(and maybe even suspected a certain group of fans of trying to impose
their own unique fashion sense onto the rest of us for the evening!),
but the flowers were a genuinely nice touch, of the sort that Marilloin fans do specialise in, it has to be said – and the band later confirmed they
had no idea that it was coming. Nor did I - I'd missed that particular fan memo!
Radiation has recently
been re-mixed and re-released, and the new mix from Michael Hunter has
converted a number of fans who particularly disliked the original ‘rough’ feel the album was
given. Personally I’m not wildly keen about revisions after the fact, and I
figure the live recording of this show is the only alternative version I need. And
you thought I was a total obsessive/completist, you don’t know me at all
really, do you? :P
Friday nights have traditionally
been seen as something of a warm-up night in the past, with onlya handful of extra tracks played in addition
to the main attraction of the full album concept. This time around, though, after
a brief intermission the band returned for a set that threatened to overshadow Radiation
as they performed a scattershot selection of tracks from all over the
decades, ranging from recentish classics such as Genie and Somewhere Else,to early h-era singles Hooks in You and Cover My Eyes (both of which should have been smashes, rather than
the moderate hits they actually were). The latter segued neatly into Slainte Mhath, the first Fish-era song
of the night. In Port Zelande this year h had surprised everybody by toasting Fish at
the song’s conclusion – this time the toast was perhaps less spontaneous (but surely
no less heartfelt) and came mid-song, fittingly before the line about ‘raising
the standard Drambuie’, which I’m sure the big man would appreciate! Not many
years ago, that would have been precisely that as far as Fishy material went,
but of late the band as a whole have seemed a bit more relaxed about playing
the early stuff (though still never very much of it at once, possibly as it seems to make h suicidal, or something...) and so Slainte was followed by Lavender and Heart of Lothian. Capping even that was the appearance of Script for a Jester’s Tear as the first
encore. I’d describe how brilliant a performance they gave of this, but why
bother when you can just watch it...
As I mentioned earlier the gig
was filmed and a mere ten and a half hours later (note this time is from the start, not the end, of the show!) it was available to buy as a
2DVD/3CD package (from which Under the
Sun and Script have been released
to YouTube for promotional purposes, hence the handy links to them above!), regaining the band their world record for
fastest turnaround between the recording and release of a live DVD. Obviously it's warts 'n' all, but the band prove, beyond any measure of doubt, that where they're concerned there simply aren't that many warts in the first place.
With the
first 50 for sale signed by the band some of the band’s craziest fans (we’re
all crazy, but to varying degrees, you understand) queued from 5.30am to secure
their copies. I've no idea how long fan number 51 queued for, but I hope they weren’t
too disappointed to miss out! Personally I was happy enough to wait and buy a
(guaranteed unsigned) copy after that evening’s gig.
And what a gig that would turn out to be. I'd love to tell you about it (and Stillmarillion, andthe Sounds That Can't Be Madegig on the Sunday, about those ovations and that climb into the balcony and all the time spent with the other mad and ovely fans, and much more besides) but I'm not gonna. Who knows, maybe I'll make up for it with a full review of Montreal 2015 in less than two years time? Go on, hold your breath! ;-)
Having
had a recent bout of the ‘not really from these parts’ disease, where you get
all nostalgic for things you’d never known or done in the first place (in this
case GCSEs, which have been big news in Blighty recently) I set myself the
below challenging essay topic (I hope I pass!):
Compare and contrast the
following gigs:
1)Marillion in Cardiff, Sunday 09
September
2)Marillion in Sheffield, Friday 14
September
3)Marillion in London, Sunday 16
September
It
had looked for a while that I might not be up to travelling for this tour, then
that I mightn’t be able to go even to the local London gig, but the evil NHS
doctors who’d threatened further surgery in September were vanquished by the
good NHS doctors who prevented the need for it, leaving me free to take in the first
tour in support of a new album the band had undertaken since my arrival in the
UK in 2010.
That
album – the magnificent Sounds That Can’t Be Made – wasn’t
to be released officially until the final day of the tour (the 17th),
but most fans in attendance had pre-ordered direct from the band (a system
Marillion effectively invented) well in advance and those copies were
despatched from Marillion HQ (just!) in time for the majority to have received
them by the time the tour kicked off in Cardiff. The choice of material from
the new album was impeccable, with the four tracks that currently make up my
favourite half of the album (Gaza, Power (listen below),
The Sky Above the Rain and the sublime title track) being showcased. If that
doesn’t sound like a lot of time being devoted to new material remember that this
is Marillion, so two epics and two shorter, more instantly accessible songs (still over six
minutes each themselves) constituted around a third of the gig.
Marillion
are noted for putting their audience (and themselves!) through the emotional
wringer and both Gaza and The Sky Above the Rain continue this
tradition, though in very different ways. Gaza
is a 17-minute+ visceral plea for an end to the cycle of violence begetting
violence in the district, told from the point of view of a Palestinian child, and
featuring some of the heaviest musical sections the band have ever unleashed. The Sky Above the Rain, meanwhile,finds the band in more familiar
territory lyrically, detailing a relationship seemingly beyond the point of no
return, but with a more optimistic outlook emerging at its climax than many
past songs have featured -possibly a
result of frontman Steve ‘h’ Hogarth’s change in outlook in recent years (see
also the entireEssencevolume of 2008’s
Happiness
is the Road). This doesn’t stop it joining the long list of Marillion
songs capable of making grown men get a bit teary in public...(of course I don’t mean me...erm...).
Both
were even more powerful in a live setting, although the ‘false start’ with Splintering Heart’s programmed intro
being played only for the stage to be ‘bombed’ seemed a little too gimmicky to
me to really work as the intro to as hard-hitting a song as Gaza; certainly the pyrotechnic-free
Sheffield version worked better in my book, though that was a decision clearly
made for health and safety reasons (tiny stage in a potential death-trap of a
venue) rather than artistic ones!
The
rest of the setlist focussed heavily on their more recent output (2004 on),
which, for a band that is touring behind their 17th album and peaked
commercially with their 3rd, might seem odd to the casual observer,
as might the fact that they only played two of their 20+ top 40 singles. Few
attending a Marillion gig these days would expect (or want) it any other way
and all three audiences showed suitable appreciation to every classic (of any
vintage) that came their way. While there was a time the band avoided
performing any Fish-era material, perennial favourite Sugar Mice got an airing in the encores, although the split between
how much h sang himself and how much of a crowd-only singalong it became varied
from night to night.
It’s impossible to name highlights without listing the
whole set, so I’ll only say that it was wonderful to have Real Tears for Sale representing the Happiness album and while
some fans have suggested that the likes of Neverland
and Fantastic Place have been
overplayed in recent years (an assessment it’s actually quite easy to agree
with when looking at past setlists), for me at least, any thoughts of wanting
them rested evaporate instantly upon hearing the opening notes. That said,
these were only my 9th, 10th and 11th
Marillion gigs (yep, they’ve finally left Toto in the dust!), so I may yet do a
coalition-style u-turn on this issue in the future!
With
keyboardist Mark Kelly’s recent hearing problems (which he detailed in his blog
HERE), the stage positions of the band members have changed this year, with
guitarist Steve Rothery and bassist Pete ‘Tremendous’ Trewavas swapping sides
to get Rother’s amps as far away as possible. Kelly, who has been side-on to
the audience for years is now facing us directly (which must have been a shock
to the system!) but it’s great to be able to see all the facial expressions and
exchanged glances going on between the band, from one position (just left of
centre is the ideal spot for me – closest to h, but with the ability to watch
Rothers work his magic during his solos and more), although Ian Mosley sadly remains
as hidden as ever behind his drum kit!
While
the set only varied slightly between performances, taking in multiple gigs in
this way proved beyond a doubt that no two shows are the same. While the band
had publicly stated that they’d be opening with Gaza the rest of the set was anyone’s guess in Cardiff, which is
always a thrilling situation to be in, not least when you’re hearing songs
being performed live for the very first time. That said, there were a few
technical gremlins (as h said, ‘It’s great to be at the first night of the
tour...you can say “I was there when that went wrong, and that went wrong and
that went wrong...”!) most notably the sudden absence of keyboards during most
of the This Town trilogy. Despite
this throwing everybody off just a tad (‘He’s lost’ said h, at one point as Ian
played one prominent fill a good few bars early) they managed to keep the
damage to nose-to-tail minor rather than full-blown train wreck – and the crowd
loved it. It was also the only night I heard h use what has almost become a catchphrase
at his solo gigs...’Shall we have a chat?’ (although the answer was we didn’t
really have time, ‘cause he’d gone all Stevie Nicks on us earlier in the night
and faffed about with at least one pointless costume change too many!).
By
Sheffield – the fifth night of the tour – the new songs had bedded in, and were
already sounding like old favourites, the technical hitches (and costume change
issues) were largely resolved and the band were basking in the rapturous reception the
new album had been receiving. h, who is what you might call eccentric at the
best of times, was absolutely, delightfully, mad as a box of frogs on this
occasion. From his between song banter (including his birthday wishes to fans
‘on behalf of the beat combo’), to whatever it was he was trying to do to Mark
(who discovered that it’s not possible to play keyboards and run away from the band’s token lunatic at the same time!) at
the beginning of Neverland he was more
entertaining than ever – though some were a little disconcerted by his
behaviour. After making no sense whatsoever in his spoken introduction of The Other Half he stopped to ask if he
sounded drunk, to which a resounding cry of ‘YESSSSSSSS!’ was the crowd’s
response. I don’t reckon he was though
(and I’ll leave it at that...) and his emotional engagement and vocal delivery
throughout the songs was as consistently excellent as ever.
Sadly, as mentioned
above, the venue was (to be kind to it) a bit of a hole and the audience were
split into those at the front who had a great time, and those at the back who
couldn’t hear the talking (sadly this included at least one of those birthday
celebrators) or the quieter musical passages and couldn’t see much of the stage
at all. Luckily I was towards the front, and I would rate this show my
favourite of the three – apologies to those who suffered a less pleasant
experience – I don’t mean to rub salt into the wound!
h in London
I’ve
read a lot over the years about how London audiences are subdued and
unforgiving compared to those in the rest of the UK, but the Forum gig proved
this to be utter poppycock – it was one of the most buoyant audiences I’ve ever
had the pleasure of being amongst (well, apart from the 16-year old girl who
sat on the floor throughout....what was that about??) – and on a Sunday night
too! Neither h’s vocals or the sound generally seemed quite as sharp as the
other nights to my ears, but nor was there anything wrong with them. The band
certainly seemed to be enjoying having space to move around in again after the
cramped set-up of Sheffield and might well have played all night had they not
been recording a live album on the night (ready for punters to collect as they left,
if they so desired), which meant a strict limit to two hours and sixteen
minutes. I’m still not sure how I’ve so far managed to convince myself that I
don’t really need to buy it (but if you’re not as daft as me you can order it
HERE for a limited time only!). Ending with Estonia
(dedicated to Neil and the rest of the Marillion-loving Armstrong family)
was a slightly downbeat finish to my week on the road, but proved my emotional
buttons were still being pressed right up to the very end.
Along
with seeing three gigs and going to a couple of places I’d never been before,
one of the deciding factors in precisely which gigs to attend was the chance to
see three different support bands. The Reasoning, Mr. So and So and DeeExpus
all put in fine performances, and while there wasn’t much between them, it was
The Reasoning who impressed the most – despite my general and irrational
dislike of female-fronted rock/prog/music of any genre. It was sufficient to
prompt me to preorder their forthcoming Adventures
in Neverland album in any case, and showed them to be in fine form after a
difficult year (this was the first gig for their new guitarist, brought in to
replace a predecessor who hasn’t been seen since March). None of the bands were
a match for the headliners though, who reminded me during each song, just why
they are my favourite band, and the fellow fans I met along the way (turns out I have another fan living about half a street away from me!) only added to the experience. Therefore all three gigs can be rated no less than varying shades of 10/10.
Extra
tracks closed two of the shows, with Between You and Me and Estonia featured in Cardiff and London, respectively.
PS I’m well aware that
Marillion are not everyone’s cup of tea, and I have no bones with that (I just
pity them what don’t get ‘em!), so in the name of balance here is a (thoughtful)
largely negative review of their Wolves gig.
Holidays in Zélande: Marillion Weekend 25-28 March 2011 Part 3: Saturday and Sunday night gigs.
As you will have noted from the previous instalments, pretty much everything that takes place at a Marillion Weekend is special and enjoyable. Nevertheless the main attraction will always remain the gigs themselves. The band have made a habit of outdoing themselves time after time (a trajectory which surely must be near its end now? People have been saying this for years it seems…) and this weekend was no exception. The 2009 sets were impressive – the first celebrated h’s 20 years with the band (Yep, as his signature t-shirt from a few years back highlighted, he’s been the ‘new lead singer since 1989’…) by playing a song that represented each of those years (and ended with a couple of Fish-era goodies for the fun of it), while the Sunday night consisted solely of the band’s epics (and epic by Marillion standards means anything from 10-18 minutes in length). In previous years the themes have been announced (not necessarily officially!) in advance, but this year they were closely-guarded secrets…until we arrived on Friday we had no inkling of what lay ahead. Truth be told, even with the themes announced in the programme….we had no inkling of what lay ahead…
Saturday night: A-Z
This certainly caused a buzz with wild speculation as to what would be involved. A lot of people doubted that the band would really play 26 songs at all (and to be fair, they were right – just!) – after all, apart from it being a mammoth undertaking, what would they do about X and Z? Somebody suggested that the theme wasn’t literal, and that they’d do one song per album – someone else that the letters wouldn’t be represented by song titles (e.g. B could mean Bluebird, which would see Out of This World played – well, it was a nice idea…).
As it turned out, it was the obvious route that was taken (albeit with a small amount of ‘cheating’) but, with a few exceptions, this is not to imply that the set list was in any way predictable! Indeed, after opener Asylum Satellite #1 h confirmed the theme, then added something along the lines of a self-deprecating, ‘To get the energy levels up….we’re going to play something even slower than the last one’. So, first I thought, ah, Between You and Me! Then, ooh, Brave! But it was, in fact, none of the above. From that moment I realised trying to predict what was coming was a futile exercise and it was best to just go along for the ride and allow the surprises to unfold in real time. Not that you couldn’t make educated guesses at times, based on what guitar God was being handed, or if h was making a move to sit at his keyboard – and sometimes the screens would display the relevant letter alongside artwork from the song’s parent album before h got around to introducing the next song, but for the most part h caused cheers of excitement and surprise with his announcements as the night progressed.
I won’t go over the full 25-song set in detail (yes, ‘only’ 25 songs – and if you’d care to guess which letter was skipped…well, I can pretty much guarantee that you’d be wrong…) but among the highlights for me were two tracks from The Hard Shoulderbeing given their first live airings – Especially True is a favourite of mine, while Half the World shone in a live setting. Sticking to the more recent material played we also heard a good chunk of 2007’s vastly underrated Somewhere Else album. Well, I thought it was underrated, but judging from the cheers for the likes of The Wound and The Last Century For Man (which, if you believe everything you read on the MOLF – that’s the Marillion online forum, for the uninitiated – is pretty much the worst song ever) I’m far from the only one to appreciate it!
While the set was largely made up of the lesser-heard tracks (as has become a tradition for Saturday sets at conventions), a few fan favourites were also thrown into the mix – two obvious examples being Fantastic Place and King – the latter’s ever-building-crescendo of a climax seeming to go on somewhat longer than Rothers and Mark were expecting, judging by their glances in Ian Mosley’s direction, as they awaited his cue to ‘end the noise’ (indeed, being close enough to see the interplay between the band members during moments like this, was a right treat for me, these bits rarely make their way onto DVDs!)
To keep the set length below four hours a few odd choices had to be included, most noticeably the inclusion of one of the -2 minutes Marbles vignettes to represent ‘M’ (the sheer audacity of doing this made me chuckle, I have to say) and Misplaced Childhood’s two minute intro Pseudo Silk Kimono being performed by h for the very first time (with lasers! Actually the lasers popped up here and there across the Saturday and Sunday nights, but PSK is the only song I can definitely remember them being used for). The biggest cheat though came when, instead of doing Incommunicado or I Will Walk on Water (to name but two possibilities) ‘I’ became time for an ‘Intermission’ (actually the sheer audacity of doing this made me chuckle, I have to say – oh wait, have I already said that about something else?! Better not mention h's pirate joke then...). The intermission was short-lived (which caught out some folk out who’d popped off for a smoke – that’ll learn ‘em…) as the band came back without h (who needed a longer break than the rest of them, we were told) to perform Jigsaw – another track that had not been performed live since the 80s. The idea here was that the audience would do the singing, but sadly this didn’t quite come off as a) nobody was sure where to come in and b) it turned out we didn’t know the words quite as well as we should have. Whoops!
Thankfully we redeemed ourselves with a proper Fish-era singalong later on in the set (‘S is for…Steve Rothery’ h declared, as God played one of his signature guitar licks and we went a bit mental). The applause at the end was phenomenal – and it’s not as if it had been muted up to that point! This led very quickly to another key audience moment as during Three Minute Boy 3000 screaming lunatics ROARED (for about…yeah, three minutes!) at the relevant point during the line, ‘Now they scream as they run after him’. The band didn’t know what had hit them…I’m sure at least one band member was in danger of wetting themselves with laughter by the end of it…but we let them carry on with the song eventually…
Actually, there’s no getting away from the fact that the S/T section was the absolute highlight of the night, but the end of the show almost matched it, as XYZ were dealt with in different ways. Following the precedent set by the intermission I fully expected the band to turn into Snagglepuss and ‘eXit stage left’ for X, but instead they brought on Dave Gregory (ex–XTC, former h-band member and current Tin Spirits guitarist)as a special guest and performed XTC’s Senses Working Overtime. Okay, so the song title didn’t begin with an ‘X’ but who cares? Y wasn’t a problem, with You’re Gone making a welcome return to the set, but as we reached the final number of the evening the band admitted that they’d struggled with coming up with anything for Z – even considering writing something especially for it. In the end by combining their own Separated Out with Led Zep classics Rock N Roll and Kashmirwe got Zeparated Out, which proved the perfect end to an epic night. If you didn’t have a wide grin enveloping your entire head at the end of that there was something wrong with you, that’s for sure...
Sunday night: The Glow Must Go On
There was far less pre-gig speculation for Sunday night, mainly because nobody really had a clue as to what the theme could refer to. Shortly after the Tin Spirits had finished their opening set for the Sunday, Lucy came on stage to announce that glowsticks were going to be handed out to us all, and demonstrated the ‘snap and shake’ method required to ‘activate the glow’ (Hmmm, sounds like something out of Star Trek. Urgh!) Basically what we had to do was snap the stick….then shake the stick. Snap. And shake. Suffice to say, we all seemed to manage it (that girl could teach elephants to skateboard, I tells ya!) But we still didn’t know why we needed them…although the reason would soon become clear.
After opening with one of the all-time classics from their catalogue, Afraid of Sunlight h revealed that (with a few exceptions) we’d be voting on the setlist for the night. The band are clearly Tories, as we only had two songs to choose from each time, with the song receiving the most shouting and waving of glow sticks being ‘elected’ first-past-the-post style and performed. (Just as well really, if they’d given us 6 choices and trialled the AV voting system things could have dragged on a bit…) I don’t deliberately set out to be contrary, but I did seem to be voting against the grain of popular opinion for most of the night – this hardly mattered as whatever the band ended up playing was more than acceptable (well, okay, I admit I had a bit of a snooze during Brave, which works perfectly well in the context of the album, but in isolation is…well, not my favourite, it seems).
A combination of getting used to the voting system and technical problems (h’s in-ear monitors were playing up for starters, which meant he had to keep dashing off stage after each song to try and get them fixed) made the pacing a bit shambolic to begin with (albeit in a fun way) but once that side of things were sorted the stage was set for one of the best gigs in Marillion history.
The band clearly had an idea of what was going to be chosen at times, to the extent that when Made Again convincingly beat Beyond You they had to admit they had been so certain we wouldn’t want Made Again that they hadn’t rehearsed it – so played Beyond You. Made Again IS great, but who were the fools passing up an opportunity to hear Beyond You in the first place?! In the end they played the first section twice, being rudely interrupted by, well, the section of the audience that I was in, the first time as we gestured frantically for them to stop and send the medics over! (A few rows behind me a chap had fallen over – initially that was all there was too it, but it soon became clear that he’d fainted and wasn’t waking up…and then he started vomiting – mercifully I didn’t know the last part until a few days later, but I believe he was fine in the end – eeek!) Afterwards Mark actually asked the others a couple of times if they were going to start again from the beginning, as though picking up where they’d left off was a viable option!
Other match-ups were clearly rigged, with fan-favourites being pitted against the likes of Most Toys and Hope For the Future (i.e. the complete opposite of fan favourites) and while I would genuinely have liked to hear HFTF even I wouldn’t have voted against Neverland for it!
By the same token there were others that went down to the wire, in fact when given the choice between Easter and The Great Escape it became obvious there was no clear winner, so a chant of ‘BOTH! BOTH! BOTH! BOTH!’ quickly grew in volume, in the end h decided that we should sing Easter to him (which meant I got to see Rothers perform THAT solo from just a few metres away – thanks h!). But that wasn’t the end of the story, as a new chant came for ‘GREAT ESCAPE!’ ‘GREAT ESCAPE!’ – the band had no option in the end but to give into public demand, although they didn’t let us get away with it again (as Pete said at one point, ‘If we keep doing both we’ll be here until Wednesday – that’s NOT a choice, by the way…’!) meaning we narrowly missed out on Estonia in favour of Out of This World and were treated to This Strange Engine as the final numberat the expense of Ocean Cloud (which of course, led to the now infamous ‘cricket bat incident’, which I’d love to tell you all about, but can’t, as it’d mean having to explain far too much for the benefit of those who don’t know why h has a cricket bat in the first place…you’ll just have to hope it makes the DVD…)
Of course that wasn’t precisely that, and a final encore for the weekend was demanded. The printed setlist would later reveal that this was originally intended to be one final choice for us, but Mark announced that it had been a terrible idea giving us the vote and they were going back to being a dictatorship. I suspect a vote would have made little difference in any case, but the musical side of the weekend ended with Happiness is the Road, an obvious choice in many ways (but it was probably time for something obvious by this point!). With confetti cannons filling the venue with gold (a visual metaphor for the music played on the weekend.you might say..) and one last audience singalong the band had completed their marathon 3 day, 55+ song setlist.
Of course there were still parties (and too many farewells) to be had post-show, and then the agony of leaving our perfect bubble known as Marillion-World and returning to 'real' life (by which time another Holidays in Eden lyric had become apt: 'And I'm paying in pain...but it's the cost of the high') but we all knew we had witnessed something truly special and were blessed to have found our way into the cult of Marillion - I mean, really, what other band would ever attempt something like this? Let alone continue to improve on it every two years. If yourdoubt your favourite band would do this there is one easy solution - listen to Marillion and make them your new favourite band...they'll even help you start out for free with a sampler CD you can request here: http://www.marillion.com/listen/index.htm (if only I'd known about this I would have become a fan a good few years earlier myself, but never mind, I'm here now...) They're not for everyone, I'll grant you that, but that's only because not everyone has taste.
And the convention story isn't over completely, even for 2011 - while the taking over a holiday park aspect of it cannnot be recreated outside of Holland, the gigs are being performed, literally as I type, in Montreal, and then again in a month's time in the UK (see you there!) With the exception of Mark again organising a fun run (on his 50th birthday no less...Mark...cripes, whatever is wrong with you....etc!) in Montreal the events side of things is barren (but you try and prevent Marillion fans from taking over a bar or three and making their own fun) but as ever it's the music that matters the most. And there'll be plenty of that!
Holidays in Zélande: Marillion Weekend 25-28 March 2011, Part 1...
Intro
Imagine an entire holiday park being taken over for a weekend by fans of your favourite band, drawn from more nations than you can name off the top of your head. Now say you can watch said band on the telly in your chalets, hear their every song being piped through the walls as you enjoy your breakfast/booze/lunch/booze/dinner/booze, and even bump into the band members as you (and they) go about their business, with no security necessary.
Add to that a special museum devoted to the band, racks of merchandise to blow your hard-earned Euros on, a wide range of activities (including a couple that aren’t even directly band-related, just to prove it can be done) and some great support bands for the gigs. Yes, of course there’d be gigs in this dream scenario – let’s say one per night, perhaps the first could see the band perform one of their classic albums in it’s entirety, possibly throwing in some non-album b-sides for good measure…for the other two, well, how about a mix of classics, fan favourites and maybe a handful of tracks that have rarely – or never - been performed live before?
If you’re a Marillion fan you don’t have to imagine – you just have to find the cash to get yourself to their biannual convention in Port Zélande, Holland, where all of this (and more!) takes place. The latest has just been (and gone, sadly) and for the first - but definitely NOT the last time - I was in attendance – and revelling in my own personal Heaven. Over the course of the next blog or three I’ll be documenting the event, only partially with a view to making anyone who wasn’t there insanely jealous, but also to reveal to those who aren’t already ‘in the know’ just how special this band (and their fans) are…
Part one (that’s this one folks!) will cover initial thoughts upon arrival, and the Friday night gig, part two the various support acts and other activities and part three the mammoth Saturday and Sunday gigs, so let’s begin…
Arrival
Following a few lovely days in Amsterdam with ‘a friend’ (sorry, private joke…) we parted ways around lunchtime on Friday – I headed straight back to Schipol Airport. Finding Andy from the Web UK (UK fan club) was nice and easy, and he pointed me in the direction of the coach service that was transporting coachload after coachload of fans to the event – it didn’t take long to fill the coach and we were on our way, on the very scenic 90-minute journey to Centre Parcs, Port Zélande. I had half-expected to be stuck in a coach full of madmen tunelessly rehearsing the vocal hook from Cover My Eyes, but thankfully (or do I mean sadly? Can’t decide…) that wasn’t the case.
Upon arrival at Centre Parcs the staff (who somehow remained immensely friendly and helpful throughout the entire weekend) provided us with our welcome packs and directions to our chalets – I arrived at mine (the very handily-located 181) to find my sharing buddies were already well-ensconced and ready for action. Unfortunately one of our expected roomies was unable to make it, due to family illness, but this did mean that I got a room to myself (and one with it’s own sink at that - convention veterans Phil and Gerald had passed on the sink in order to take the room where they could actually move the beds more than two inches apart from each other – fair enough!).
I quickly made up my bed and had a quick glance through the programme of events for the weekend which, amongst other things, revealed the themes for the Saturday and Sunday gigs (The enticing A-Z and the intriguing The Glow Must Go On, respectively; we had known for months that the Friday night set would be based on 1991’s Holidays in Eden album, but the rest was a mystery) before heading back down the slightly treacherous spiral staircase to join Phil, Gerald and Pete (like me, a convention first-timer) for the first drink of the weekend and engage in some Marillion-related chat with like-minded fans (a pleasure that never manages to wear off!)
Phil wisely suggested an early visit to the Merch stand, and was seen over an hour later returning with bags of goodies and a hole in his wallet where there had previously been 200+ Euros! Pete and I limited ourselves to an official weekend t-shirt each, with a Holidays in Eden album cover-inspired design,complete with the title of this blog entry as the very apt lyrical quote on the back. (By Sunday morning – probably earlier – the only sizes still in stock were small and XXL, so thanks Phil for preventing any threat of procrastination on my part!). Like the Centre Parcs staff the merch team were delightful despite being completely rushed off their feet and having to constantly apologise for the fact that the M-Tube DVD sampler had somehow not managed to arrive in Holland! With this important ritual out of the way there now wasn’t long before the band would be hitting the stage for the first time and the Holiday would really begin…
Gig 1: Holidays in Eden
The Holidays album has its detractors (admittedly not many of them, but as with detractors of anything they do like to go on about it just that bit too loudly/often!) and has always had the unenviable tag of being Marillion’s ‘pop’ album, but no one can (Yep, pun intended…) deny the power of opening track Splintering Heart and it is one of the most perfect gig-openers imaginable. Due to it’s extended sequenced intro H (as lead vocalist Steve Hogarth is affectionately known) is usually on stage alone for the first two minutes or so, but this time he was above the stage, the curtains opening to reveal him perched on a lighting rig, which was gradually lowered as the song went on, before he finally reached the stage with the rest of the band. The final line of the sequenced part of the song, ‘But not as much as this!’ was roared by the crowd who then went – entirely expectedly – absolutely mental as the band kicked in and Rothers/God (as guitarist Steve Rothery is accurately known…) delivered the first of his 50+ mind-blowing solos of the weekend.
The predictability of a set centred around a single album can take away some of the magic of a gig (not a problem for the other two nights) but the band provided a cracking reading of a great album, and even managed to add a tiny bit of unpredictability by playing Waiting to Happen early. Given that this happened straight after h mentioned they were playing the album in order (and knew what that order was because they’d ‘looked it up’) it’s hard to know if this was a wind-up or evidence that somebody had tinkered with the relevant Wikipedia page – either way it did make me worry (briefly) that they were going to skip two songs completely!
The epic This Town trilogy that closes the album was an undisputed highlight of the weekend (see the 100 Nights section above) and the band closed the set with b-side How Can it Hurt – not a classic by any means, but great to hear nonetheless. It wasn’t long before they returned for the encore, comprising second Holidays b-side A Collection and non-related track Man of a Thousand Faces, the implied link here being that, like A Collection, Man was an acoustic-based song with a John Helmer lyric (Helmer contributed lyrics to most albums for the first ten years of h’s tenure with the band). The song had the audience singing along to the ‘Hey, yeah yeah yeah’ section at the end, and we weren’t going to stop singing for a daft little reason such as, oooh, the band leaving the stage, so kept it going for a good few minutes after they’d gone.
The band returned once more – sans H – with keyboardist Mark Kelly apologising for the comparative brevity of the set but assuring us that they’d be making up for it over the next two nights (and truer words were never spoken!). The absence of h was soon explained as the opening notes of (probably) my favourite song of all – The Invisible Man – sent the crowd back into frenzy mode and h reappeared in his ‘old man with cane’ guise (sorry, this isn’t easy to explain, so I’m not even going to try…) to begin this 13-minute epic, and delivering as fine a rendition as I’ve yet to hear. As ever the climax (which in written form looks something like: ‘I will scream again – I am perfectly sane! I am PERFECTLY SANE!!!! But I ammmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm the invisible maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan…’) made my head want to explode at this depiction of utter helplessness - gets me every time I tell ya…shortly after this the first gig really was over…and yet the weekend had barely begun…
