Tag: Marillion

In Concert: The Heart of Marillion

On By kruekuttIn progressive rock9 Comments

Marillion at 20 Monroe Live, Grand Rapids, Michigan, February 18, 2018.

Waiting for Marillion to take the stage, my thoughts drifted to the rest of those gathering in this well-appointed concert club.  Why were they here?

Doubtless, there were locals who, when they heard Marillion was returning to Grand Rapids after 20+ years, anticipated pure nostalgia — “Kayleigh,” “Incommunicado,” “Hooks In You,” “No One Can,” fixtures of local rock radio in the early 1990s.  After all, why else would a band with no more than a cult following tour the States, if not to play the hits?

Then there were the hardcore fans, the ones I’d hung with in Facebook groups for a couple of years now.  People from GR, Kalamazoo, and Detroit who’ve traveled nationally and internationally to see the band since their last Michigan stops — some 30, 40 or more times.  The folks who converged on this mid-size Midwestern city from (for example): Bangor, Maine; Hillsboro, Oregon; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Baja, Mexico; and Stoke-on-Trent, England, telling stories of their first Marillion experiences, sometimes stretching back more than four decades.  Not to mention “The Nine,” as they named themselves, who’ve seen every show on the current US tour.   They all have their favorite songs — but they knew that much more was coming than a rote run-through of career high points.

And then there was me — a Marillion fan since Seasons End, but only on my fourth show (still way behind King Crimson and Rush), bringing my wife and two friends for their first experience of the band, ten minutes away from my house.  I couldn’t help but wonder: what connects us?  Why this band?  What’s at the heart of this experience?

mezz preshow

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Marketing Marillion: More

On By kruekuttIn progressive rock2 Comments

With their USA tour winding down, Marillion have announced street dates for the rest of their 2018 limited edition live reissues through earMusic,  listed below with original years of release:

  • March 23: Unplugged at the Walls (1999) and Tumbling Down the Years (2010)
  • May 25:  Smoke and Mirrors (both 2006)
  • July 6: Happiness Is Cologne (2009) and Popular Music (2005)
  • September 21: Live in Glasgow (1993) and Brave Live (2013)

Merch copies of the “Limited USA Tour Edition” of FEAR (which includes a sampler of the live reissues) sold out at Marillion’s recent Grand Rapids show, but it’s still available from Amazon at this writing.

Other confirmed upcoming releases include:

  • March 9: Brave Deluxe Edition
  • Spring: Live at the Royal Albert Hall
  • Fall: Marillion Weekend 2017: Chile
  • ??? (nope, can’t say any more …)

Finally, watch this space for a review of that Grand Rapids show, coming soon!

 

— Rick Krueger

Marketing Marillion

On By kruekuttIn progressive rock1 Comment

As Marillion tours the United States (stopping at my home town this coming Sunday night!  SQUEEEEE!!!),  I’ve found the mechanics of marketing this band in a country where they’re at best a cult act fascinating.  How do you sell albums beyond your core fanbase, especially at retail, when your last album came out 16 months ago?  And, what else might that core fanbase want, or have missed?  As Marillion manager Lucy Jordache commented in the group’s North American Fan Page on Facebook, “Many retailers wanted something ‘new’ to sell and therefore advertise the tour and also press didn’t really want to cover any tour dates unless they had a ‘new product.'” So Marillion and their retail distributors earMusic (the rock division of Germany’s Edel Group) have responded with a twofold strategy.

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Love

On By bradbirzerIn progressive rock3 Comments

To celebrate this 14th of February–the Feast of St. Valentine–here are fifteen tracks to enjoy.   All about love, but not necessarily romantic love.  Blessings, Brad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkPy18xW1j8

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Steve Hackett’s Latest Single: When the Heart Rules the Mind

On By bradbirzerIn progressive rock3 Comments

GTR from LastFMGuitar Mastermind Steve Hackett has re-recorded the GTR classic, “When the Heart Rules the Mind,” with Marillion’s Steve Rothery.  The new version will be available tomorrow for purchase.

[With thanks to Prog Magazine for posting this first]

Marillion BRAVE pre-order news for U.S.

On By bradbirzerIn progressive rock2 Comments
marillion brave
De-Luxe!!!

Dear Fellow Citizens of the United States,

At the moment, it is cheaper to order the 5-disc Steven Wilson remix deluxe version of the forthcoming BRAVE from Marillion through Marillion.com than it is through amazon.com.

At Marillion.com, including shipping, $42.

At amazon.com, including shipping, $49.98.

This has been a public service announcement from your friends at progarchy.com.

Yours, Brad

Rick’s Reissue Roundup: Attack of the Spring Box Sets!

On By kruekuttIn progressive rock3 Comments

Shed a tear for the hardcore prog collector — actually, don’t.  This week has been absolutely crammed with articulate announcements looking to part fans from their hard-earned cash or pull them deeper into debt.  And no, I’m not talking about the upcoming Derek Smalls solo album.  Check out what’s coming our way as winter (hopefully) gives way to the spring of 2018:

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My Best of 2017???

On By bradbirzerIn progressive rock2 Comments

Let me just state from the outset that I love that Chris had the gumption to post his favorites albums of the year already.  We’re not even in December, Chris!  Love it.

So, just as an experiment, I checked my player’s settings and calculated the albums I listened to the most.  While I can’t claim this to be a fair statement of what I think the best of the year was–after all, some albums, such as Glass Hammer’s UNTOLD TALES.  It’s only had a month to compete against some albums that have had 11 months.  Still, it’s a marker.

Additionally, because my player calculates the number of plays for the year total, it registers all albums in my collections, not just those that came out in 2017.  So, by the number, folks, by the numbers—the ten most played albums in the Birzer house for the last 11 months.

No. 10 most played of 2017:

Glass Hammer Untold

 

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Clutching at Straws at 30

On By NickIn progressive rock5 Comments

It’s been 30 years since the release of Marillion’s Clutching at Straws, the band’s fourth album and their final recording with the legendary frontman Fish. For many, this also makes it the last true Marillion album. Although the band may have continued, to both critical and commercial success with Steve Hogarth at the helm, they never truly recaptured the poetic grandeur and lyrical luxuriance of those days under Derek W. Dick aka Fish.

Marillion_Fish_OpenAir_Mannheim_Maimarktgelaende_1986_06_21
Source: Wikimedia

“I am a writer who can sing, rather than a singer who can write,” explains Fish, who will retire from the industry next year after a final album and tour. “I was also an arsehole and my ego was out of control at that time.”

“That time” was the sudden pop star status that the success of their third album, a number one album no less, had brought the band, which included Top of the Pops appearances for the hit singles, “Kayleigh” and “Lavender”. It was the excess of these experiences, along with the problems it brought to his own private life, that Fish channeled into Clutching at Straws.

We get a taste of life on the road with “Hotel Hobbies” and “Sugar Mice”, Fish’s ego unleashed in “Incommunicado”, and even a track that Fish describes as his resignation letter to the band in “That Time of the Night”. There is melancholy, there is melodrama and there is more than a touch of self-pity; perhaps even self-loathing in the half a dozen or so songs of the original release.

Clutching at Straws was an altogether different beast from the mercurial third album, with its haunting lyrics and sweeping melodies flowing seamlessly from one to the next. Clutching at Straws was a collection of distinct songs with a much darker, heavier theme, which exposed the problems within the band and foreshadowed their breakup the following year.

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA
Source: Wikimedia

Nicknamed Fish because he apparently drank like one, it’s hard not to read autobiographically into the sad central character of “Torch”; propping up the bar, failing in his marriage and family life and insisting on “Just for the Record” that he’s going to put it down and turn his life around.

There are echoes of the poetry of the third album in tracks like “Sugar Mice” and the way the brilliantly observed “Warm Wet Circles” mourns the loss of the age of innocence, but even these tracks are bittersweet.

For all the bolshy bravado of “Slainte Mhath” and his dreaming big of “adverts for American Express cards, talk shows on prime time TV, a villa in France, my own cocktail bar”, the bitterness of hollow fame is laid bare for all to see. When the final track pronounces the band to be “terminal cases that keep talking medicine, pretending the end isn’t quite that near”, it’s clear that despite there being a four-second track listed as “Happy Ending”, there is nothing like that on the horizon for Marillion and Fish.

Unlike the previous album, we won’t be waking up to find that it was all just a bad dream. This time, the nightmare is all too real: the band of brothers split asunder by the arrival of fame and fortune.

It may have been Fish’s personal favorite of his four Marillion outings, and it may have been voted number 37 on the Rolling Stone’s 50 Greatest Prog Rock Albums of All Time, but in the end, they were always just clutching at straws.

A few months later, in a row over the way the band was being handled, Fish gave them an ultimatum to choose between their manager and him. They chose the manager. And the rest, sadly, is history.

 

Marillion Live in the USA February 2018

On By kruekuttIn progressive rockLeave a comment

by Rick Krueger

Hot on the heels of next year’s Cruise to the Edge on February 3-8, Marillion will mount the second United States leg of their ongoing FEAR tour.  This time around, they’ll play towns and cities in the South, Northeast and Midwest they haven’t visited for a while.  Dates are as follows:

 

Friday 9 February               The Plaza Live Orlando, FL
Saturday 10 February         Variety Playhouse Atlanta, GA
Monday 12 February          Carolina Theatre Durham, NC
Tuesday 13 February          Palace Theatre Greensburg, PA
Thursday 15 February        Town Ballroom Buffalo, NY

Friday 16 February             Royal Oak Music Theatre, Royal Oak, MI

Sunday 18 February           20 Monroe Live Grand Rapids, MI
Monday 19 February         The Arcada Theatre St Charles, IL
Wednesday 21 February   Granada Theater Dallas, TX

 

I can vouch for the Royal Oak Music Theatre in metro Detroit (where I’ve seen Todd Rundgren and Steve Hackett) and the Arcada Theatre in west Chicagoland (where I’ve seen Neal Morse with District 97 opening) as fine, welcoming places for this kind of show.  But I’m especially jazzed that the boys are coming to the sleek new venue 20 Monroe Live in Grand Rapids, my home town.  Steve Hackett brought his terrific Genesis Revisited with Hackett Classics tour there this past February; it turned out to be a great spot for a prog show.  And this booking answers the fervent wishes and prayers of more Marillionaires than you might think!

Owing to a long-standing communal love of prog and the dedicated advocacy of local radio legend Aris Hampers, there’s been an eager Marillion fanbase here ever since they opened for Utopia at the Lowell Showboat, touring Script for A Jester’s Tear.  By the late 1980s, the band was regularly filling DeVos Hall, Grand Rapids’ mid-size auditorium.  When I moved here in 1990, I was pleasantly shocked to hear “Kayleigh,” “Lavender” and even “Incommunicado” regularly on drive-time rock radio!  And the enthusiasm continued after Steve Hogarth replaced Fish; his The Invisible Man: Diaries 1991-1997 recounts a memorable GR weekend of packed in-store appearances, dinner and entertainment with Hampers, and a sold-out club show (yep, I was there) while touring Holidays in Eden.

As Marillion’s profile faded in the US, their visits here petered out as well; the last time the boys played Grand Rapids was on the crowd-funded tour for This Strange Engine.  From the buzz on the band’s North American Fan page on Facebook, already building since this morning’s announcement, GR fans will be more than ready to give the band (along with fans from all over the country, the continent and the world) a warm, grateful welcome.  If Marillion isn’t playing near you on this tour, feel free to come visit us next February!  (Yes, it’ll probably be cold — but between the indoor skywalks that run for nearly a mile and the unbelievable density of craft breweries, brewpubs & craft distilleries downtown, there will be ways for everyone to stay warm.)

Tickets for the tour go on sale to the general public on Friday, October 6.  Venue presales may start before then; the Facebook page will be the best place to get info, presale codes, etc.