The Benja-man Is Verbose

I do occasionally post about music other than Fish, honest!  I fully intend to be getting back to the other projects in Nov-Dec.  Here's another one for the road, though.   When working my way through the massive discography I did listen to a hefty smattering of the officially released live records available to me on streaming.  In anticipation of seeing the man live, I thought I'd revisit a few recordings that stood out to me the first time, and ramble a bit about Fish as a live act. First, Fish Heads Club Live , a set containing two 2010-ish acoustic gigs.  I gravitated to the first of the two, recorded at University Of Derby.  Here's the setlist: 1)  Chocolate Frogs 2)  State Of Mind 3)  Somebody Special 4)  Jumpsuit City 5)  Slàinte Mhath 6)  Brother 52 7)  Vigil In A Wilderness Of Mirrors * 8)  Punch And Judy 9)  Out Of My Life 10) Incubus 11)  Jigsaw 12)  Pilgrim's Address ** 13)  A...

So here we are once more, for the last time.  With much fanfare, Fish announced that Weltschmerz would be his last record, and finally released it in 2020 after doing a bunch of oldies tours, releasing renditions of a few of the songs on an EP ( A Parley With Angels ), getting married, having some major health problems, losing his dad, starting to get the wheels in motion of the next phase of his life, and so on.  Unsurprisingly, the result was big, befitting a dramatic final statement.  A "double album" (released physically as a two-CD set), multiple eight-plus minute songs.  I don't think I'm allowed to complain about it being a lot, because it's supposed to be a lot. And just when I thought I'd pinned down his band, we now are back to two guitarists, with both John Mitchell and Robin Boult taking playing and writing duties, and various drummers swapping in and out, and Liam Holmes now tagging in to do piano and keys.  Although missing one of Fish's ...

A Feast Of Consequences sees things seeming on a superficial level unusually stable.  Fish's vocal cords are finally free of tumorous growths, he's settled into irregular record releases and is actually enjoying playing live again, and the supporting cast is basically a stable group who've all been here before.  Stevie remains the bassist, of course, but also here's Robin Boult on guitar, Foss on keyboards, Gavin on drums, Liz Antwi returning on backup vocals, and Calum producing.  Fish is going to be taking his sweet time to eventually release sixty-seven minute records at this point, and who are we to question? Track One:  "Perfume River" "There were no sirens... I heard no alarms..."  I feel like Fish openers in later years tend to be slow builders divided into two halves, with the main distinction being between those that eventually get somewhere and those that kind of meander (like "The Field").   Feast 's longest individual track ...

Still a little in-house project, with our trio of Anna, Ivo, and Merlin being the co-credited songwriters for everything, and the only musicians credited for playing on the record. Track One:  "Pain" It opens with two clear sounds - a pulsating guitar that'll soon resolve into a background metal riff, and a lively hurdy-gurdy overlay that basically acts as the lead stringed instrument, handling the main riff.  This will be a recurring theme.  Once Anna starts singing I hear hudry less, and the song seems a little less hard-rocking than you'd think, although it's got a bit of a rock chorus.  The best hook here is the "day in, day out" part.  The best section is the instrumental break in which the opening progression serves as the basis for a full-on hurdy solo.  The lyrics are cryptic and some delivered in a breathy wispy style that I don't love, but I gather that either Death or a human child is being scapegoated or something, setting the scene for.....

I feel like anyone reading this would know the mythology behind 13th Star .  But just in case - Fish was on the cusp of getting married (to Heather Findlay, another prog singer), he'd written a few songs, the relationship ended abruptly and very badly, he went into pissy mode and wrote a bunch more songs that skewed, to say the least, angry.  Bassist and BFF Steve Vantsis, who'd never been a songwriter before, had a few musical ideas that he shared, they discovered they meshed great, and the rest of Fish's career would have a stable main songwriting collaborator.  We ended up with sort of a loose concept about a character's search for his "13th Star" (in Fish lingo, he apparently decided that each of the most significant women in his life was a star, because, uh, reasons) and a bunch of breakup songs.  Gavin Griffiths continues to be the most frequently employed drummer and Foss Patterson returns on keys. In more recent comments, Derek has opined that the reco...