Synchronicity in the news. Tory minister Maria Miller says “British culture must become a commodity“, a statement that speaks volumes for their values. Then the news that the manufactured talent-show boy-band JLS are to split up, but not until after they’ve raked in the money from a farewell tour and album.
Fish has been giving updates on the progress of his new album “Feast of Consequences” over the past months. Today we get a glimpse of what the deluxe edition of the album will look like, with a 100 page hardback book filled with Mark Wilkinson’s artwork.
This is the precisely the sort of thing artists need to do to sell physical product in a day of low-margin download sales. There is likely to be a pre-order campaign, much as he did with his previous studio album, 2007′s “13th Star”.
Six years is a long gap between albums, but I’m confident it will be worth the wait. The album is due out in the Summer, with a lot of the new material to be played on his UK tour in May, with 13 dates covering about as much of the UK as it’s possible to do in two week tour.
Marillion are a band who have always had an especially strong long-term relationship with their fans, and the way they’ve made full use of this goes a long way towards explaining how they’ve prospered over such a long career. Weekend-long fan conventions have been a regular feature of the Marillion calendar since the first one at an out-of-season Pontins back in 2002. Such has been the demand that this year they held three separate events, the first in Port Zelande in Holland, the second in Montreal, and the third at The Civic in Wolverhampton.
While each one featured different support acts and other activities, the concerts at each convention took the same format. On each of the three days, the band would play one album in its entirety, with the other half of the show made up from complimentary material. Friday’s album was 1998′s Radiation. It would be fair to say it’s a much-discussed album which has divided fan opinion over the years. It dates from a time when each Marillion album was a reaction against the one before as the band tried to reinvent themselves in a very different musical climate from when they started out. It was a time when “prog” was at it’s lowest ebb, and some of Radiation adopted a more contemporary alternative rock sound with as much in common with the music bands such as Radiohead and Suede were making at the time than it did with the Marillion of old. Certainly the raw, lo-fi production was a bit of a shock to the system.
In completely contract, Saturday’s album would be Brave, the 1994 concept album inspired by a news story of a girl found wandering on the Severn Bridge. Recorded as a return to their progressive roots after the relative failure of its more commercially-orientated predecessor, the album was one of the most musically ambitious things they’ve ever done. Dark, intense, and utterly lacking in radio-friendly singles, it’s always been a firm fan favourite. Finally on the Sunday, they would play their current album, “Sounds That Can’t Be Made”, released at the tail end of last year, and never before played live in its entirety. On their November tour they only played selected highlights of the album at a time when a lot of fans hadn’t had the opportunity to hear the record.
There was a different support act on each of the three nights. Friday’s was virtuoso guitarist Aziz Ibrahim, accompanied by tabla player Dalbir Singh Rattan, who served as a complete rhythm section on his own; some of the tabla fills came over more as bass riffs than percussion. They began with a fifteen minute instrumental (very prog) with some amazing fluid guitar work and good use of effects, the two of them making as rich a sound as a whole band. The rest of the set was a little more song-based, and there were moments when it felt as if the singer-songwriter part of his act needed more work, as if things were marking time until he took off on another solo. But by the end of the set it was Aziz’ phenomenal guitar work that remained etched the mind.
There was a huge buzz of anticipation by the time Marillion themselves hit the stage. From the opening hard rocker “Under the Sun” to the beautifully melodic ballad “Three Minute Boy”, whatever Radiation’s merits on record, the material came over strongly live, and might even have prompted a few doubters to reassess the album. The closing two numbers were especially powerful, with intense takes on “Cathedral Wall”, and “A Few Words From The Dead”, retrospectively made relevant by the terrible events in America two days later.
They filled the second half with crowd-pleasers, drawing surprising heavily from pre-1988 material. “Slainte Mhath” has featured in setlists a few times in recent years, and Steve Hogarth’s raising a glass to Fish was a nice touch. But I doubt many expected the band to reach further back, with the hits “Lavender” and “Heart of Lothian”, and jaws dropped even further with “Script for a Jesters” Tear, the title track of their debut album as the first encore. They signed off with “Happiness is the Road”, the crowd singing the refrain over and over long after the band had left the stage. The whole thing was recorded as a DVD, and in a successful attempt to break the record for the time to produce a DVD had the finished product “Clocks Already Ticking” on sale the next evening.
On Saturday afternoon tribute band Stillmarillion played a charity gig at Bilston Robin 2. I don’t normally do tribute bands, but since I was staying two minutes from the venue, it would have been rude not to. Stillmarillion are a tribute to the 1982-87 era of Marillion, so this one was a trip down memory lane. The obvious highlight was when Marillion’s own Steve Rothery joined them for two numbers, “Chelsea Monday” and “Incubus”, but even without him they pull off the music very effectively. When the final notes of “Market Square Heroes” died away I looked at my watch and was amazed to realise they’d been on stage for two and a half hours, with a set including all of “Script for a Jesters Tear”, most of “Misplaced Childhood”, the highlights of “Fugazi”, selections from “Clutching at Straws” and quite a few non-album b-sides. No “Grendel”, but that did get played on the jukebox in The Old White Rose after the gig, which was fill of people dressed as jesters.
Then it was back to Wolverhampton for the second night of the convention proper. This time were two supports. First up was an acoustic solo spot from Marillion’s bassist Pete Trewevas, accompanied on some songs by Eric Blackwood of Edison’s Children playing some electric lead lines. Appearance-wise, if not musically, they gave me flashbacks to The Two Ronnie’s Big Jim Jehosaphat and Fat Belly Jones. Next up were Relish, a trio playing an energetic mix of rock, funk and soul. After a rather weak opening number, they got progressively better as the set went on, with some strong grooves and some impressive lead guitar.
Then came what many fans were eagerly waiting for, Marillion’s performance of “Brave” in full. They did not disappoint, and proceeded to play one of the most incredible live performances I’ve ever seen them do in 30 years of attending their gigs. Through the emotional maelstroms of “Living with the Big Lie” and “Mad”, the atmospherics of “The Hollow Man” and the title track, and the climax of “The Great Escape” the whole thing built in intensity, and the five minute standing ovation at the end of “The Great Escape”, really said it all. Many of the songs have featured individually in live sets over the years, but played as a whole it turns into something much greater than the sum of the parts. By the time the applause died down and the band played the coda to the album, “Made Again”, minds has been blown.
Following that wasn’t going to be easy, and for the second set they again they dipped back into the earlier days of the extensive back catalogue. We had fantastic versions of “Out Of This World” and “Seasons End”, encoring with “Warm Wet Circles/This Time of the Night” from “Clutching at Straws”, with that incredible solo from Steve Rothery.
Sunday’s support was Touchstone, a band best described as being at the rock end of prog-rock. Despite a poor sound mix that rather took the edge off things, they played a spirited set which still managed to make a strong impression on the crowd. Kicking off with the epic “Wintercoast” their short but sweet set took in all of their three albums, and it was nice to hear the Discordant Dreams/Beggars Song medley back in the set, something they’ve not played for a while. Kim Seviour, as ever, makes an engaging frontwoman and visual focus, and the three-part vocal harmonies with Rob Cottingham and Moo Bass were particularly effective when the sound mix did them justice.
Marillion took a slightly different approach for the third night, playing just a single set without an interval. “Sounds That Can’t Me Made” is more a collection of songs than a concept album like “Brave”. So beginning with the 17-minute “Gaza”, one of their most overtly political songs, they interspersed the new material with older songs. Even if it couldn’t quite top Saturday’s incredible performance it was still another great show. The crowd was more enthusiastic than ever, at one point singing the prominent guitar line at the end of the title track as a refrain, much in the same way as we’d sung “Happiness is the Road” on Friday. The band even went into a holding pattern on “This Strange Engine” waiting for the extended applause for Steve Rothery’s final solo to die down before carrying on with the song.
The main set ended with what may have been the best version of the epic “Neverland” I’ve ever heard them play. And for the final encore they took us back down memory lane with “Garden Party”, in which Steve Hogarth paid no heed to Heath and Safety and climbed via the PA stack to the balcony.
And so ended another Marillion convention. If you only know “Kayleigh” and their other 80s hits, and still ask if Fish is still with them (I got asked that more than once over the course of the weekend!), then you don’t know Marillion at all.
The Marillion of the 21st century is one of British music’s best-kept secrets. They’ve weathered a great many changes in musical trends. They’ve lived through a music business that’s changed out of all recognition and pioneered the art of staying afloat without the aid of a record company. How many other bands can rehearse and play more than seven hours worth of music over the course of a weekend? What band can omit their biggest hit, yet nobody cares? Who else can continue to make relevant and challenging music more than thirty years into their career? And who else combines that level of emotional intensity with such an incredible level of musicianship?
But above all, what makes an event like this is the fans. At it’s best, live music can be as much about the audience as it is about the people on stage, when the band feed off the energy they get from the crowd. So it was here; it went from being able to hear a pin drop in the quiet moments to mid-song standing ovations, and occasions where the crowd became a 2000-strong choir. Marillion plan return to the UK towards the end of the year. But as good as the tours can be, nothing can quite match the atmosphere of these fan weekends.
A few days ago, Jason Gorman tweeted that he thought social networks should work like email – a set of common standards that no one company owns and controls. It fits in with my thinking that the walled-garden approach taken by Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn is not a good thing. It may make it easier for those companies to monetise their services, but confining content and relationships to proprietary silos is a bad thing for the web as a whole. You risk ending up having to use the web equivalent of seven telephones.
I’d prefer to see an ecosystem of collaborative applications each of which focusses on doing one thing and doing it well, using open APIs and common standards like RSS. I’d love to see a separation between applications that focus on hosting content, be it micro-blogging, photo-sharing, discussion forums or friend list management, and those that aggregate, filter and display that content. Each can adopt whatever financial model makes sense for whatever it is they’re trying to do.
The irony is that’s how Twitter started out, encouraging a large number of third parties to build applications using their users’ data, then shutting down the APIs and killing off those apps once their user base reached critical mass.
Should you wish to go to HRH Prog II Festival in the far end of Wales next March, it will indeed be an epic journey to get there. The journey from Reading to Pwllheli will take more than seven hours. And worse, five of those hours will be spent in one of these things.
It’s almost, but not quite the longest journey time wise you can make in a class 158. Liverpool-Norwich or Glasgow-Mallaig is slightly longer, but there are only minutes in it.
Last time I rode the Cambrian coast line it was back in the days when there were still loco-hauled workings on Summer Saturdays, and I remember a single class 37s struggling up the grade towards Talerddig summit with nine coaches, and reduced to walking pace by the time it reached the top of the bank. Those were the days.
A trip down the rabbit hole of YouTube lead me to this gem. This was filmed around the time of my earlier visits to Switerland, before I started taking a serious interest in modelling the Lötchberg line and didn’t take detailed notes of the train formations. On later trips just after the turn of the century things were less varied, with EWiv push-pull sets on all but a handful of international through services. But back in 1990 it was a real mix; just look the very first train, with it’s mix of Swiss, Italian and Belgian coaching stock, and a rare BLS livery EWi restaurant car.
It’s notable just how few trains are uniform rakes; proof that you don’t need a full rake of anything to make up a realistic train. In particular the EWiv coaches were still being delivered, and the BLS didn’t have enough of them to make up complete rakes, hence the sets make up from a mix of EWiv and older EWi and EWii stock.
The other thing of note is the Re4/4Iv locomotives, which were operating over the Lötchberg at the time. Only four were ever built, and the class never went into series production. All four were eventually sold to the Südostbahn.
The new Black Sabbath track “God is Dead?”, from the forthcoming album “13″, the first Black Sabbath studio album with Ozzy Osborne since 1978′s “Never Say Die”. First couple of listens and I think it sounds a lot better than anything from the aformentioned album, but give it a listen for yourself.
Sign of the times that we now refer to promos uploaded to YouTube as “singles”, but I guess they serve exactly the same purpose as releasing “radio singles” used to for album-orientated bands like Black Sabbath.
Monday afternoon was my first chance to use Reading station in its post-rebuild form with the station back in full use. It’s an ambitious rebuild aimed to improve capacity for what had become a major bottleneck on the system, with five brand new through platforms on the north side of the station on the site of the former goods avoiding lines, and complete replacement of all platform-level structures on the existing platforms to match those on the new plaforms.
The view above is of platforms 9 and 10, which had previously been the two relief line platforms. Now the fast lines have been slewed across to feed in to them, and the relief lines slewed to serve platforms 12-15. I guess the up main (on the left-hand side) must be a temporary alignment, and will eventually be straightened.
Looking west from the same spot. The track layout is unchanged bar one new crossover, one end of which was the old turnout leading into the now-removed bay platform. In this interim layout the former fast lines on the left are currently out of use, the old slow lines are the new fast lines, and the two new tracks on the right form the new slow lines.
The brand new platforms 13 and 14, looking very new and shiny. It looks almost like Kato Unitrack.
Platforms 7 and 8, looking towards London, with a lot of building work still taking place. These were the original fast line platforms; 7 on the right is currently connected only to the Berks & Hants line heading towards the south-west, while 8 on the left is here used by a reversing Cross-Country service. The old centre through track is now disconnected and out of use.
A view of the interior of the spacious new transfer deck. There’s an awful lot of empty space here at the moment.
She’s only been in Hell a couple of days and she’s shut down three furnaces and privatised the Lake of Fire already!
Margaret Thatcher. A third of the nation loved her. Another third hated everything she stood for with a passion. And the remaining third is too young to understand why the rest us feel the way we do.
I was never a supporter. I found her intensely tribal style of class-based identity politics loathsome and dangerous, and hated the way she acted as if half the country were enemies to be defeated.
Some on the right are invoking “Do not speak ill of the dead” when anyone dares to mention anything on the debit column of her balance sheet. But Glenn Greenwald in The Guardian explains why that is only appropriate for private individuals, and should not apply to public figures, especially those as divisive and polarising as Thatcher. To allow her supporters and ideological heirs to heap unconditional praise while insisting that their political opponents remain silent out of respect is itself a highly political position, something many on the right seem unwilling to acknowledge.
There was certainly no love for her in Scotland, and Scottish writer Charlie Stross does not mince his words in response to the sort of uncritical praise I’ve seen coming from one or two right-wing Americans.
I’d like to remind non-Brits that strong leaders are more popular abroad than in their home land, because foreigners don’t get to see the skulls that were smashed in the process of building that reputation for “strength”.
The resulting comments thread contains some interesting discussion of Britain’s post-war industrial problems for which Thatcherism was supposed to have been the solution.
The funeral arrangements show that Thatcher is as controversial in death as she was in life. The Telegraph’s Peter Oborne eloquently describes why giving Thatcher a state funeral in all but name dangerously undermines the political neutrality of the monarchy, and is a very bad thing for democracy. A poster on Twitter made the very good point that an extravagant public event for such a partisan figure is the sort of thing that’s expected from a tin-pot dictatorship rather than a mature democracy. Charlie Stross (again) risks invoking Godwin’s Law by making direct comparisons with Nuremberg rallies.
I’m very glad to be overseas for the next week and a half. I fully expected Cameron et al to use the Maggon’s funeral as a rallying point for their clan, but I wasn’t expecting a full-blown Nuremberg Rally. Disgraceful.
Can’t say I disagree with that. Not that I want to condone or encourage rioting, but large scale public unrest would be as appropriate a memorial to Thatcher as what’s being described above.
HRH Prog 2 will take place at Havan y Mor, Pwhelli, North Wales, on March 20-23 next year. And Chic Festivals boss Jonni Davis promises the change of site offers a better experience for prog fans.
It’s always a good thing for any organisation to learn from it’s mistakes, and in this case Version 2 seems to have fixed many of the bugs in the first festival. The organisers promise it won’t be freezing cold (One lead guitarist reported on Facebook that he couldn’t feel his fingers on stage!), and there will be more variety of food, not just pies. There is also just one main stage, meaning the festival won’t be bedevilled with the number of clashes that this year’s event suffered (Mostly Autumn vs. Also Eden, and Karnataka vs. Hawkwind were just two).
Just as significantly they’ve announced it almost a full year in advance, in relatively remote location. This means that it will be an epic journey to get there, although Snowdonia is rather more scenic than Rotherham. But it also means it’s not going to tread on the toes of other competing events, and should hopefully avoid the unfortunate situation with the collapse Y-Prog festival.
She’s only been in Hell a couple of days and she’s shut down three furnaces and privatised the Lake of Fire already!