FISH - A post about a few live recordings
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 Gentleman's Excuse Me
14) Kayleigh
15) Lavender
16) The Company
This tour was just Fish, Frank Usher on acoustic guitar, and Foss Patterson on piano/keys (electronic or not, depending on the song). That was it. Apparently this allowed Fish to tour farther and wider without paying as much to do so, let them have a little more freedom than usual to change up the setlist, and a meeting at one of these gigs apparently led him and Steve Vantsis to get over a short-lived falling out. So, does the acoustic tour get credit for the last two records?
Crowd noise on the bootlegs is minimal - they must have turned it down. I don't imagine that when he came out singing "Chocolate Frogs" - this is just the singing part, and done totally a capella - that the room was dead silent with no chatter. I could almost imagine Fish enacting a policy that everyone must face the stage in solemn silence while devoting their full attention to his performance... but not quite.
Once the gig actually starts, I'm pleased by how it comes out. Say what you will about the two musicians in the backing band. I've heard Foss called "much maligned," although I have no idea why. His persistence in not being named Simmonds or Terell? Frank has never really stood out to me before. Here the two are seriously in a zone, though. The basic formula is, Frank plays the basic riff line while Foss adds some shimmery open chords for flavor and drops some loud downbeats for rhythm. It works. Every song kind of then develops a lounge-jazz vibe, a format that works surprisingly well for a lot of Fish songs. A song like "State Of Mind" that's so bass driven fits just fine. A song like "Brother 52" that's so tied to synths and sound files fits just fine. ("The President's Address" does admittedly sound a little empty.) The performers are working with their limitations and making something great out of it - the instrumentalists for the acoustic setting, and Fish for his diminished vocal range. He doesn't have to yell as loud or go so high to sing with heart, or to indulge in the melodrama of something like "Vigil" or "Incubus."
The setlist is an interesting mix, too, making the rather surprising choice to only include one song from the 21st century and to lean so heavily into Marillion material, especially from Fugazi.*** Since they're reinterpreting the old songs so heavily, I suppose it makes sense; especially enjoy this new arrangement of "Jigsaw." I get the sense that the freeform "any song is on the table" feel helped the tour seem fresh for audiences and performers alike; even having heard the gig before, I was still surprised to be hearing Suits outtake "Out Of My Life" getting its time on the big stage.
I do note that the Derby gig feels short, like it's missing a few songs. Maybe feeling the limits of the format. I do think part of the short feeling is because the actual gig must have been lengthened by the singer going on extended rambles about whatever, right? I mean, it's possible that they went for a different, formal concert vibe, but that'd just be so at odds with the way Fish normally operates... so, I imagine the recording just excised all the between-song banter.**** We get a little taste of what was probably a lot more as part of the intro to "Lavender."
Speaking of, though, I think it's the performances of "Kayleigh"/"Lavender" that made the show stand out so much to me, and that made me choose this over the other Fish Heads Club gig. Rare enough to hear Fish perform them late in his career at all outside of the context of a Misplaced tour. "Kayleigh" is one of the bigger challenges for Frank and Foss because the original is so iconic; they do a nice job that relies on their ability to seamlessly hand the riff back and forth so that whoever needs to be free to play something else can do so at a given moment. After inexplicably not including any attempt to mimic the famous piano line that ought to link the two songs, they then take on "Lavender." This performance feels almost improvised, instinctual, even though I'm guessing it was actually quite reheasered, or at least scripted. The guitar solo feels big, then Fish allows the tune to basically take him wherever he feels, including an extended "for your LOVE" bridge that turns that bit into a legit hook to which to return at the very end, and then sort of fleshes out the piece by adding a new verse. Which is basically the old verse a second time, but changing a lyric here and there to make the message a more retrospective song from a faraway time. "Lavender" doesn't usually stand alone for me; it feels incomplete if not immediately followed by either "Bitter Suite" or, if at a post-Fish Marillion concert, into "Heart Of Lothian." Yet in this acoustic three-man setting a song that was once so slight finds itself wearing the hat of an epic, and lookin' damn good that way.
Hearing the acoustic show right before revisiting the first of the two shows included on the compilation The Movable Feast (from Karlsruhe, Germany, in 2013), was a bit of a revelation. Here's the setlist for that one:
1) Perfume River
2) A Feast Of Consequences
3) Script For A Jester's Tear
4) Dark Star
5) All Loved Up
6) What Colour Is God?
7) Blind To The Beautiful
8) Mr 1470
9) He Knows You Know
10) Crucifix Corner
11) The Gathering
12) Thistle Alley
13) Medley: Assassing/Credo/Tongues/
Encore:
14) Freaks
15) Lucky
Encore 2:
16) The Company
So, obviously "Perfume River" is a slow build - I always forget how long the first section of that one is - until finally the hook drops in. Yet something about it still felt like I was listening to the acoustic gig. Then "A Feast Of Consequences," which I think of as a rocker one you get past the first verse came on, and it still kinda felt like an acoustic performance. I soon had to recalibrate my expectations since clearly the entire show was going to sound like that. I'm trying to think of the best adjectives to describe the overall feeling. The mix seems to focus on the vocals, there's not a strong bottom end such that everything is "thin," or at least less heavy than one would get at a metal show. Despite Fish's self-proclaimed vibe being as much rock as prog, I could imagine a seated audience watching a light show with a big screen. This is a gig to soak in whilst nursing a tallboy, not to headbang.
The effect isn't inherently good or bad, although some songs seemed especially nice and some songs got the "huh, I remember this rocking harder" reaction. I'll highlight "Script For A Jester's Tear" as not having nearly the metal edge the studio version does, for the better. Some of that is simply a contrast between the energy of angry/impassioned young guys and a singer shrieking in no discernable key compared to the inherently different energy of an a greybeard of the music business reviving an old classic while arranging it to suit a voice better suited for storytelling than for making high-pitched sounds.
There are a few moments that sound here and there like a "big" of "full" show. "Dark Star" initially sounds like "huh, okay, the band is finally going to play hard and loud," although the chorus still feels smaller than my head expects. The climax of "Thistle Alley" unabashedly rocks and sounds brilliant. "View From A Hill" sounds big in its brief appearance. Those instants are just, as a I said, here in there. In contrast, most of the gig persists in giving me that feeling like it's a chamber group in a small room where I was expecting an orchestra in a big concert hall. I actually grabbed a few selected tracks from other Fish recordings (all post-2005, if that matters) to see if that vibe pervaded there. Sometimes it's muted. It's there.
I can think of three possible explanations. One is that the effect is strongest since I chose to listen to a gig from the Feast tour, a record that seems to have been composed on acoustic guitar, or at least has strong acoustic elements in most of its songs. One is that 21st century Fish songs rely heavily on the synth line and electronics, and that songs without a hum of rhythm will sound smaller by comparison. And one is that Fish is as much singer-songwriter as rock star, meaning that from the ground up - composition, arrangement, performance - he produces music best consumed in an intimate setting in which you can clearly hear the singer spooling out his poetry. I think #3 is close to the answer. And this project has thus proven to be a good reminder that might help me prepare for what a Fish gig will be like.
Anyway, that's my main impression of the show. Other things... well, I enjoy the show just because of the same freeform feeling as the acoustic gigs. The song choices seem so adventurous! Besides a nice healthy heap of then-new stuff - including the really good parts of "High Wood" sans the suite's lesser opening and closing tracks - you just never know what's coming. "What Colour Is God?"***** as presented here fits right in with the background-heavy tracks on 13th Star and Feast. "Mr 1470" is great to hear. Fish's vocal variations during "Freaks" and Robin Boult's lively rhythms during "Lucky" mean that I quite enjoy the encore despite not being the biggest fan of either of those songs in their original forms. Above all, though, can I praise that medley? Banger unexpectedly gives way to banger, all culminating in the early stages of Fish realizing that the all too rarely played "View From A Hill" is not only a great song, but a readymade closer.
I hadn't really realized until these last few listens how much he likes ending with the comment "that was the show that was." Seriously, you hear it at least as much as his better known signoff, "take care, and stay alive," which he doesn't even do at every gig - the Karlsruhe gig doesn't get it!
Some in-person gig reviews to come, whenever they happen and I get around to it!
*As noted previously, all the live records seem to list the track formerly/usually known as just "Vigil" that way
**Fomerly/usually "The Pilgrim's Address"
***My main thought on stage banter is that it's regrettable to lose it. I get where the tedium would come in and why some would rather hear the songs without the same stories over and over. Each gig is a performance, though, so if you're going to try to document the live experience, I'm fully in favor of releasing a complete gig rather than a compilation, and I'm in favor of including all of it. Stage banter, futzing around between songs, mistakes, crowd noise... all of those things contribute to the rhythm of a gig and the flow is stilted when excised.
****The other gig included on the release reveals that, if nothing else, "Zoë 25" was in the rotation for the tour.
****Fish, as usual, throws away nothing and is never ashamed. So "Colour" still includes that faux-rap bridge. However, he doesn't seem to be trying nearly as hard to do a Caribbean accent compared to the studio version. Baby steps...
Comments
Post a Comment