SCRIPT FOR A JESTER'S TEAR

Another victim of time and listening in too often, I guess. I got Script For A Jester's Tear on vinyl in 1990 or 1991, when I still had no CD player of my own, and I immediately loved the whole album. If I felt there was a slightly weaker song then, I guess it was He Knows You Know, but I absolutely adored Chelsea Monday, Forgotten Sons and especially the title song.

So here I am once more in the playground of the broken hearts. Boah!! What a start of an album. And then this final part, this monster of a guitar solo over this innocent line "Can you still say you love me?", not to forget all those little word games in the slow section. No wonder I named one of my best private cocktail creations after this song. But unfortunately there is what I call the rhythm part in between. For more than 20 years I didn't mind it, Script For A Jester's Tear was firmly one of my Top 5 songs. But now that I've heard it what feels like ten thousand times, it feels repetitive and a wee bit boring so I've been trying to avoid the song for quite some time now. But it's certainly not as bad as The Great Gig In The Sky, I still love the first two and the last three and a half minutes of Script. Unfortunately it is impossible to cut out the part I don't like so much, so I will have to keep avoiding it or get over the dislike (probably the latter).

However, nothing has changed about the five other songs on the album. They are still among the best Neo-Prog has ever delivered. My personal ranking and rating of them has always remained the same. The issue about the title track reduces the overall rating from perfect 5.0 stars down to 4.4, though I wouldn't swear on my life and magic that this will never change again. So it is 4 stars for now.