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Fish - The Complete BBC Sessions

Artist: Fish
Title: The Complete BBC Sessions
Label: Blueprint BP297CD
Length(s): 73+70 minutes
Year(s) of release: 1999
Month of review: 11/1999

Line up

Fish - vocals
Mickey Simmonds - keyboards
Frank Usher - guitar
Mark Brzezicki - drums
Robin Boult - guitar
Steve Brzezicki - bass
Bruce Watson - guitar
For the IE sessions (minus Watson I would think):
David Paton - bass
Kevin Wilkinson - drums

Tracks

Disc 1:
1) Faithhealer 6.30
2) The Voyeur (I Like To Watch) 5.34
3) Punch And Judy 5.52
4) The Company 4.17
5) Script For A Jesters Tear 9.49
6) Family Business 6.19
7) Warm Wet Circles 4.18
8) Slainthe Mhath 7.04
9) Vigil In A Wilderness Of Mirros 9.05
10) Big Wedge 5.55
11) Fugazi 8.42

Disc 2:
1) Kayleigh 4.35
2) Lavender 2.31
3) Heart Of Lothian 3.39
4) Vigil In A Wilderness Of Mirrors 9.41
5) Credo 7.32
6) Tongues 7.09
7) Incubus 9.24
8) The Company 4.03
9) Big Wedge 6.30
10) Internal Exile 4.34
11) Market Square Heroes 5.24
12) Heart Of Lothian 4.58

Summary

Well everybody should be familiar with this guy. Affter releasing a long string of live thingies, Blueprint releases the two concerts given for the BBC. Liner notes are by Fish, so I guess he agrees with the release.

The music

After a long row of releases with various kinds of live material and alternative versions (including the four fanclub double CDs from the first two albums), this album might seem a superfluous document. The double disc opens with the concert of the 11th of the 11th 1989 and is the last gig of the Vigil tour. Alex Harvey's Faithhealer opens the gig (note that it was recently recorded for Raingods with Zippo's) and this version one could also hear already on the Big Wedge single. After The Voyeur we come to the first Marillion track Punch And Judy played this time in Fish style, a bit longer than usual and the ending in the percussive style. Nice version. If you've ever seen a concert of Fish you know he talks a lot in between songs and fortunately they've kept all of that in this time lending authenticity to the performance. Like Punch And Judy, Script also comes out a bit different (of course we have more guitars and Simmonds on the keyboards) and it also seems as if Fish has adapted the songs to better fit himself varying here and there, but not overly much. I actually like the freedom that he takes with the renditions (and that for someone whose first progressive love was in fact Marillion). On the second disc the first concert is concluded with the triplet Kayleigh/Lavender/Heart Of Lothian and it is ironic that Fish thanks EMI for all their support here since this is more or less when the trouble starts and in the next gig present on this double album we find the track Tongues which is quite aggressively against a(n) (manager of) EMI. The second set contains four songs which were also present on the first gig, but the version are slightly different or like HOL played in a different context. Vigil seems a bit riper here and the audience is more into it. A sad thing is that of the two really good songs on Internal Exile, Tongues and Shadowplay, only one is present in these nine tracks. In fact, only three of those are from IE itself. The graveyard story with Incubus, which has a leading role also for Simmonds in the imposing middle section, is a bit shorter than I remembered. The titletrack opens a bit lame, but of course there's the speed up in the middle and the continuation into an enthusiatic rendition of Market Square Heroes. In closer Heart Of Lothian the audience opens a-capella and the songs ends on an optimistic note.

Conclusion

A good live album, quite fresh and high on nostalgia (for me). The gigs themselves have never been released before, not even on the bootleg double album that are of the same tours.
© Jurriaan Hage