I enjoyed the Lady Fantasy demo very much! I'm not the biggest Marillion fan by any stretch so there is much about the band I don't know. Does Lady Fantasy surface on an album down the road in the band's career?
I enjoyed the Lady Fantasy demo very much! I'm not the biggest Marillion fan by any stretch so there is much about the band I don't know. Does Lady Fantasy surface on an album down the road in the band's career?
I started playing the Garden Party tape out of curiosity. I've often wondered why fans want to hear every raw, awful sounding demo from a band. I made it through about 30 seconds and thought to myself why the hell am I listening to this? I guess fans just like to hear how a song evolved from beginning to end. I get that, but MOST of the time I'd rather just hear the finished version. I do agree that there are sometimes when a demo can reveal a unique insight into a band and their creative thought process.
That Lady Fantasy is nice, thought I would like to hear it sung by Fish.
I'm another person who was introduced to Marillion through Fugazi in 1984. It will always be my favourite Marillion album and i never tire of listening to it, particularly the latter three tracks which I used to listen to literally day after school when I first got the album.
Yeah, though I haven't listened to any of this stuff in years, I loved Fugazi. I first got a Marillion album in 1996 I think, the debut. I first heard of them when a friend was over and I put on Genesis Selling England by the Pound. When the first track started, he asked me if it was Marillion, lol! I asked who Marillion was and we both realized that it must be Marillion that sounded like Genesis ;-) Anyway, a few years later I got Script and loved it. Got Fugazi a few weeks later and loved it almost as much, though over time I came to consider it the best of the Fish albums. I like Misplaced Childhood, but I still think it's the weakest of the Fish era.
I've never been able to enjoy Hogarth Marillion, though I always thought Hogarth was a great singer. I've tried a few different times to get into that Marillion, and failed each time, mostly out of boredom and the feeling that there must be something else I'd rather be listening to.
Anyway, thanks for posting those early demos, very interesting and not half bad (though probably not something I would need to have to hear again).
I've always wondered about this one line in Garden Party: "Angie chalks another blue, mother smiles she did it too."
Anyone have a clue what this means? I'm guessing "chalk" might mean hitting someone with say a rock or something and blue probably refers to a debutante or high society person. But I could be completely wrong.
From the alt.music.marillion FAQ - not exactly conclusive, but historically awesome!:
> To chalk another blue ?
> Come on guys, enlighten me !
A `blue' is a sporting honour. To obtain a blue you have to represent
Cambridge University against Oxford in a major sport. You could be in the
team all year but if you miss the Oxford game due to injury you don't get
your blue. The major sports are rowing, rugby, football (aka soccer),
cricket, (field) hockey, boxing + perhaps one or two others. If you
represent the university in a minor sport (eg. tennis, squash, badminton,
ice hockey, basketball...) you get a `half-blue'. Receiving a blue
entitles you to numerous privileges, such wearing a hideous light blue
blazer (dark blue at Oxford), and gives you considerable status amongst
those who consider athletics more important than academics.
[=== End of included message ===]
Further comments added later:
Thus `Angie chalks another blue' can on one level be interpreted as
meaning that Angie is a sort of sports groupie, who is perhaps trying to
sleep with all the members of the university rugby team and has just
succeeded in bedding another player - and chalked up (tallied) this
conquest on her personal score sheet.
In addition, this line can also be taken as a reference to snooker (a game
with some basic similarities to pool which is popular among the upper
classes in Britain). One of the balls used in snooker is blue. Also the
chalk rubbed on the tips of the cues used in snooker is blue - so
conceivably this line contains all sorts of phallic imagery!
Furthermore:
[actually, I've heard that it's slang for taking uppers, ie blues.
there are other references to blues in Quadraphenia.--kbibb]
[There is a simpler explanation. Here in England someone who is somehow
connected with the royal family, or a Lord, Peer, etc., is said to be "blue
blooded". Hence "blue" from the song.--Paul Irvine]
So, in conclusion, this one line (four words) manages to make allusions to
three different aspects of upper class decadence - a fine example of
Fish's lyrical brilliance.
I agree with practically all this except I also like the majority of the Hogarth albums.
I thought that I was possibly the only Marillion fan that didn't rate Misplaced Childhood. A few nice things on side one might have made a decent E.P. I suppose. I will say though, they might not have made Clutching At Straws without it. At the second attempt, they nailed the short-song format.
As to Fugazi, I agree that it's strong from beginning to end with Jigsaw being probably my favourite Marillion song.
This! Just digging around youtube for old concerts. I knew a boot of this show existed but I've never heard it. Decent quality too, for what it is.
Marillion as a four piece, sans bass, following Diz's departure, prior to Pete's arrival.
oh goodie an early-Marillion thread, i’ll just post this into this thread:
Been learning how to play Grendel recently, to create/play for fun an arrangement for several acoustic guitars. Not a professional musician, and no idea of when I’d record and put it on the internet. Though did upload for a few off-forum folks this 2-minute snippet recorded during practice and I’m now posting it here at PE too. FYI this was only quickly recorded using a laptop’s built-in mic and really old guitar strings on this particular acoustic guitar, but it turned out okay. Playing old Marillion stuff on acoustic guitar at home is a fun hobby and basically what I’m working on for this particular song is more multi-tracked than heard here — this is just some practice bits with deliberately limited multi-tracking. Will keep you updated at some point in the future about where I’m at with the song. I don’t know how long I’ll keep this at youtube.
Update: This (my fun hobby of learning/playing/similar Grendel) has been on hiatus since the time I posted that video to youtube (it's probably been a month at least) (see: my previous post above), and will continue to be on hiatus for a while, for many reasons (such as, many hours given by me and my wife in recent weeks to learning in detail about some cat health topics, we have two cats relatively old). But this fun Grendel work will continue! At the time of posting that video, I had learned to play / arranged about maybe 70-80% of the song, for playing it on guitar, because it's fun.
Above, in 2018 I posted about a brief Marillion Grendel acoustic guitar practice session recording (see above), I haven’t continued working on that song fyi, but noticed a few days ago that I’ve made a 2nd similar recording around that time, for one of the other segments I had worked on around that same time, and this 2nd recording (also a practice session) is even more basic than the one above, and uploaded it to youtube today, here’s the link fyi for anyone interested in that classic song, the description there in youtube elaborates a bit.
"just practicing Marillion's Grendel on acoustic guitar, part 2"
Favourite Marillion moment:
"The Flaming Shroud".... In thick Scottish accent
Making Wikipedia marginally more interesting at:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCul...PXchSo_vDxtcLg
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