Divorce song for 29 August 2025

Between what's right and wrong, can a love still grow strong?

On the arc of the curve

19 July 2025

Although I surely knew it instinctually, I never thought about how emotionally exhausting divorce would be until I was actually in media res of one. I take a little comfort in knowing that it must be even worse for couples with minor children, lots of shared property and expensive doodads to quarrel over, etc. Having said that, I am looking forward to getting off this roller coaster of sadness and anger as soon as my brain is able. Despite my best efforts, I often find myself mining the past for clues as to when our marriage reached the point of no return or rehashing the times when I felt I was being mistreated in one way or another. I'll fixate on a particular event or series of related events for a day or 2 before finding something else to lament.

It's a rainy day and I am in a room at a flophouse with an air conditioner so loud that it gives the F-35s out at Truax a run for their money. I've been meaning to write about my life at this point but I have also been trying to keep busy and spend time with people as much as I can to ward off the Robinson Crusoe levels of loneliness I feel. Piper is lying next to me, occasionally dozing off when not looking at me expecting pets any second. It took a couple days but she finally got comfortable with the room and stopped hiding. The first night she was here she dared not leave her carrier. I tried to inveigle her out with the promise of treats to no avail. Looking at her nestled in the blankets inside the carrier, I could see the fear in her eyes and my heart broke. Again. I cannot recall the last time I felt so heartbroken as in the past couple weeks or so. Piper is my companion more than she can ever know.

The flophouse I'm staying at for another few days is on the outskirts of town. While I could have chosen something not so far from everything, I really enjoy the all-too short drive through the country in the morning when I head into town where I park my car and then hop on the bus which takes me to work. Today I went to the coffeehouse that I've adopted as something of an escape from home. I take the long way there - the scenic route and put on some calming, ethereal music as the trees, cornfields, cows, and many a sandhill crane go by my window.

There are moments when I can just lose myself in the scenery and feel the pull of Mother Nature as I drive though wooded areas or see her reclaiming a dilapidated barn. Other times I ruminate on my failed marriage. Today my brain was fixated on the adage about never going to be angry being good advice. I regret that we never adhered to it.

Take the ride

I missed the 27th(!!) anniversary of Fish's Sunsets on Empire yesterday. I was going to post another tune from his show in Milwaukee on that album's tour but that will wait until next year. Instead I am going with "Jungle Ride" live in Poland a couple months after the Milwaukee show at Shank Hall.

Sunsets on Empire is definitely a favorite album of mine. Not just of Fish's, but by anyone, of all-time. I think he described it as "progressive nouveau" at the time of its release. Fish and his co-conspirators crafted songs with great melodies that often times, usually when he was in league with Steve Wilson, utilized all the latest/trendiest technology so we had samples and loops as well as all manner of sounds that had never been on a Fish album previously.

While these types of technologies had been utilized to a degree on the previous album, Suits, here they're more prominent and better integrated. Loops are supported by real instruments more there and seem to stand out less, seem less of a novelty. Plus, the rhythms have a bit more groove to them and a bit more punch too.

"Jungle Ride" is a hazy, almost hallucinatory trip through the male psyche. About 3 minutes in a violin slithers into the soundscape with its Middle Eastern vibes and the song settles into a great trippy groove.

Dreaming of Suits

It's been 30 years since Fish released Suits, his 4th album. With his music career a tour away from being only a memory, there's something poignant about seeing him live fairly early on his solo journey. It's a bit sad for me knowing there's no more Fishy music to be had. Waiting for new albums of his and delving into them when they finally arrived had been a part of my life for so long and I miss it.

So here's "Mr. 1470" from 30 October 1993, meaning Suits was still months away from store shelves.

So Fellini for 23 years

Fellini Days by Fish came out today in 2001. It was a return to form, so to speak, in that it was a divorce/end of relationship album. Going to back to his early Marillion roots.

This is usually my favorite song from it, "Tiki 4". A smoky, easy-going vibe.

R.I.P. John Giblin

Watch the Old World Melt Away

 

I remember the moment I found out that Marillion had lost their singer, Fish, very well. It was, I think, the spring of 1988 and the sad news came in a letter – the handwritten type sent via the U.S. Post Office – from a woman with whom I traded bootlegs. The teenage me was in shock, at first, as I read the words while seated at the kitchen table. Shock then led to me feeling devastated. How would I get my fix of prolix, poetic lyrics about personal struggles and the achingly beautiful guitar solos that brought them to life musically? What would happen to the band? Was it really the end?

Not by a long shot.

Marillion smartly brought in a new singer who was much shorter than Fish, had a completely different voice than the Scotsman, and wrote very different lyrics. I didn’t envy Steve Hogarth having to fill Fish’s shoes but history has proven he was more than capable of being the band’s front man.

I recall well buying the first album of this new incarnation of Marillion, Seasons End, in the fall of 1989. Although the cover featured the old logo, it did not sport the very colorful imagery of Mark Wilkinson who had painted the artwork for the band’s previous album covers which were dense tableaus of Fish's lyrical world. Instead it was more spartan, featuring a series of small photographs that represented the four elements set on a larger backdrop of ocean waves. Each of the smaller pictures had a reference to the band’s previous era with Fish.
 
The one representing earth has a feather which may be a magpie feather; in the air panel we see the tip of a jester cap not unlike the one seen on the Clutching at Straws cover; a chameleon sits on a branch while in the background a fire roars; and lastly the picture of a clown seen on the Fugazi album cover is seen sinking into a pond or lake.

I couldn’t wait to get home and listen to it.

I suspect the band decided to play a trick on fans with the lead-off song, “The King of Sunset Town”. Here we all were, eager to hear the new singer in action. We hit play or drop the needle and are forced to wait two and half minutes before Hogarth sings a note. But a glorious two and a half minutes they are.

Mark Kelly conjures a wash of synths that slowly builds. He adorns the swirling mix of string-like and chorus sounds with some other bits that, along with Steve Rothery’s guitar, add mood to the gently churning aural wave. Pete Trawavas’ bass eventually joins and some subtle cymbals from Ian Mosely are thrown in for good measure. Then a glassy whoosh of those cymbals ushers in the drums which skip along as Rothery gives us a gorgeous solo full of his trademark sustained notes. I love this solo’s cadence which starts with high notes and then descends. Then it’s back to the higher ones and down low once more.

Things slow down with a few plucked guitar notes and a wandering bass providing the backdrop for Hogarth’s entry. He has a kindler, gentler voice than Fish. “The King of Sunset Town” is about the poor and the rich, the powerful and the weak, filtered through the lens of the events of the Tiananmen Square protests of that summer. Had Fish tackled this topic, he surely would have made the lyrics a screed angrily denouncing the Chinese authorities and bitterly lamenting the deaths of those killed by the army.

But Hogarth (and lyrical co-writer John Helmer) write a broader, more humanistic tale. One that perhaps focuses less on the violence and deaths, and more on the power of that nameless man who stood in front of a line of tanks causing them to halt. Hogarth’s voice is no less powerful or emotive than Fish’s, but he tacks the seas of human experience via a different course than his predecessor.

The music sounds fresh and dynamic here and on the rest of Seasons End. Instead of another round of plumbing the depths of despair and marshaling anger, Marillion seek out the good in the world, however well-hidden, and tease out hope even if the situation seems hopeless. The balance between opening one’s heart and venting one’s spleen tips decisively towards the former.

Raised in the jungles I quickly learned to read the trees

Back in the spring/summer of 1987 a friend of my older brother caught wind that I was a Genesis fan of epic proportions and, as good elders do, gave me the "If you like Genesis, you should check out..." speech familiar to many a proghead. A tape was also included. While I cannot recall the whole spiel, Marillion was on the list as the accompanying tape, which I still have, contained the 12" single for the band's "Market Square Heroes". The b-sides were "Three Boats Down from the Candy" and "Grendel", the 17 minute epic that lovingly borrowed a bit from Genesis' own epic, "Supper's Ready".

A friend of mine whom I'd suckered into being a Genesis/prog fan a couple years earlier and I went out on a mission to find more Marillion. While I'm not sure, I'd bet we made our way to the Rolling Stones music store out by the HIP (Harlem Irving Plaza). Chicago music lovers know where I am talking about. I don't recall what Marillion album my friend bought but I went home with their fourth album, Clutching at Straws. The anguish and melancholy of Fish's lyrics (along with some angry and sorrowful music) were perfect for a disconsolate teenager who had just a couple months previously been uprooted from Chicago to the backwoods of Wisconsin.

Roughly a year later I was shocked to hear that Fish had left the band. And so my proggy path had been riven in twain. I still had Marillion to follow with their new singer, Steve Hogarth, but also Fish's solo career.

A few years ago Fish announced that he was to retire from music after a final solo album and a farewell tour. The album, Weltschmerz, was released in 2020 while the tour was, like most things, delayed by Covid. Endings invariably give way to reminiscence and reflection and with 30+ years of fandom under my belt, I joyously looked back at his career.

One thing that has made his solo work so interesting is that Fish is not much of a composer so he collaborates with others who can devise musical accompaniment to his lyrical musings. Some collaborators stuck around for multiple albums while others worked on one before moving on. This means that there is some continuity but also plenty of variation in his solo work.

I am loathe to label any of Fish's albums as my favorite although I do feel some are better than others but find that each has its place. Listening to a YouTube playlist recently, a live version of "Jungle Ride" came on and I was reminded again what a fantastic song it is.

The song appears on his fifth solo album, Sunsets on Empire, from 1997 which is famous in proggy circles for being the one where Fish collaborated with Steve Wilson of Porcupine Tree. Wilson produced it, played on it, and co-wrote 6 of the 10 songs. "Jungle Ride", however, was co-written with guitarist Robin Boult who had been one of Fish's co-conspirators since his second album, Internal Exile.

As with a lot of music in my collection, Sunsets on Empire is inexorably intertwined with a period in my life, in this case it's my misbegotten mid-20s. My friendship with my roommate had become frayed to the point of being irreconcilable and there was, unsurprisingly, a woman involved. Fish was having marital problems when he wrote the lyrics for Sunsets on Empire and it was hard not to feel a sense of connection.

But "Jungle Ride" is more concerned with one of the other themes of the album, manhood. Sunsets on Empire isn't a concept album focusing on all things masculine but it is a motif that appears every so often.

The theme is most overtly expressed in the song "Brother 52", about an American biker and Fish fanatic who felt that the collapse of society was nigh and so he started stockpiling weapons. This drew the attention of the federal government and ended in a shootout with ATF agents. The refrain of "We are lover, warrior, magician kings" is a reference to the book King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette. The authors use Jungian theory to explore masculinity via the four titular roles/archetypes. It's been ages since I've read the book but I think the gist of it is that healthy masculinity involves balancing "mature" expressions of these impulses, which are the primary ones in men.

Elsewhere on the album Fish is a loving and protective father to his daughter Tara on the song bearing her name. "Goldfish and Clowns" chronicles an incident in which Fish had a tryst, of sorts, with a woman who wasn't his wife that he met at a party. And so we get a song about being a husband and the things that go along with that role - love, fidelity, etc.

"Jungle Ride" takes the listener back to the fairs of the singer's youth and the ride that gives us the title. Therein we find men-in-training awkwardly jockeying for the attention of pretty girls as gangs of boys/young men prowl the midway looking to stir up trouble and get into fights. This was an era

Where men don't cry and husbands lie and you never have to justify a kickin'
When mates jump in to save your skin if a chib is ever pulled out in a square go

It's a song about immaturity/boyishness on various fronts. It is also a stunning song musically. After Fish's spoken word intro, Robin Boult's melodic acoustic guitar sits atop a tom-heavy beat from drummer Dave Stewart that is joined by the extra percussion of Dave Haswell. (Conga? Djembe?) The air is thick in the dream-like atmosphere here. Just shy of the halfway mark, the band fall into a hypnotic groove while a violin solos and sultry, wordless vocals weave from left to right like a beautiful woman tempting and teasing.

A true highlight of a career with many.

Field of Crows Turns 17

It was on this day back in 2003 that Fish released his eighth album, Field of Crows. While one of his lesser efforts, in my opinion, about half the album is really good to great. This is a show from that tour recorded on 6 April 2004. 

 

A Feast of Consequences by Fish

It’s been six years since Fish’s last effort, 13th Star. That album was forged in the aftermath of his disastrous relationship with Mostly Autumn singer Heather Findlay who canceled their wedding shortly before the big day. Consequently it is a very dark affair, its lyrics littered with anger. 13th Star was mainly co-written with bassist Steve Vantsis who also contributed drum programming, samples, and keyboards which gave the album a distinct industrial edge. At some point Fish’s relationship with Vantsis soured and they went their separate ways after the tour in support of the album. For his part, Fish had surgery on his throat and found himself on the primrose path of matrimony.

Although Vantsis and Fish have buried the hatchet, their latest collaboration, A Feast of Consequences is a very different animal. The shadings of Nine Inch Nails have given way to a more melodic sensibility, Fish’s anger mostly ceding to introspection and a desire to look at the world around him.

“Perfume River”, the lead-off track, opens with some rather lonely bagpipe – Scotland fading in the distance – as Fish pleads to be taken to the titular body of water. The Perfume River lies in Vietnam and Fish traveled there alone in the wake of the end of his relationship with Findlay. Here he closes his mind “in soft surrender” and “in quiet resignation take[s] the lies”. He wants nothing more to escape his life that has been torn asunder:

Carry me down to the Perfume River; hold me down in the Perfume River

Where I’ll drown my sorrows, and I’ll die in hope

Push me away down the Perfume River to the swirls and eddies of the Perfume River

In these dark and muddied waters just let me float

The truth I don’t want to know

Lyrically this is not too far away from 13th Star, but musically, it’s nothing like it. The song is nearly eleven minutes long and meanders through multiple sections. The opening bagpipes give way to dream-like synths before Robin Boult’s acoustic guitar plucking enters. Slowly the song and tension build as drums and electric guitar are added to the mix. A vocal crescendo gives way to a briskly strummed acoustic guitar that banishes the miasma and ushers in a faster tempo. Fish’s vocals lose the sustained notes and drama as the pleading chorus takes over. A fantastic slice of progressive nouveau.

“All Loved Up” takes things in a totally different direction with a Keith Richards guitar lick and Fish sardonically discoursing on fame in the age of the Internet. It sticks out like a sore thumb here being more light-hearted lyrically and musically than the rest of the album but on the other it’s really just “Incommunicado” inverted and updated for the 21st century. There’s more to Fish’s life than lost love. “Blind to the Beautiful” follows and is rather sparsely arranged. Acoustic guitar, piano, and accordion, courtesy of Foss Paterson’s keys, carry the tune with occasional flourishes of a doleful violin. Elizabeth Antwi’s voice is featured here to great effect for the first time since “Incomplete” twelve years ago. It has all the ingredients for another song about the loss of love but the beauty here is nature. With lines such as “The ice retreating, mountains exposed in the sun,” this song is decidedly a lamentation over environmental destruction and our indifference towards it.

The title track is straight-ahead rock and the name is a play on a quote from Robert Louis Stevenson – “Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences”. It acts as something of a companion piece to “Blind to the Beautiful” in that most of the lyrics here seem to refer to a relationship that nears its final moments (“I tear a page from the book of faces/Throw your letters in an open fire”) but the environmental theme crops up again at the end with “We were running out of World, running out of hope, running out of resources/We were running out of time, running out of space, running out of tomorrows.”

What comes next is a half hour suite concerned with The Great War. Referred to as the High Wood Suite, it consists of five songs: “High Wood”, “Crucifix Corner”, “The Gathering”, “Thistle Alley”, and “The Leaving”. The High Wood is a site in northern France which saw fighting during the Battle of the Somme and Fish was apparently inspired by reading a book on the battle, visiting the site, and then learning that his grandfathers both served in that area during the war.

The first three songs were co-written with keyboardist Foss Paterson and so the opener, “High Wood”, leans heavily on piano which is complemented by a string quartet. The drums eventually begin a harrowing march as the song shifts gear to the events of 1916. The chorus is almost a chant, adding a bit of primal menace. “Crucifix Corner” opens with more piano and sustained guitar notes as battle nears but Boult’s six strings churn out a galloping riff for the cavalry charge in the second half of the song. We flash back to 1914 with “The Gathering”. What sounds like a Salvation Army band sets the mood as the country prepares for war and young men ready themselves to be shipped out. Duty, honor, and hope for a better future rule the day. The brass sounds very odd on a Fish record but the chorus features the customary wall of guitar and organ.

The brief retreat to better days ends with “Thistle Alley” with the nightmare of the war resuming. This is the heaviest song of the suite and marks a return to the sounds of 13th Star. Gavin Griffiths’ bass drum is brought up in the mix to emphasize the plodding rhythm while the guitar alternately bubbles underneath and cuts out jagged chords. Vantsis left his mark on “Thistle Alley” but the piano and strings which bookend “The Leaving” signal the return of Paterson. Boult, however, owns the middle section here with layers of guitar reminding the listener that, while the war may have ended, the loss and pain had not.

After a half an hour of Fish investigating The Great War, “The Other Side of Me” sees him looking inwards and at his own life once again. But he seems to have come out of the darkness and found some solace. Aidan O’Rourke’s bittersweet violin is a highlight of this song as is Robin Boult’s rather Gilmour-like solo. The Floydian feel is bolstered by Antwi’s backing vocals here as well. The song feels like “Sugar Mice” with a happy ending. “The Great Unraveling” brings the album to a close. The positive vibe of “The Other Side of Me” is tempered here with a bit of pragmatism. The singer is no longer the lost soul of “Perfume River” seeking to just be someplace else; instead he has gone through it all and come out the other side able to move on and a bit wiser.

The lives that we played before,

Stretch into our past define us,

Instinctively hearts entwine

Love brings us closer to carry us forward

If, as my ears tell me, the strength of 13th Star lies with its consistency of mood and tone, then the great virtue of this album is its diversity. Instead of a single event providing the focus, here Fish is looking inside but also at the world around him. In addition to love lost, he has fun with celebrity & the Internet, mourns for our environment, and spends half the album looking back at one of his latest interests, World War I. The variety of lyrical subject matter is reflected in the music. While mainly a rock album, it speaks well of Fish that you can find flugelhorn on one track and a hip-hop drum box on another. The tonal palette brings together your typical rock instruments and pairs them with strings, brass, and drum loops to great effect.

Foss Paterson doubled his songwriting credits with Fish on this album with much of the High Woods Suite being co-written by him. Those songs are dynamic with slower passages that highlight his piano work giving way to louder sections where he harmonizes with Robin Boult’s guitar. Speaking of guitar, it was great to hear Boult alone on this album. Normally he’s to be found sharing the six string duties with Frank Usher or Steve Wilson but he’s basically on his own here which was really nice for me to get a sense of just what he brings to the table. He ably moves from acoustic to electric, gently picking one moment and slashing out distorted walls of sound the next. His parts always fit in with the greater whole whether that means providing a lead or adding to the overall picture.

Fish’s voice also merits mention here. It sounds clearer and he sustains more notes than on 13th Star. While he will never be able to sing the vocal gymnastics of something like “Grendel” again, his voice has regained much of its dramatic flair. 13th Star featured more bursts of raw emotion while this album is more about sustaining emotional arcs across songs. There’s less anger present here. And Liz Antwi’s return is most welcome. She provides nice counterpoint which helps make the songs about relationships less antagonistic and take on a more pensive feel, more about looking back at past troubles rather than being mired in them.

This is certainly one of Fish’s strongest efforts. Not only are the material and performances strong, there is a lot on A Feast of Consequences that sounds like nothing Fish has ever done before yet sounds quintessentially Fish.

Fish @ Shank Hall, 14 June 2008

Last weekend The Dulcinea and I braved the flooding here in Southern Wisconsin and went to see Fish at Shank Hall. As he always does on his (extremely) infrequent U.S. tours, Onkel Fish pledged to meet up with fans before the show at a drinking establishment in each tour stop. For Milwaukee, the pre-gig festivities were held at The Hi Hat Lounge in the Garage. We arrived sometime between 5 and 5:30. The place was littered with many a fan and the big man's latest, 13th Star, was playing on the stereo.

Despite the horrendous service, we managed to grab a bite to eat and down a few brews as the clouds gathered and the rain fell. At one point we heard a roar and turned to see Fish stepping inside. He seated himself at the reserved tables next to us. Taking off his jacket, he began sipping what looked like a Guinness and immediately pulled out a cigarette. A line formed with fans eagerly waiting to meet him and have him place his John Hancock on album covers, DVD sleeves, and all manner of paraphernalia. Fish seemed in good spirits and willingly signed whatever was put in front of him and took all requests for pictures. And he graciously accepted a bag of fresh cheese curds from a fan from Wausau.

The D and I finished dinner and went to the back of the line. One gentleman in front of us had a couple photos of himself with Fish from back in 1987 when Marillion was in town for a gig at Billy's Old Mill. Fish had a lot more hair back then. When it was our turn, The D leaned over and asked him for a birthday kiss. I didn't have the camera ready but I did get a shot of him signing her arm. And I got my picture taken with him.

Sometime after 7 we hit the road for Shank Hall. It was fairly crowded and would eventually hold 300+ folks. The opening band for the night was Strange Land. They were progressive metal and, to my mind, pretty bland. Improbably, one song got stuck in The D's head. Before their last song, the singer told the audience that Milwaukee had a progressive rock scene and asked fans to support it by attending shows by the likes of them, Kopecky, Far Corner, and Dimension X.

A short wait later, the lights dimmed. Then the voice of Lisa Simpson came over the PA.

"Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen and welcome to the show! This is Lisa Simpson from the......Simpsons, huh! I don't usually practice this sort of debauchery! Are you ready to rock and roll!!? You are in for some treat tonight! Fish is such a wonderful guy and the keyboard player is so cute!!! And they don't call him Fish because he likes to take a long bath! He introduced me to a new soda pop called... eh... Guinness!!! Woo Hoo! Geezabun!!! I am the Lizard Queen!!!! Ladies and Gentlemen!! Fish!!"

Yeardley Smith, who does the voice of Lisa Simpson, is a big fan of Fish and recorded the intro back in 1997 or '98 when she found she was unable to attend a show of his. Now, when she said "Geezabun", I just cracked up, leaving The D a bit perplexed. Go here for the full explanation but know that it's the answer to a joke. Back in the Marillion days, Fish would tell the joke, "Q: How does an elephant tell you it's hungry? A: Geezabun!", with geezabun being "give us a bun" said quickly by a Scotsman. Then fans would throw buns onstage. OK, if you're a Fish/Marillion fan, it's funny.

Then came the La Gazza Ladra bit by Rossini followed by the opening piano of "Slainte Mhath" from Marillion's Clutching at Straws. I went hoarse from screaming "Waiting on the whistle to blow!" Indeed, I suspect I wasn't alone because nearly everyone was doing the same. It was a great way to start the proceedings. I wasn't able catch Marillion on the Clutching tour so it was wonderful to hear that material live. Next were "Circle Line" and "Square Go" from 13th Star. I didn't know every line like I did the older stuff but they were powerful performances both. Fish introduced the latter as being about being angry and he did a bit of shadow boxing at the end. The D remarked to me how she felt some kind of kinship with Fish through this song; it seemed to get across some of the same feelings of anger and frustration that she feels.

I hope that someone recorded this show because Fish had some great stories including a rant about how we put cheese on everything here in Wisconsin. For the intro to "So Fellini", I think he told the story of walking around and finding the statue of Robert Burns at Burns Commons (Knapp & Prospect Streets). He'd never seen the statue before and took it as a good sign. (Fish is a proud Scotsman.) The song came off well and, since I'd never seen him perform anything from Fellini Days, it was a treat.

I won't blather on about each individual song but let me say a few more words. The salvo of "Hotel Hobbies/Warm Wet Circles/That Time of the Night" was simply amazing. I nearly yelled out "Teenage war brides" but restrained myself. (Marillion fans understand this.) I hope I don't come across as some geezer who merely wants to wallow in nostalgia but these were the songs that helped me through a very unhappy time of my life. I was 15 and my family had moved from Chicago to rural Wisconsin. My parents' marriage was falling apart and I didn't have a friend within 300 miles. Marillion was the soundtrack of my life at that time.

The new song "Dark Star" had great dynamics as did the hard-hitting "Manchmal". New guitarist Chris Johnson looks likes he's barely able to drink yet his playing was fantastic. He makes a great foil for Frank Usher, Fish's long-time friend and guitarist. Johnson took most of the crushing leads but also stepped back at times so Usher could step forward. The last tune from 13th Star played that night was "Arc of the Curve" and it's quickly becoming one of my all-time favorite Fish songs. It's the "Kayleigh" of the 21st century as Fish wears his heart on his sleeve amidst sustained guitar notes and a catchy chorus. It's just beautiful.

I am loathe to say that one Fish album or the other is my favorite as each has certain songs, certain moods, and certain memories associated with it. But I will tell you that 13th Star ranks amongst his best. There are great melodies and some dark grooves and they all mix together perfectly with a very raw Fish who, in typical fashion, is lamenting the end of a relationship. It's an album full of anger, frustration, sadness, and regret but it all sounds perfectly natural, not forced. The D commented to me that one reason she loved Fish was that he was very open and passionate in his music. I think that those passions have found perfect musical foils on 13th Star - the best since Sunsets on Empire. There have been similar bursts since such as "Incomplete", parts of "Plague of Ghosts", "The Pilgrim's Address", and "The Field" but on this album everything just gels as they did on Sunsets. Kudos to bassist Steve Vantsis who co-wrote most of the 13th Star material.

The penultimate song of the set was The Sensational Alex Harvey Band's "Faith Healer" which saw Fish descend into the audience and lay hands. This was followed by "White Russian". Although a relic of the Cold War, the message is timeless and it really benefited from being played live as it gained the most muscle of all the Clutching material.

The encore break didn't last for long and they returned to the stage first with "Cliché", a song from Fish's first solo album, Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors. It's never been a favorite of mine but it always sounds great live. I loved it back in '97 and I did again in '08. Frank Usher really stepped out with his soloing here and having two guitarists this time round really filled it out. "Incommunicado" came next and I was jumping up and down, singing, and, in general, having a great time.

When it ended, the band walked off the stage which prompted the audience to starting chanting "Sugar Mice". "Sugar Mice" was written in Milwaukee back in 1986 and it starts out, "I was flicking through the channels on the TV/On a Sunday in Milwaukee in the rain". Soon enough they were back and Fish told us how it started raining just as they began the song at the soundcheck. He also noted that Father's Day was right around the corner in the UK (This also relates to the lyrics.) and he seemed to get a bit emotional during his intro. Then the gently plucked notes of the song started. I found my eyes tear-stained by the end. The guitar solo just aches and I remember all-too well listening to that song on a long drive with my father that I'd rather not have taken.

The night ended with "The Last Straw", the terminal tune on Clutching. Despite being the biggest downer song of Fish's career, it has a swagger to it which made it a fitting finale as the crowd sang, "We're clutching at straws, we're still drowning" at the top our collective lungs.

This was one of the best shows I've ever been to. 300+ fans were there for the music and I didn't have to deal with anyone carrying on a conversation next to me. The vibe was just incredible. At 6'5" and with lots of tales, Fish can work a crowd. The band was really tight and the new songs fit comfortably along side the classics. Again, Steve Vantsis really deserves credit for his contributions to the songs on 13th Star. They bring out the best in Fish. The D remarked to me after the show that one thing she loved about Fish was how passionate he was about his relationships and how that came through in his music. Indeed. Whenever he has problems with a relationship, he tends to turn out a classic album.

Hopefully he'll return to the States before another 11 long years are up.

Regarding Fellini Moments

A Fellini Moment was defined by Derek Dick, a.k.a. - Onkel Fish as follows:

"The term 'Fellini moment' came about on the back of a long snake of a tour curve when the surreal became normality and events and experiences took on new meanings. In all the madness of such a lifestyle there are moments of serenity when time stops and you catch a glimpse at the true wonder of the World we live in. These moments stand out in a day and there are some days when these events gather in clusters or curves. This is a Fellini Day. The term is a direct reference to Italian film director Federico Fellini who would sprinkle his movies with moments of tangential beauty or draw our attention to a detail of wonderment that would often go otherwise unnoticed in our hectic every day lives."