FUGAZI

Script For A Jester's Tear was a success in the UK hitting number 7 in the charts and both singles charted as well, so an auspicious beginning. They did a UK tour and released a VHS titled Recital Of The Script from the final show. If you want to check out what the band looked and sounded like at this very early stage it is a great document of that time. The band was almost perfect except that Fish had a problem with their drummer Mick Pointer who apparently had some timing issues and wasn't quite at the level of musicianship as the others. So out went Mick and after short stints with Andy Ward and Jonathan Mover on skins, in came Ian Mosley to fill the drum seat. Mark Kelly, Pete Trawavas, Steve Rothery and Ian Mosley have made up the core of the band from their second album to this day, with no changes other than when Steve Hogarth replaced Fish in 1988?but that's a story for a future post. Nick Tauber who had produced their first album was brought back for their second album Fugazi which was recorded between November 1983 and February 1984. It is a much harder sounding record than Script. Almost all of the softer edges from the first album were filed down into fangs.

The album was released in March of 1984 but was preceded by the single Punch And Judy which was the second track on the record. It is a gritty, angry song about a shitty marriage/relationship, which is a recurring theme from Fish on all four of the albums he recorded with Marillion. It is not soft music, and it is fairly representative of the feel of the entire album. It isn't my favourite song on the album. It's good but doesn't really get much better than fine for me unless I'm feeling particularly irritable in which case it is a tonic. For this single the band actually recorded new versions of Market Square Heroes and Three Boats Down From The Candy with John Marter on drums ? the only material the band ever released with a drummer other than Ian Mosley and Mick Pointer. There are subtle differences between the two versions of both songs but I'm not sure one is vastly superior or inferior to the other and neither suffer nor are particularly improved upon either. They are more variations of the same theme for fans to debate over. The Punch and Judy single reached 29 in the UK charts. The cover art of the single is probably my least favourite of all the work Mark Wilkinson did with the band. The album artwork is much better in my opinion. It does a perfect job matching the starkness of the album, but in painted form. It also continues the jester theme?this time in a more?overdosed kind of state.

The first song on the record is Assassing which ended up being the second single which fared slightly better than Punch and Judy, reaching number 22 in May of 1984. Assassing is a very strong opening song and deals with verbal assault. It is harder edged than anything on Script but like much of the album it does have a sterility to it. I'm not sure how to describe the album other than a lot of it sounds unfriendly. I do like the song quite a bit though, even though the keyboards are a bit shrill in parts. The drumming is immediately noticeable as an exponential improvement from their prior work. Mosley and Trawavas are absolutely in the pocket. Rothery's guitar solos are awesome and Fish's lyrics are really, really good. For some crazy reason my band Tempus Fugit used to do this song as part of our live shows back in High School. In hindsight it seems like a strange choice for a band to cover back in the mid 1980s?an unknown song by a band almost no one in Canada had ever heard of. But it was a lot of fun to play and maybe it also made us kind of unique in that way as well. Or maybe it is why I never had a girlfriend in high school. Could have been the headgear as well. The artwork for the single was not bad ? again not my favourite but it continued the stylization of the band, and their logo by this point was uniquely identifiable. The flip side of the single was a song called Cinderella Search which is absolutely gorgeous. It really should have been included on the album as I think it would have improved it greatly, much like if Genesis had included You Might Recall on Abacab. Cinderella Search actually sounds much more like what the band would produce on the following two records. It is much gentler in execution and softer in the timbre of sounds used by Mark Kelly and Steve Rothery. It also uses a lot of piano which I love and something Mark would continue to use more of as time went on. I'd venture to bet it is near or at the top of Marillion fans favourite non album tracks. It is a great song worth checking out. If you do check it out ? make sure it is the version that doesn't fade out as it suffers from the fade. The 5:30 version is far superior as it preserves the proper ending.

After Assassing is Punch and Judy which I already mentioned, which is then followed by Jigsaw. Of the three super extra slow beat per minute songs found on the first two albums, Jigsaw is my favourite. It is a song with two speeds. Very very light and slow with keyboards, and much heavier with all instruments. It is almost like a slow prototype of the formula grunge would follow to almost unbearable limits of tolerance in the 1990s. Steve Rothery has a great solo in the song which, apart from the dynamic power shifts in the song, is the best part of it for me. It is not bad. Of the 7 songs on the album, I'd place it at number 5, above Punch and Judy and She Chameleon.

The last song on side 1 is Emerald Lies which was originally planned as the b-side of the Punch and Judy single. It is an amazing song, probably my third favourite on the album. I love Fish's vocal delivery holding notes for long periods to build up tension when he sings "I am the harlequin". The song is doused in reverb, which I love on songs like this. It is dark and stark and, like Jigsaw, varies between slow/quiet and fast/loud but much more successfully. It is an extremely dynamic song that moves seamlessly between different sections building as the song progresses to a sweepingly epic finale. A whole other level of writing can be found on this song. If Good Vibrations was Brian Wilson's Pocket Symphony, Emerald Lies is Marillion's Pocket Prog. Side 2 of the Fugazi album starts with the excruciatingly torturously slow and plodding She Chameleon. I know I'm going to get a lot of flak from Marillion fans for saying this, but I find the song almost painful to listen to for the most part. When I hear it, I feel like it is some kind of penance I'm being required to perform. I mean I can do melancholy and slow brooding songs like a champ but there is something about this song that I just can't tolerate. It sounds to me like a gothic torture device. OK what do I like about it? The drums are loud and make nice strong sounds though they are playing at about 4 beats per minute for much of the song. I'm actually convinced people like this song because Fish says Fuck in it. Mark Kelly does have a great keyboard solo about halfway through, as does Rothery, but overall, it all just plods along like the theme music for a bad Dracula movie. Whew now I feel better. Sorry I had to get that off my chest ? I was thinking about Morrissey and it put me in a foul mood. If I had to swap out a song on the album to make room for Cinderella Search it would be this one, hands down.

The good news is that the album ends on a high note as far as my favourite songs on the record are concerned. Let's be clear though, it is a painfully depressing high note. First up is the 8-and-a-half-minute Incubus which sounds different musically than anything the band had done to date. It has an awesome balance of music and vocals as well as some amazing sweeping musical sections that are all given space to breathe, allowing the mood to be established and support the vocals, which are ripe with fantastic lyrics. The sections last as long as they are needed to support the story of creepy obsession until it all stops to the sound of Mark's piano followed by the delicate delivery by Fish for several verses until the band erupts again to a riotous conclusion via another amazing Rothery guitar solo. The last third of this song is one of my favourite sections of any Marillion song. It is an absolutely incredible piece of music with some remarkably great lyrics. The title track Fugazi immediately follows. These two songs are so close in greatness and intensity that I have a hard time separating them. They almost both need to be played together, though not quite like Zeppelins' Heartbreaker/Living Loving Maid. They can and do exist in isolation of each other, but they are both better songs by their association when heard in succession. I think Incubus is kind of like the assist to Fugazi's winning goal if that makes sense. Either way Fugazi is one of the quintessential Fish era songs. It is the showcase of everything the band had learned from the material they had written to date, and executed to perfection. It is vastly dynamic, with shifting sections of different musical sounds and tempos, building to a frenzied pace over the first three minutes of the 8-minute song. It takes the moodiness of a song like Script, the dynamics of Incubus, the rush of Market Square Heroes, and the brooding eeriness of Chelsea Monday or She Chameleon and it doubles down on all of it, bettering all of them within the construct of one song. For me it is the best song the band wrote to this point in time and it still gives me shivers listening to it. It is a SUPER fun song to sing and the lyrics roll of the tongue like it should be the star poem in an angry prog poetry book. When my band played at Brutopia in Montreal prior to the 2011 Marillion Weekend we performed the second half of this song and I absolutely loved singing it.

So there you have it. Marillion's second album Fugazi. It is one of my least favourite Marillion albums and yet it contains two of my most favourite songs by the band. I feel like it is also the band's least favourite album as they have never played a single song from it in full with Steve Hogarth on vocals, since he joined the band. It is a dark, stark, angry and unfriendly sounding album, like the worst moments of adolescence put to music. I don't mean that in the sense that I hate it by any means. There are parts of it I absolutely love. It is just a heavy sounding album and it is something I really need to be in the mood for, to listen to. However, for some fans it is their favourite album by the band. Marillion fans, like Genesis fans, are as divisive in their opinions of albums as they are in their opinions of singers?but more on that later.

Recommended Listening: Assassing, Cinderella Search, Emerald Lies, Incubus, Fugazi

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