SCRIPT FOR A JESTER'S TEAR

The late Seventies and early Eighties were very poor times for me and my friends as '24-carat symphonic rock'freaks: Love Beach by ELP sounded almost as crappy as the cover looks, Roger Waters had left Pink Floyd and Genesis and Yes had jumped on the 'pop-prog' bandwagon... but then there was Marillion. At first we nailed them as a blatant Genesis-rip off, mainly because of the similarities between Grendel and Supper's Ready on their min-LP Market Square Heroes. But on this new album we discovered that Marillion had so much more to offer than Genesis echoes (the twanging acoustic guitars, Fish his voice, the organ runs and the synthesizer flights that often reminds me of The Lamb). When I noticed this just released album in my favorite record shop Supertracks in The Hague it was love at first sight: the wonderful artwork by Mark Wilkinson (layered with mystical associations), the poetical lyrics ("yet another emotional suicide", "catalogue princess, apprentice seductress" and "who order desecration, mutilation, verbal masturbation in their guarded bureaucratic wombs", splendid words!) and the amazing equipment like the Rickenbacker bass, Yamaha SG guitar (like Steve his hero Carlos Santana) and Minimoog synthesizer, could it go wrong with all these ingredients?

No! From the very first moment on this pivotal neo-progrock album you are carried away to the wonderful and compelling world of early Marillion. Four long captivating compositions and two short, catchy songs. Fish delivers inspired, often emotional vocals and beautiful poetical lyrics. Steve Rothery his guitar work(between Hackett, Latimer and Gilmour but with the emotional overtones from Santana) is very powerful with lots of great, very sensitive soli. The keyboards from Mark Kelly range from tender piano and harpsichord to flashy Minimoog runs and bombastic eruptions on his Yamaha and Roland synthesizers. Peter Trawavas plays fluent and propulsive, only Mick 'E.T.' Pointer his drum work sounds sometimes a bit too tight. My absolute highlight is Forgotten Sons, Fish his statement against the UK policy in Northern-Ireland: Marillion succeeds in a very emotinal and compelling way to translate that tension, anger and sadness into a mindblowing epic composition with one of the emotional 'grand finales' in the progressive rock history: "for a second you'll be famous but labelled posthumous" ... it's about Northern Ireland but "l'histoire se repète": Vietnam, Afghanistan, Irak and all those many other countries were young soldiers were, are and will be manipulated by governments that are only interested in money and selling oil and weapons ...

"Peace on earth and mercy mild, Mother Earth is loosing her children" ....