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Marillion - Marbles On The Road CD (album) cover

MARBLES ON THE ROAD

Marillion

 

Neo-Prog

4.01 | 84 ratings

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Gatot
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
3 stars For those who love Marillion Marbles should have this DVD. This DVD came to me at the same time with Pain of Salvation Be Live DVD. So, which one should I play first? You bet! PoS Be Live won the competition for my DVD player. In fact, PoS won the market share also as I played it much more than Marillion Marbles on The Road. Honestly, there was another DVD as well that came at the same time: Spock's Beard Don't Try This at Home (3 discs). Back to Marbles, this was the performance of the band filmed over a sell-out weekend at London's Astoria. As the cover says it: "This concert DVD documents Marillion's live presentation of the critically acclaimed album 'Marbles'. Using 15 different cameras, and presented in both stereo and 5.1 surround sound, this film gets closer to the Marillion live experience than any previous video recordings.". Is it? Let's have a look in some more details .

The Performance

Well, the live was recorded during the last two nights of the UK Marbles tour at the Astoria theatre in London, on July 10 and 11, 2004. It is presented as if one gig and follows playlist of the tour. It begins wonderfully with The Invisible Man, the album opener. Wow! It's a great performance. I love how Hogarth sings deeply with his heart and voices out the lyrics in very clear and powerful vocals. I also like the performance and style of Steve Rothery that takes his stand quietly close to power amps for his guitar. He looks like David Gilmour as he has gained weight a lot (yeah .. a lot man! Especially if you compare with his performance in Recital of The Script DVD). Even his play is similar with Gilmour in some way. Pete Trewavas is the only member that plays with body movement. Ian Moseley with his variations of drum set is another good looking part of the DVD. The first part is terrific! Flawless and very attractive. It continues with a slow pop song Marbles I .

You're Gone is played with enthusiasm by the band and gained a big applaud by the audience (which most of them are old guys .. like me!). There come a short conversation initiated by Hogarth and introducing the story of a nurse that brings to the next performance of Angelina. It continues with a floating, ambient music as with Invisible Man. To this point, I observe that the Marbles songs are better performed live in this set than the original album. Invisible Man is a good example. Also on transition pieces like Marble 1,2 and so on - it is much better here than the original one. Basically, I do not like these pieces on studio album but I can respect more in live set.

The exception is probably on Don't Hurt Yourself which I love the studio version than this live set. Reason being that on studio version I can enjoy the best sound quality because the mixing of sounds was terrific. The Damage is better in live set here. On Neverland I can see clearly how good the band was in composing the music. The performance here is really very good - and I can observe in details the work of Steve Rothery and powerful drumming of Ian. It sounds that the music is much more enriching here.

Having done the marbles part, the band continues with their previous albums like from Brave: Bridge and Living With the Big Lie and other albums with following tracks: The Party, Between You and Me, Uninvited Guest , Cover My Eyes. Well, I have to admit that the last two tracks are the songs that I hated much that they have been made by the band that I loved since its inception in early 80s. It's so boring songs and why the band use as closing? I don't know .

Steve Hogarth is I think a good communicator as in between tracks he speaks (communicates) well with the audience in relax way. For example when he introduced the upcoming single Don't Heart Yourself which was going to be released the day after the show. He asked the people "For God sake, please buy the single .. And it sounds like this ." (continued with his acoustic guitar intro for the single).

There is one thing worthy to take note in this DVD. It's about when Hogarth took the singing of Marbles falsely and he asked the band members to hang on the music. He then restarted again. Two differing views for me about this event. First, I respect the band's (Hogarth's) candidness that as a big group they also could make a mistake. Second, another side of the coin I asked myself: how can it happen? With their reputation as excellent musicians they could make false entry about their own song - on stage??? Come on guys . I have never seen such thing like this.

Summary

It's a rewarding experience enjoying this DVD especially if you appreciate the band's last album Marbles. The only thing that I personally feel enjoying this DVD set is that when it reaches approx half an hour of the show I get bored because they have the same style over and over. The songs are mostly mellow. I'm probably biased as I compare this with PoS Be Live DVD which is totally excellent DVD. But, that's life man . The music produced by prog musicians are competing one to another. That what happens to me. I have a selection of bunch of DVDs to watch and I have the full power to choose the ones that I love most. Overall, it's a good DVD. Keep on proggin' .!

Progressively yours,

GW

Gatot | 3/5 |

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