Review of Marillion's Fugazi

Released 1984

"The thief of baghdad hides in islingtown now, praying
deportation for his sacred cow. A legacy of romance from a twilight world. The dowry of a relative mystery girl."

Having spent many hours rooting around in second hand record shops for albums released when I was but a child, it was something of a novelty to look forwards to Marillion's second album hitting the shops. Marillion were despised and ridiculed by the mainstream music press, famously derided as unoriginal Genesis wannabees with little talent beyond mimicry. However Script For a Jester's Tear sold very well, leading to their lengthy residency at the Marquee Club and a strong reputation as a formidable (if not overtly pretentious) live band on the wider circuit. Opening the Reading Festival in 1983 with a circa twenty minute version of the (at the time) unreleased Grendel, a vast sprawling epic with a huge nod to Supper's Ready, displayed levels of indulgence not seen for many years on stage.

It was highly enjoyable to follow current exponents of prog rock sensibilities in the face of bemusement from the majority of my contemporaries.

The review of Fugazi in Kerrang! wasn't as emphatic as their first album. In fact it wasn't particularly kind at all, quoting 'difficult second album syndrome' and questioning their subsequent appeal and staying power. I saw this as puff and bluster: a band couldn't fall so awfully from grace in the course of a couple of years and a couple of albums, surely.

I was impressed that the same artist had been employed for the cover of this second album providing a strong sense of continuity; there was a theme of isolation common to both albums - the 'bed-sit' land referred to in Chelsea Monday on the first album was present once more. A bedraggled figure with more than a passing resemblance to Fish lay sprawled on a bed amidst much chaotic detritus. The jesters outfit was in evidence, as were other familiar motifs: the rainbow and the crow. LP's by Pink Floyd and Peter Hammill lay scattered on the floor as unambiguous acknowledgements of the tortured soul's heritage. This wasn't going to be a fun record clearly.

Having recently seen Apocalypse Now, I was impressed by the (almost) direct lifting of part of the lyric of Assassing from the film. I was less impressed by the drum sound; it was very much rooted in the general trend of more popular music in the mid-eighties; the drums were bought much further forward in the mix and much less subtle than I would have expected. Hmmm, a rocky start.

I wasn't taken too much by the next two tracks either. Both were very light, had pop inflections being quite insubstantial and very much at odds with much of the first album. The primary instrument in evidence was Fish's voice. His cynical invective was taking on the role of the doomed adolescent poet, very much the tragic jester.

Having spent most of this first listen wearing an unfortunate frown, I realised with Emerald Lies and She Chameleon that something was creeping up on me, raising the hairs on the back of my neck. There was a 'coldness' and a clarity to the production that was in perfect harmony to the anguish of Fish's words. Whereas the first album was often quite lush and ornate, there was pain and pity echoed by a more sparse but symphonic guitar sound; providing a terrible tapestry of aching and pleading, which slowly drew me in.

This was an album which you would switch off if your parents walked in; so personal and indulgent and self pitying and yet so tangibly desperate and brilliant in it's execution, you couldn't possibly justify or identify with it's pomposity and misery. And yet, to hide beneath the headphones, safe from the world, wallowing in it utterly, was, what we now call a guilty pleasure.

Review of Barclay James Harvest's Everyone is Everybody Else

Released 1974

"I didn't ask to be born and I don't ask to die
I'm an endless dream, a gene machine
That cannot reason why".

I didn't actually purchase a copy of this album until a couple of years ago, but I have known every nuance of it for over twenty five years, as this was a favourite album of my Fathers. Why my Father, whose music collection was restricted to a handful of cassettes which were kept in the car, would have been attracted to a Barclay James Harvest album remains a mystery to me.

I had probably heard the album dozens of times before it clicked that it was by BJH. A constant musical reference point for me in the early eighties was a long lost copy of the Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll; an excellent compendium of band histories and discographies covering the period from the 1950's to the time at which it was published in 1983. I would often mentally refer back to entries in this book when thumbing through the bins in second hand record shops.

One day, whilst waiting for my Father to fill up the car, I absentmindedly dug into the passenger door recess to look at the cassette boxes contained therein. Seeing that one of the cassettes was by a band listed in the aforementioned book was a genuine surprise. I had seen the box many times, but couldn't get past the fact that it had (and has) one of the worst covers of all time, firmly rooted to its year of release: bum-fluff moustaches, stripey jumpers and orange bomber jackets rendering the band logo all but invisible in the cassette format.

When the engine was started the cassette started once more and I listened to it properly for the first time. Why had I not heard the clear and obvious similarity to Pink Floyd before? The plaintive keyboard sound and guitar in particular were very similar, as was the overall stoned melancholy that pervaded the whole album. I was stunned that this had passed me by me many, many time before.

However, I knew that my Father was a Moody Blues fan, and I had read that BJH were often referred to as a poor man's Moody Blues; indeed they embraced the label and released a song of that name. I still thought that they more closely resembled Pink Floyd.

That night I sneaked the tape into my bedroom and listened to it through my headphones.

While John Lees and Les Holroyd's lyrics were trying to be a 'deep' and 'significant' as Roger Waters, they weren't quite succeeding. However, in terms of the melancholy I mentioned earlier, they certainly gave him a run for his money. This was hardly uplifting music.

The lyrics may not have been particularly inspiring, but the musicianship was a joy to behold: the last third of the opening track, Child of The Universe has a wonderfully lush mellotron and Floydian slow dreamy doom laden guitar, equal to anything I heard up to that point.

With the benefit of the twenty something intervening years, I can now see that the production on this album is superlative, having been rarely equalled: the bridge of Paper Wings which starts 56 seconds in, is still revealing layers to me now after countless listens, and the piano at the beginning of The Great 1974 Mining Disaster is just gorgeously executed.

Huddled in a dark corner of my bedroom, with a red light bulb and the volume as loud as I could bear, I was delighted to have found another exquisite example of prog rock from the most unexpected source. Swathes of fluid guitar, throbbing keyboards, precise poised drumming and cleverly orchestrated harmonies washed though me, pulling deeper into the genre.

I listened to the final track, For No One, over and over that evening. The huge mellotron resounded around the headphones, beautifully interplayed with the joint lead vocals over the chorus, perfectly concluding with one of my favourite ever guitar solos. BJH; a guilty pleasure to this day.