Ralphy's Concert Reviews

Marillion - Concert at De Hanenhof in Geleen (Holland) 04-05-2002

I had been looking forward to this show for 2 reasons, it was the first in a row of concerts that I was/am going to visit this spring and summer and secondly it had been at least 6 years since I had seen the musical love of my youth, Marillion, perform live on a stage. This was my third visit to a live show of Marillion, but the visits had a lot of time in between. The first time I saw them was on their Misplaced Childhood-tour, still with Fish on vocals, it must have been somewhere in 1986 or so, I think. The second time I visited them on the closing performance of the Brave-tour at the Bospop-festival of 1996? and now would be the third time. I have been and still am a huge fan of Marillion, I have all of their studio albums in some form or another and them coming to my neck of the neighborhood was a pleasant surprise. The day was a bit strange though. Let me explain, the 4th of May is the day on which we remember the deceased (of the second world war in particular) in The Netherlands. This is done among other things by taking 2 minutes of silence just before 8 PM, but this was also the time me and my friends had agreed to meet to leave to the concert, so we didn't take the time to honor the dead this year (shame on us therefore, May 5 is celebrated as liberation day btw). On our way to the venue another thing happened, we had a bit of a delay due to an accident in the opposing lane and as we drove by the accident site we saw a partially covered body in the grass in the middle of the road. Because of these things and something I will explain later this concert in my memory probably will always be linked to death somehow.

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When we arrived in the house the opening act had already started playing. I'm not sure who it was, but it was a guy alone, playing guitar and singing. I trust he was a friend of Pete Trewavas (Marillion's bass player, for those who don't know), because Pete joined him on stage for his last song, a cover of Cindy Lauper's "time after time", this was OK, but otherwise the guy's performance didn't leave a big impression on me. We came with a diverse team to this concert, my best friend, Maurice, and I, we are long-time fans of Marillion, my girlfriend Monja knows them a bit through me and her friend Astrid didn't know any music by Marillion (except for the obvious "Kayleigh") and I was especially interested on how she would react to the music of the Marillo's. I had expected to meet 2 other old friends and big Marillion-fans at the concert, but one recently got married and the other bought a house with his girlfriend, so I guess their priorities changed. Marillion started the concert with the 2 opening songs of their latest studio-CD "Anoraknophobia" and the first thing I noticed was the complete surround sound that Marillion gave to the room (Astrid commented: 'that's something different than one guy with a guitar'). These 2 songs make great openers for a concert, "Between you and me" brings you right to the edge of your seat (we weren't sitting down, but you know what I mean) and Quartz is one of the best songs that they've made recently and it also gives you a good inclination of what Marillion is about with it's mood swings and tempo variations. What followed was a relaxed and sober version of "Beautiful". After that they played something that I did not recognize at first, later I found out (I got a peek at the set list of the sound technician) that it was a piece of "Brave". A lot of hardcore fans consider the album "Brave" the best work with the second vocalist Steve Hogarth, I disagree with that and tend to like only parts ("Alone again in the lap of luxury" and "Paper lies") of that particular album. By choosing to play songs like this, "Quartz" and the following "Afraid of sunlight" it was evident that Marillion was playing especially for their hardcore fans, because these songs are note easily accessible for non-fans. They are not songs that a crowd of 'normal' rock fans would flip out about, but they are rather, as I like to call them, listening songs with intricate switches and variations to them. It really was an evening for the fans of progressive/symphonic rock and as it probably was one of the few shows Marillion would do this year, all these fans had come to watch it and they were extremely appreciate of the music Marillion was playing tonight and the band appreciated that back to the audience, so there was a whole lot of interaction between band and crowd going on.

Next up were 2 new songs, "Map of the world" is a bit more accessible for the major public, but would be followed again with another complex, but beautiful masterpiece "This is the 21st century". Somewhere during the show I don't remember exactly when Steve H. and the band made a bit of fun of a certain ex-teenybopper artist, who has recently made a cover show of old Frank Sinatra-tunes by doing a short thing like that with twisted lyrics and stating that anyone can do this crap. After that came the Marillion-classic "Easter", always a highlight it proved, that although Steve Rothery may have become a bit wider over the years, he still knows how to touch the strings in such a way that you can feel the emotion of a song floating through your bones. The marvelous "Easter" was followed by such an applause that led H. to say that they weren't finished yet and had some more songs to play, starting of with another older song "The uninvited guest" and then came the song which was the absolute highlight of the evening for me, "Man of a 1000 faces". Obviously I had never heard this song played live before and it made a tremendous impression on me, really WOW !!! Sometimes an expression says more than words.

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Next up was the combination "This town/The rakes progress", a part of the reasonably successful album "Holidays in Eden", but by far not the best known pieces of that CD and to close the pre-encore set list they returned to "Brave" with "The great escape". There was no doubt, that Marillion would come back for some more songs and the first thing they returned for was another of my favorite songs and a classic "The king of Sunset Town". The live version of this song left nothing to be desired compared with the album version on "Seasons End". Again there was a short interlude, but the crowd literally demanded the band back onto the stage and the band also enjoying the tremendous atmosphere of the night were only too pleased to meet this demand. From the set list that I had seen I knew that the planned extra encore songs were "Cover my eyes", probably the biggest commercial hit that Marillion with H. as singer had in Holland, and "King". They did play these songs and I especially enjoyed the first of these 2, but to prove that they were very satisfied of how the evening had gone the band had an extra surprise in the form of a truly remarkable version of "The space ..." that they added to the show, before finally leaving the stage with the promise to return next year (I saw the managing director of the Pinkpop-festival, Jan Smeets, in the audience and I wonder whether Marillion has paved their way back into the line-up of that festival for next year with this outstanding performance).

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I have read other comments on this concert and most who were attending state that Marillion was in a rare positive form this day. I have to agree with that, but maybe I was lucky, because I remember there Brave-show of several years ago with even more fondness. From the 3 times I've seen them so far I have to conclude that twice they were in optima forma, but maybe there just a band who can make most of a performance in general. That Maurice and I would enjoy this performance is certainly no surprise, but Monja and Astrid also had a great time, so I have to compliment the band on that. I rate this concert with an 8.0, the reason this number is not higher is mostly in the choice of songs performed this evening. I missed some songs from the albums "Marillion.com" and especially "Radiation" and I would have chosen to hear other songs from "Brave" and maybe "Holidays in Eden", but the songs they did perform were superb.

I have something more to add to this review, well it isn't really connected to the concert. But as I told you before this concert and this review will somehow always be connected to death in my memory, 2 reasons for this I gave at the beginning of this review. Here is the third and biggest reason for it. On the 6th of May I started to write this review on the attic, where my computer is. Suddenly I heard my mother cry on up to me "Ralph, they shot Pim Fortuyn". Those who live outside The Netherlands probably don't know who Pim Fortuyn is, so let me tell you a bit about him. Pim Fortuyn was a political writer and columnist, who decided to enter into the Dutch elections of 2002. After a disagreement with the party he entered the race for, he started his own party with considerable success. Fortuyn had some totally new ideas, extreme some stated and in some occasions I would agree with that, but in any way he completely upset the established political landscape of The Netherlands. He was a very charismatic man and he was not afraid to be very outspoken and head on about certain issues that the established political parties had had a very gloves on attitude about. This new and unknown way of practicing politics had already gotten him and his party more than a third of the votes in the city election of his hometown Rotterdam and he had a way of appealing to the public that promised to make him also one of the winners of the parliamentary elections which are to be held on 15 May next. Because of his outspoken manor Fortuyn, who was bald-headed and gay, had made political enemies in almost no amount of time. His competitors had already compared his more extreme right-wing ideas to those of infamous foreign political leaders like Austria's Jörg Haider en France's Jean-Marie Le Pen. Although I did not agree with most of Fortuyn's political ideas I also disagree with those kind of comments trying to put him into one heap with foreign racist and fascist political parties. Anyways now you have a short impression of who he was, when I heard my mother crying out to me, I reacted with total surprise and astonishment. I thought she was joking, before I had come up onto the attic I had heard Fortuyn being interviewed on my favorite radio station, 3FM. It had not been a joke (wouldn't have been a good one anyway), but the truth. After leaving the radio studio Fortuyn had been shot and died of his wounds not long after. I was and still am in total shock about this. The Netherlands who have a reputation of being a tolerant nation where everyone can speak his mind trembled on his roots. We had not had a political assasination for several centuries and I never even thought it was possible this could happen here. In some third world country, yes, in the violent US of A, yes, in a neighboring country, maybe, but not in tolerant Holland. Well guess who woke up harshly from this dream, Ralphy S. and 15 million Dutch people with him. As I stated before to put in mildly I was not in total agreement with Pim Fortuyn, but the thought that someone could be killed for speaking about his ideas in this country devastated the world as I know it for me. Maybe I should have been expecting it after the brutalities of 11 September last, the ongoing atrocities in the middle east, the recent school shooting in Germany, that somehow this wave of violence could not go by our country, maybe I was to naive in thinking this can't happen here, but somehow I did. I don't have any solutions for what is to come now, but I do know now that the spiral of violence in which this world has gotten itself has finally landed on my front door and that the only way to get out of it is respecting basic freedoms like the freedom of opinion and having the common courtesy to respect those who we disagree with, otherwise this cannot have a happy ending.

I know most of you did not come to read this last part, but I had to get it of my chest and if you read it, thank you.

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