Really

[james_davis_nicoll]

Nobody here remembers Marillion?

Comments

[onyxlynx]

Remember them, sure.

Have a reason to remember them? Not so much.

[emceeaich]

Yeah, more of a power pop than a prog rock fan here.

[adrian_turtle]

Of course I remember. (Mostly the chalk hearts melting on the playground wall.)

[brewsternorth]

I think I remember about one song by them (it was on a compilation of Eighties rock).

[bethzebra.livejournal.com]

I do, assuming we're talking about the band. I had some friend somewhere along the line who was a rabid fan. I wasn't one myself, though, so basically all I remember is that they exist and are a band. (or did exist and were?)

[nishatalitha.livejournal.com]

Ditto. Also, they were before my time.

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

We'd have to have heard of them to remember them. According to Wikipedia, they're a prog-rock band that formed in 1979 -- there's a recipe for obscurity if I ever heard one.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Next you'll be claiming you never heard of Blue Oyster Cult!

(btw, I only just discovered the connection between Boney M and Milli Vanilli)

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

German disco?

[autopope.livejournal.com]

I remember Marillion. Saw them live once, at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1983.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

I know of them. There's also a singing Marillion in A Song of Ice and Fire, but IIRC Martin swears it's coincidence.

[terheyt.livejournal.com]

He was my first thought. Only prompting brought up the other at all.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

I know them a little; my best friend got married to 'Lavender'.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Remember? I still listen to them.

[mad-troll.livejournal.com]

I know of them - and might have heard them, since a friend/former flat-mate had some CDs.
Are they so forgettable?

[ellemir.livejournal.com]

I was a huge fan as a teenager, and can remember queuing to Clutching at Straws on the day of release.

[xinef.livejournal.com]

We have at least 2 of their CDs and still listen to them occasionally.

[agharta75.livejournal.com]

They lost it after Sil left.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Yes. Some of us olds who remember said Marillion didn't see whatever post of yours referred to them earlier.

I had a couple of friends who were super into the prog-art-rock thing in college.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Oh, the poll.

I lost track of Marillion before Fish left, so I didn't even know about Hogarth.

[alyxyn.livejournal.com]

My heart sister is a big fan of theirs. Has a large print of one of their album covers in her office and is constantly trying to get me to listen to them. The one or two songs I heard I recall liking, but somehow I've never gotten around to trying to hear more.

[coyotegoth.livejournal.com]

Do you remember
chalk hearts melting
on a playground wall?

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Do you remember
Dawn escapes
from moonwashed college halls?

[timgueguen.livejournal.com]

I've been aware of them since the '80s but have never listened to them, other than maybe seeing the video to "Kayleigh" on some '80s video show. What I read about them never interested me enough to bother.

[rpresser.livejournal.com]

This, without the video possibility.

The band name always makes me think of Tolkien (and I guess it's probably supposed to). And I never thought of Tolkien as much of a musician.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, the band was originally called "Silmarillion".

-- Paul Clarke

[(Anonymous)]

We still listen to our CDs. They are not new, true. The real Marillion is no more...

Ewa

[marith.livejournal.com]

The Clutching at Straws album is my official Music of Pain. In the unlikely event I ever go through labor, the ipod will have it on repeat.

[martin-wisse.livejournal.com]

Is it too late to say I'm sorry? or would that just be a gentleman's excuse me?

[gwynnega]

I don't like 'em, but I do remember 'em!

[andrewducker]

Misplaced Childhood was one of my favourite albums (although I haven't listened to it in a while). And I've seen Fish live.

I remember them...

[death4breakfast.livejournal.com]

...from the one popular song they had that was on the AOR station I listened to in the 80's. They weren't bad but they weren't really my favored style of music, so I didn't pay much attention to them beyond that.

[iainjcoleman.livejournal.com]

Clutching at Straws is one of the best rock albums ever, and certainly the most underrated.

[daev.livejournal.com]

Marillion poked their heads into mainstream-ish popularity around 1985 with Misplaced Childhood and the "Kayleigh" single. That was a time when young people like me who'd cut their musical teeth on Pink Floyd and other big '70s greats were desperate for anything sweeping, impassioned, and symphonic, in a world where your choices were increasingly dance-influenced pop on the radio and adrenaline-focussed punk in the underground. As a result, anyone who could even tickle the same proggy emotions were beloved -- Dream Theater ("Life in a Northern Town"), Marillion, Queensryche ("Silent Lucidity"), and Rush.

Marillion also seem to be one of those bands that's kept going forever, still making good music, but never hip enough to have acquired a multi-generational following. They're perpetual "cult following" bands, but only at certain times did their cult bandwagon pick up passengers. There are a bunch of these guys -- names whose appearance in someone's music collection will instantly tell you how old they are, even though their music's not dated and was never trendy. Some other good examples I've noticed:

• Webb Wilder
• The Oyster Band
• Cowboy Junkies
• Robyn Hitchcock

It's not like the English folk-rock of the Oyster Band was ever a hit, and they're putting out good CDs in the same style, so they ought to be timeless. But if I see someone on LiveJournal whose "current music" is an Oyster Band song, even a new Oyster Band song, I can bet they went to college around 1990. Same for Webb Wilder. (Hitchcock's got a wider distribution.) This is different from embarrassing one-hit wonders in your old LP collection -- nobody's buying current David Lee Roth albums -- and from the really timeless musicians like delta Bluesmen.

[badger.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid of anoraks.

[timgueguen.livejournal.com]

Speaking of Gabriel sound alikes I'd like to mention a silly theory I've had for a while: Dave Matthews had the success he did in part because he sounded somewhat like Peter Gabriel, and Gabriel didn't put out enough material in the '90s. Therefore the kind of people who were attracted to Gabriel by songs like "In Your Eyes" ended up listening to Matthews because there wasn't more material from Gabriel. ("The Space Between" is a good example of Matthews sounding like Gabriel.)

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

That sounds like me, actually. (Though it was "Crush" for me.)

[armb.livejournal.com]

I saw them live with a ex-girlfriend I'd broken up with in between buying tickets and the concert (but we were still friends). I haven't heard them post-Fish though.

[pauldormer.livejournal.com]

I'd heard of them, but as I tend to listen to mostly classical music I know little about them.

But I do remember seeing a quote from an interview when they started. "They are named after the hero of Tolkien's novel, Sil Marillion."

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

I do, but I never cared for them.