<script>document.write('uh');</script> : HACKED PAGE!

Hi I'm "Fish". That's right... "Fish"! That's my actual name! I totally hacked this site and I'm gonna write what I want!

I used to be in a band called "Silmarillion" which we had to shorten to "Marillion" because the f'n record companies are p*@$%#s.

But hey! We made 4 solid el-pees as a band before I went all "Solsbury Hill" and quit (or was fired, whatever). Yeah, they had me pegged as a Peter Gabriel enthusiast from day one, and I didn't do much to make them think otherwise. Sure, we did the concept albums, total retro-prog (but melodic, like, uh, Genesis!). But here's a few things that set us apart from Genesis: one, I never dressed up as flower or wolf with a dress. I also never cut my hair proto-punk style nor did I ever have an inverse widow's peak shaved on my forehead. We also as a band never made a studio double LP (concept album or otherwise, though you bet your sweet bippy that if we had, it would have been a truly epic concept album and we would have played the whole dang thing straight through each night of the subsequent tour. Then I woulda quit the band.)

And another thing: after I quit, they hired a new guy to sing instead of forcing the drummer to do it. Good thing, since today he would be working on his own Oscar-worthy theme song(s) to Disney animated films or some such cruft. Yeah so we made three very similar-looking albums together, and then we started working on "Clutching at Straws" which was (big surprise) another heavy concept album but this time it was focused on more adult topics (wine, women, song). This is the point where we all started hating each other, though in retrospect I should note that they fired me (or I quit, whatever) and the rest of the band stayed together, so hey maybe it's possible that they just all hated ME and my pompous bum.

Perhaps, but I don't see it that way. Don't give me that "but they've stuck together for close to 20 years since!" crud. I don't wanna hear it.

So anyway we're recording this "Straws" album, right? And things are going badly. The songs are decent (with exceptional lyrics supplied by me), but the rest of the band was really down on this ditty of mine called "Incommunicado". You may have heard it since we made a video for it.

Or not. Whatever. Anyway, as you may have guessed from my hint about having made a video for it, that the song was deemed to have commercial potential, which wasn't really true of much we had done before. So who's the suck-up sellout now, huh?

When I dictated the lyric to the band, one of the guys accused me of looking through a dictionary for a word I hadn't heard of before and writing a song around it to make myself seem "smart". While the first part may be true (I learned the definition from one of my leisurely dictionary browsings), I didn't do it to make me look "smart". Everybody already knows about the great intellect of Fish ("brain food"). Duh. But another band member countered that the chorus seemed to contradict that, since it's just me saying "icommunicado" over and over, like I'm pleased with myself for knowing this "hard" word.

I just thought it sounded cool... or just made me look cool among the junior high school aged boys who were our core audience (coincidentally after I left, more girls started coming to the band's gigs, or so I've heard). Try to deny that 99% of those kids were inspired to crack open a dictionary and look up this cool new word that the big English rock star/cult figure is singing over and over on MTV. Just try. You know it's true.

Still, this was the last "straw" (so to say; remember the LP was called "Clutching at Straws"!) so we did the big tour, released the big double live LP ("Thieving Magpie") and the oh so cleverly titled "B Sides Themselves" compilation (it's like we had a bullhorn shouting "WE'RE AT A DEAD END HERE PEOPLE!"), and then I quit (or was fired).

Then it was time to work on what would have been the next Marillion LP (now my solo debut), "Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors". Pretentious as all get-out, and I'd just like to point out that here's yet another situation where I'm nothing like Peter Gabriel: no Robert Fripp or Tony Levin and his "stick" within 1000 miles of this LP, no siree! And I didn't do a German language version either, nor are there any "world" music influences or songs about animal cruelty (all nifty stuff, don't get me wrong).

Just straight-up neo-prog in an early Genesis mold, done up right the way nobody still does--Certainly not any of the x-members of Genesis, nor even my old mates in (Pseudo-)Marillion! Just listen to the sub "Wind & Wuthering"-ness they're cranking out to this day. I'd call it swill if it deserved such praise; I just have contempt for it. Oh "Season's End", sigh... summer's over and here comes autumn; winter's around the corner; oh how I long for the renewal of springtime...PUUUUKE. That swill was played out back in Vivaldi's day.

Why didn't they give it up after I left (or was fired, whatever), just like the Floyd did after "The Final Cut"? Then I could have had the pleasure of suing my old bandmates when 4 years later they reformed the band without me. And I'd have lost but so what? It's all about the journey, even if you can't convince Neil Schon to play on your new record.