Sit And Chew On Daffodils...

Today is the thirtieth anniversary of the release of Marillion's Script For A Jester's Tear. Writing that makes me feel somewhat old! Script is an important album in my record collection as it introduced me to prog, not that I really appreciated that at the time. My musical taste in the late seventies and early eighties had been centred around the classic heavy rock of albums like Rainbow Rising, the emergence of NWOBHM classics like Number of the Beast and Wheels of Steel. Bands like Yes, Genesis, Jethro Tull, King Crimson etc didn't feature.* Script changed that...

Listening back to the album it clearly has flaws but its still has a power and emotion about it that enchants. Fans of seventies Genesis claim the music is highly derivative, it may be but I don't hear it. The reason for that is the lyrics. Full of passion, pathos and anger, Fish is a superb wordsmith and every song here has moments that make the hairs stand up on my neck.

The title track weeps sadness of love lost, Garden Party spits sacrasm at the silver spoon brigade, Chelsea Monday resonates with pathos of a life wasted and Forgotten Sons, the piece de resistance in my opinion, fires off salvoes of bottled up anger at the wasted lives in the Northern Ireland Troubles. Show me a Genesis album with any of that...

So tonight I'm sitting chewing daffodils behind the hull of my Saracen armoured car, playing Script For A Jester's Tear and toasting it for introducing me to a genre, and bands and songs I love, that may have passed me by.

* Pink Floyd were the exception but everyone bought The Wall and The Final Cut (also thirty years old) spoke to me as one of Maggie's millions. I didn't realise that was "prog" but in the early eighties rock fans liked everything from Marillion to Metallica and were not obsessed with sub-genre labels.