Dear FishHeads, Freaks, fans and the Company,

Well the convention is approaching fast and furious, and I am coming to terms with the enormous workload we will have to deal with in the next few weeks.

The band arrives on Sunday to begin three weeks of solid rehearsals and hopefully everyone has done their homework so we can get up to speed quickly.
It's a huge commitment and we will be pressed to get everything together in the run up.
As I said there are no warm up shows so it will all be focused on the night.

To put it in perspective only 9 of the 40 songs across the two set lists were performed on the last tour,.3 are first time ever as a solo artist, 11 are pre '88 with most of them having been on the bench for years and a lot of the others haven't been in a set since the '90s.
Frank and Foss have dim recollections but Chris and the 2 Gavin's are learning everything from scratch.
I would never have contemplated sets like these for anything other than a convention and in all honesty this could be the last time out for a lot of these songs.

The sets will contain a mix of eras on either night and there is enough material to keep everyone happy across the weekend.
And the band completely perched on their toes! :-)

Not only do I have my own end to hold up as the singer, relearning lyrics and remembering material from over 20 years ago but I also have the "daily events" to put together including writing the "Never Mind the FishHeads" sketches for the Sunday afternoon, working out what we will do as the acoustic set on the Saturday, getting together with Tosh and others to plan the back screen projections and all the other film elements together with all the "sundry" pieces that go to making a happening weekend.

The weekend tickets are selling well but I have decided to put up the individual nights for sale as there are some people who can't make both nights and also some members of the public who want tickets but who are not members of the fan club.
With this in mind we will have tickets for the individual nights on sale through my web site and from the Assembly rooms at Leamington Spa on Monday.

The tickets are priced at £25 for each night. They are valid for the evening performances only and not the after show party on the Sunday.
As already confirmed Pendragon will be my special guests on the Saturday and The Reasoning and Glyder will be my guests on the bill on the Sunday.
Doors on Saturday for the evening performances will be at 7pm and on Sunday it will be 6.30pm.
My sets will be totally different each night and there will be an eclectic mix of songs across the two performances.

People who are fan club members and who only want to come to one night can get special laminates for the events of that day for £5.
These are available only through my web site and only valid together with your individual ticket.
The same criteria on numbers etc apply as for the full weekend laminates. Details are on the web site.

The convention is taking a massive effort to put into place and with promotion kicking in over the coming weeks I am going to be a busy chap!

All that and getting down the gym and pool to try and get myself in some sort of acceptable shape :-D

It's been 8 months since I last sang a full set on stage and at the moment I am worrying the neighbours as I weed the brassicas and go through my vocal exercises.
It seems ludicrous to some that we are putting ourselves through all this for just two performances in Leamington Spa but as this will be the last indoor performances for a long time I want to make it a bit special and at the same time have a bundle of fun.

With all this workload there have been a few casualties on the ideas front.
I have decided to put the NEARFest DVD back until later in the year.

The audio is all mixed and the visuals are all together but I have not had the time to put together all the extras for the bonus disc.
I could have had a basic DVD together for the convention and put the limited edition out later but I personally hate when I buy a movie I want and then discover there is a better version that comes out months after and that contains a bunch of material I really would like to see.
I still have to put the interview together and also sift through hours of footage I shot on the road over the period of touring.
I had an editor ready to start working on the bonus material with me but it would all have been pushed to get it into production before Leamington and I want to make sure that the project is exactly as I want it and not something rushed out half-baked.

The finished NEARFest movie will be shown over the weekend together with footage shot throughout the 13th Star tour but the DVD package itself won't be available until October as I won't be able to get into the studio until late August and September.
Sorry to disappoint some of you but as I said I would rather go with the all-singing and dancing version first before the standard version goes to retail at the end of the year.

I'd also hoped to make a start on the book but again I need a clear run at it and I didn't want to have my mind preoccupied with other more pressing duties. It will necessitate some clear focus and a phone off the hook so from September onwards I will be nose to the keyboard whittling out the project that will jump start next year's activities.

One other project has moved into position was after meeting a film producer in London recently I have been asked to write a treatment and a synopsis of a script that has been dogging me for years. My pitch was well received and I must admit to getting quite excited at the prospect of moving something on and into a field I have wanted to get involved in for years.
It's a bit daunting but I feel I have to start testing myself a bit more and getting out of the "comfort zone" I have been in for too long.

The last 7 months have been much needed for a number of reasons and most of my energies have been spent tidying up business affairs and developing the garden.

Since coming back from Croatia KT and I managed a couple of trips.
The first was down to London with Frank and his wife Sue to support a charity auction for Combat Stress. http://www.combatstress.org.uk
I had been introduced to the organiser Kevin Godlington (Google and discover a fascinating individual ;-)) by an old friend of mine from Bosnia. Kevin knew I was supportive of the Combat Stress charity and asked me if I would come down and play a couple of numbers at the charity auction in the Berkeley Hotel in June.
Frank was more than happy to come down with me and we took our wives along for the occasion.

It turned out to be a great night with most of the attendees either army related or big time spenders from London high society.
Colonel Tim Collins was one of the guest speakers and I admit to being overawed when meeting Lance Corporal Johnson Beharry, proudly in uniform and wearing his Victoria Cross. It was the first time I had ever seen a VC on a living person and knowing the level of heroism required to attain this decoration it did take my breath away. You can read his story at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_Beharry

Our involvement was after the dinner and just before the auction.
It was the first time I had sung in public since the last tour and the operation so I was doubly nervous.
Frank and I had rehearsed in the afternoon in my room in the Columbia hotel and we at least had that behind us.
Kevin had wanted the obligatory "Kayleigh" which we started with and received a minor roar from a few people who were obviously fans.
The other number was a bit more contentious and I had cleared it with Kev as I didn't want to throw a bucket of sick on the occasion.
We launched into a pretty attacking version of "Pilgrims Address".
Again heartily appreciated by a few, who were mostly military, but the majority gibbered and jabbered throughout our short set despite calls for quiet from those who did want to listen. Pretty much the standard kind of ambience at corporate events and a reason why they are a rarity in my gig schedules! :-)

Frank and I did well and I was quite proud when introduced later to Colonel Tim Collins and he admitted to enjoying the performance and also to being a fan. We'd done our bit and Kev and the organisers were well chuffed. I retired to my wine consumption a happy chap.

The auction side of the evening was pretty scary and I had to keep my hands deep in my pockets.
It wasn't the Stig's helmet, the day with the England Rugby team, the day with a Formula 1 team and driving the car, the day with the SAS boys at their base in Hereford (done that and got the T shirt ;-)) or the framed autographed Colonel Collins address to his men on the eve of the Iraq invasion together with his cap and 22 regiment badge that worried me. All those items tantalised and tempted but my resolve would hold.

The one that had me sweating was the day out with an Apache helicopter crew and getting a chance to fly the beast!!
It was even hinted that the lucky bidder would be on an aircraft on a weapons drill! The numbers began dizzy and kept rising. I sat on my hands and avoided eye contact with the auctioneer.
It eventually sold for £16k!!!!
I was glad (as was KT!) that the lesson learned from bidding while under the influence when I bought the F1SHS registration plate back in '89 was still remembered! :-[ :-X

Altogether the event raised a staggering £94k for Combat Stress from an assembled crowd of just over 200 people!!

The other trip was to Denmark with Mark and Julie Wilkinson to attend the opening of the Dante Exhibition at the Fantasmus Art gallery in Saeby
First up we had a trip to Holmsbu in Norway to meet up with our good friend Morten and the other Vikings for a couple of days R and R.
Two days at the spa in blistering sunshine was just what we needed and it was great to be able to spend time with Mark, Julie and the guys away from backstage areas.
As expected the evenings were spent quaffing wine and beers and with the near perpetual sunshine up there the walk back along the road by the fjord was pretty magical and presented some eerie photo opportunities.

The second night was bizarre as after a long session and just as we were preparing for our midnight hike back to the hotel the news broke in the bar that Michael Jackson had died.
Suddenly everyone came together and the session took on new legs.
The circus was underway in both Los Angeles and Holmsbu.

The press in Norway next day was dominated by the story and I was glad not to be in the UK where Sky news and the like were jumping over barrels and through hoops pursuing the latest developments.
My attitude? I admired what he did as a singer and performer in the early years but as we came into a new century he was part of a freak show with little musical content.

I was never a fan and was definitely not impressed by choices in his personal and public life. There have been others far more deserving of the accolades from the media who had revelled in his fall from glory in recent years. The hypocrisy is outstanding.
The thing I found most disgusting was the focus on the financial side of everything concerned with the shows and the chorus of weasels trying their damnedest to capitalise from the situation.

Out of all the verbose and "sincere" wailing and gnashing of teeth from so many "close friends" and celebrities I found the daughter's tribute on stage at the memorial service yesterday incredibly moving and one of the few genuine moments in the last week.
I just feel sorry for his children as the circus inevitably rolls on and the obvious greed from certain quarters poisons the memories and allows history to repeat itself by swallowing up yet more innocence in the pursuit of filthy lucre
.
I found his father despicable with his statements as he seemingly attempted to capitalise like many others on the publicity surrounding his son's death.

And the guilty? I had heard from sources a long time ago that he was probably unfit to tour never mind perform those 50 London shows.
How could anyone pledge someone who we know now was so obviously ill to a commitment of that magnitude?
The doctors, the promoters, his management, advisors and everyone else who were on a percentage should look at themselves closely in the mirror and take stock of their humanity.

The golden goose is dead and the eggs that are left will be fought over by carrion.
Michael Jackson RIP.

The ferry to Denmark was a first for me and I had never been to the Northern swathes of that country before.
The drive to Saeby was weird. Every village we passed through on the Friday night just short of 11pm was deserted.
It was more like a science fiction movie about a plague or massive evacuation in the face of ghouls or aliens.

On reaching Saeby it was the exact opposite as the town was jumping with a street festival in full sway.
We met up with Claus Brusen, a fellow artist, gallery owner and the publisher behind Mark's forthcoming book "Shadowplay".
A highly charismatic man and consummate and generous host he had us put up in his father's flat overlooking the town square.
It was fine for me and KT in the back bedroom but for the others they had to endure the Bacchanalian festivities below that swept through the night and into the early hours of the morning.

We had a sneak preview the night before the opening and I admit to having been hugely impressed by the collection of artwork on display.
Every artist had to submit pieces created around the theme of Dante's Divine Comedy and all had stepped up to the plate.

You can check out the artwork including Mark's two paintings at www.fantasmus-art.com
His "Paulo and Francesca" is definitely worth checking out ;-)

I didn't expect the quality to be so high and both KT and I hovered with wide eyes and open mouths at some of the paintings.
My personal favourites were "Fruits of Enlightenment" by Dutch artist Michael Hiep and Margaret Bowland's "Wedding Cake", KT's were  "Malebole" and "Divina Commedia" both by Reinhard Schmid ,although there are others too many to mention here that had my credit card buzzing in my pocket asking for attention.
The knowledge that the walls in the studio are full kept us both from buying anything.

I had a short speech to make before the official opening and was interviewed for local TV.
After that it was mingling and beers and meeting an array of characters that all had fascinating stories and opinions.
We retired later to Claus's house by the sea for dinner and more conversation while consuming the output of a small French vineyard!
A fantastic night with wonderful company.

Mark, Julie and Morten disappeared North toward Norway the next day while KT and I meandered around Saeby and hid away for a long lunch in a fish restaurant by the harbour.
At night we stayed in Claus's converted farmhouse on the beach and took in his incredible collection of artwork.
Another long meal with some of the remaining artists including Patrick Woodruffe with table banter going on into the wee hours soaking up the wine left over from the previous night's party.
It was such a refreshing and creatively invigorating weekend and our hosts Claus and his wife Sannie were impeccable to the nth degree.
They drove us the next day for our flight at 6am and we arrived in a damp and dreary Scotland shortly before midday.
It would be out last free time before the convention and I was straight onto the PC that afternoon and churning over the plans with more than a little trepidation.

Once again the garden had continued to erupt under the care and protection of my parents.
The brassicas in particular had literally gone through the roof and we had to remove all the protective nets to allow them to grow on.
Now of course they are open to attacks from the Cabbage White butterflies that lay their eggs in profusion amongst the damp thick leaves.
The impending army of caterpillars as always are the bane of my life and with 40m of raised beds filled with Savoy cabbage, summer cabbage, three types of broccoli, kale and brussel sprouts it's a pretty big area to cover by hand when you have chosen to garden organically. Best bet is to keep a wary eye for the fleeting white butterflies and deal with them as ruthlessly as you can.
My chosen weapon a badminton racket!
There's nothing quite as fulfilling as catching a prancing Cabbage White on a half volley in the sunset.

For those that get through my flashing racket and lay their bundles of yellow eggs I put faith in my second assault team.
Those are the wasps that have a gargantuan nest in the wooden shed nearby.
I learned my lesson on food chains a few years ago when I destroyed a nest and quickly found myself overrun by pollen beetle as I had just eliminated their major predator.
I put up with the annoyance of wasps around my Sauvignon Blanc and the irritation of an occasional sting with the knowledge that they are allies in my battle against the bugs.

My only problem is that we some merchandise in the wooden shed and I hope for Elspeth's sake we don't get a run on "Fellini Days" picture discs! :-D


So now is the quiet before the storm of rehearsals.
I have four days to go until the amps warm up and the wires crackle into life.

The new potatoes are being raised, the beans and peas shelled, the broccoli harvested, the carrots pulled, the onions, garlic and shallots dried in the sun and I pray the cabbages make it through the aerial invasion. The band will at least be well fed!

A flicker of white has just passed my office window,
Must dash,

Advantage Fish! :-D

Until next time
love
Onkel Fish xx


PS. I found it amusing watching the tennis at Wimbledon recently when Roddick was playing as sometimes when he took his place on the serving line the camera angles allowed his head to block out some of the letters of his name on the scoreboard.
Lo and behold up there playing Federer in the final was none other than DDICK ! :-D

Dear FishHeads, Freaks, fans and the Company,

It has been a tough couple of days for myself and Katie as we have been dealing with the fallout from the article in the News of the World.
I admit to having raged on reading what I considered was a very unbalanced and exaggerated disclosure which was badly written and contained a number of general factual errors that could have been easily rectified with due diligence and without my input.

I had known about the existence but not the content of the article for quite a few weeks and it had originally been scheduled to be printed two weeks before our wedding.

I had been suspicious when I received yet another unwanted phone call from my ex wife in early May asking me for verification on a number of events concerning incidents in our marriage. I only took the call as she mentioned it had to do with our daughter. She was obviously drunk and kept returning to specific themes which were in the most nonsensical. I asked if the call was being recorded or if someone was listening in to the conversation. She denied both. When she began raving down the line I terminated the call.

A few days after a friend of mine told me that he had been contacted by the News of the World to verify some information.
I soon discovered that the thrust of the piece was on domestic violence and was wrapped up in a "sex, drugs and rock and roll" story which had been sold to the newspaper by my ex wife.

It didn't come as much of a surprise as I had been expecting such a move for quite a while and with an impending marriage the timing was cynical, malicious and deliberately intended to be hurtful.

My ex wife had moved back to Haddington in December 2007 soon after her second husband was imprisoned on drug offences.
She left me in 2001 for another man in Berlin when I was £900,000 in debt and close to bankruptcy.
She was returning when I had cleared all my debts and established a new home and was still recovering from the debacle of the Summer of 2007.

Tara had gone to Berlin with her mother in 2001 as I was unable to look after her while I attempted sort out the financial mess I had been left with through perpetual touring. During the 4 years our daughter was in Berlin I financially supported her and bailed out my ex wife on a number of occasions despite my own problems. Tara returned to Scotland in 2005 to live with me.

Returning in 2007 for our daughter's sake was not, it appeared, the principal reason and before she came over I made her very aware that I had no interest in rekindling any sort of relationship and that I did not welcome her presence in Haddington.

During 2008 my relationship with our daughter deteriorated as her mother became more influential resulting in a number of major arguments that came to a head with Tara leaving home in November. The disruption caused by my ex wife was no coincidence as I by then was involved in a relationship which was obviously special.

Although I am currently estranged from our daughter I was sad to read the version of events in the NOTW article as related by my ex wife.
I strongly disagree with what was said and as with a number of incidents mentioned in the article there are witnesses who have a very different perspective on what happened.

In saying all that I have no intention of taking legal action against the News of the World over this article.
I do not believe that bringing my 18 year old daughter into a wrangle between my ex wife and myself is a decent or adult approach and as my daughter is attempting to sort her own life out at the moment she does not need the emotional trauma of being asked to testify against her parents in a court case or exposed to a tit-for-tat newspaper war which would benefit no one except the publishers.

Judging by the standard of journalism exhibited in most scandal sheets I would never trust my side of the story to be properly represented and have also decided not to retaliate on the same low despicable level as employed by my ex wife.
I was asked to be interviewed and was "door stepped" by the journalist in question for my responses to the accusations. I refused as it would only have given more credence to the article and made my ex wife's claims appear genuine.
I will deal with the history of events from my perspective in my book in a less sensational manner and will readily document my part in what became a dark travesty of a marriage.

I am no angel and did more than my fair share of "sex, drugs and rock and roll". Nobody died!
I have never been warned, arrested or charged with any count of violence and in my divorce there was no mention of domestic violence.

However, I am not the devil portrayed in the article by a sad, bitter woman who resents my current happiness with Katie and who has gone out of her way to disrupt our lives and cause as much pain as possible through using our own daughter against us.

Retribution?
I'll just leave it to Karma.


Fish

copyright Derek Dick 2009

Dear FishHeads, Freaks, fans and the Company,

I have never been someone who has run away from issues and have always tried to be straight and up front about my problems in Life, taking advice from my old press officers Brian Munns at EMI and Keith Goodwin who advised me way back that to "lie and deny" is not the best policy as you will always be found out.

Today in the parochial version of the "News of the World" , the one only released in Scotland, my ex wife has sold an "exclusive" story about her life with me for the princely sum of £7000 (as far as I have been told through acquaintances).

For a number of people who know me well and were about during the "dark ages" the stories are not new but have a perspective which to say the least is unbalanced.
I refused to talk to the News of the World as I did not want to verify or deny any of the articles choosing to leave it in the hands of my lawyers.

I will be having discussions with my lawyers and press advisors tomorrow to determine the best way to approach these "revelations".

I don't want to go into any more details at present but I can say that Katie and I were aware of the impending story for quite a number of weeks and the timing was very deliberate, cynical and cruel.

It's been a shadow hanging over us for a while and we had hoped that the story would disappear as it was obviously sold on the "profile" of our quiet and intimate wedding arrangements which she was aware of.


I would have liked to have thought that after being separated for 9 years and officially divorced since 2003 that my ex wife would have let things lie but obviously she feels differently.

You can read her "true story" about our marriage at
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/scottish/scottish_news/359861/Terrified-Tamara-reveals-all-about-life-wth-Marillion-singer.html
and if you care to post to the "journalist" in question you can at jacqueline.mcghie@notw.co.uk

I'll let it lie there for now as there are a number of issues I have to deal with at present the most pressing and immediate of which is cooking a roast chicken dinner for my wife!  :-)

lots of love

Onkel Fish x

PS There's a clip of "Kayleigh" performed live at the wedding in '87 on the NOTW website. (Bruce Dickinson on bongo duties)
Must talk to EMI publishing about the permissions and royalties  :-D

PPS There's also a link to the "Kayleigh" video, check out the size of the pupils on the actress!  ;-)


Long Cold Day [Dick/Wesley/Young]
(c) Derek W Dick 2001

It's so funny, you don't call at night, always missing in action,
I'm left out in the cold and you'd never have thought I was thinking,
Turning it over
Putting the pieces in place and building a case for my anger
I'm taking it in, I'm taking my time in taking you out,
'cause it'll be a long cold day in Hell before I take you back,

So tired of your lying, I can't sleep at night,
I'll accept what I'm told, take what I'm sold,
There's no question to ask,
To sort out the answers,
To prove who is wrong or who is right,
But I know in my heart that we're breaking apart.
If we admit to the truth,
Pretend it's all been an act,
As a matter of fact
It'll be a long cold day in Hell before I take you back.

Sometimes I feel like I'm sailing on a dreamboat on wild and heavy seas,
I was cast adrift or fallen overboard, I catch my breath and head for shore,
I turn around, the ship sails on
This ship sails on.

Funny, you don't call at night, always missing in action
I'm left out in the cold and you'd never have thought I was thinking
I was thinking
Still thinking
Still thinking
Said I was, said I was

So tired of your lying, I can't sleep at night,
I'll accept what I'm told, take what I'm sold,
There's no question to ask,
To sort out the answers,
To prove who is wrong or who is right,
But I know in my heart that we're breaking apart.
If we admit to the truth,
Pretend it's all been an act,
As a matter of fact
It'll be a long cold day in Hell before I take you back.

And I still remember sailing on that dreamboat on starlit mirrored seas.
I hold my breath and I gaze from shore from this empty beach and this pile of clothes
I hit the water, the ship sails on
I hit the water, the ship sails on
I hit the water, the ship sails on
I hit the water, the ship sails on

Dear Fishheads, fans, freaks and the Company,

I am delighted to announce that on Saturday May 30th Katie and I were married on the small eco island of Galesnik near Hvar in Croatia.
We'd decided to keep it all a private affair and we jetted off the week before, just the two of us, with only close friends and family aware of what we were doing.
I have to say it was one of the most wonderful romantic days we can both remember and we couldn't have wished for a more perfect location.
We are both extraordinarily happy together and very much in love and arrived home earlier this week to take up residence as Mr and Mrs Dick!  :-)

I will follow up with a more detailed story of events surrounding our wedding in the next few days but we just wanted to share our happiness with you with this short announcement.

lots of love
Derek and Katherine Dick @>----

Dear FishHeads, Freaks, fans and the Company,

Like London taxis, you never see Fish blogs for ages and then 5 pages come at once! :-D

Quite a few people have asked about the upcoming releases from EMI as other mail order companies have been advertising advance sales on these tiles.
As you know I recently supplied EMI records with sleeve notes for 2 of the 3 new live releases and the projects have moved along quite fast in recent weeks.
Both Lucy Jordache, the Marillion manager, and I have been involved in developing the projects and after discussions with EMI I am pleased to announce that we will be selling the titles through our own mail order operations.

The titles are as follows:

"Thieving Magpie" (2005 digital remaster) double CD.
CD1 - La Gazza Ladra, Slainte Mhath, He Knows You Know, Chelsea Monday, Freaks, Jigsaw, Punch And Judy, Sugar Mice, Fugazi, Script For A Jester's Tear, Incommunicado, White Russian
CD2 - Pseudo Silk Kimono, Kayleigh, Lavender, Bitter Suite, Heart Of Lothian, Waterhole (Expresso Bongo), Lords Of The Backstage, Blind Curve, Childhood's End?, White Feather.

"Recital of the Script" (2009 digital re master) double CD recorded live at the Hammersmith Odeon 18/4/83
CD1 - Script For A Jester's Tear, Garden Party, Three Boats Down From The Candy, The Web, Charting The Single, Chelsea Monday.
CD2 - He Knows You Know, Forgotten Sons, Market Square Heroes, Grendel.

The first time the complete concert has been released in audio format. Includes a previously unreleased track; 'Three Boats Down From The Candy'. The version of 'Charting The Single' from the gig was previously issued as a b-side to the 'Garden Party' 12" but was not featured on the original DVD version.

"Live From Loreley" (2009 digital re master) double CD recorded at the Freilichtbuhne, Loreley 1987.
CD1 - Slainte Mhath, Assassing, Script For A Jester's Tear, White Russian, Incubus, Sugar Mice, Fugazi.
CD2 - Hotel Hobbies, Warm Wet Circles, That Time Of The Night (The Short Straw), Kayleigh, Lavender, Bitter Suite (Medley), Heart Of Lothian, The Last Straw, Incommunicado, Garden Party, Market Square Heroes.

The first time the complete concert has been released in audio format. Includes four previously unreleased tracks; 'White Russian', 'Fugazi', 'Garden Party' and 'Market Square Heroes' not featured in the original DVD version.

These are scheduled for release on 22/06/09 but we will be taking advance orders for these titles from Monday.
Prices will be announced over the weekend but we intend to be highly competitive with other mail order stockists and would appreciate your support in dealing with the artists directly.

I am first to admit that I was surprised at EMI's decision to go with these titles as both "Loreley" and "Recital" have been available on DVD for a while. It appears that the success of the "Early Stages" collection (which we still have in stock) has prompted a re-examination of the other dusty gems in our back catalogue and as contractually we have no control over the material both Lucy, the Marillos and I decided it would be more advisable to help out rather than relinquish total responsibility.
Nigel Reeve and Hugh Gilmour at EMI have done a wonderful job championing our cause and have, together with the rest of the team there, done everything they can to make the projects as "interesting" as possible under the circumstances.
These are not full price double CDs which does make it more palatable and the remastering of "Loreley" and "Recital" a worthwhile incentive to audiophiles.

I understand there will be accusations of "scraping the barrel" directed at EMI, and perhaps there is some justification, but as I said previously our choice was to walk away and let Amazon and the like benefit or get involved and at least try and get some return above the pennies we get as royalties as a band under our old contract while at the same time presenting something to fans that is high quality and reasonably priced.

I'd like to think that in the future we can work together with EMI on other "archive" projects where we have some more control on content and not just reissue titles in different formats.

I don't mean to appear negative on these releases but I am very aware of the raised eyebrows out there and felt I had to offer some explanation and perspective.

I personally am looking forward to hearing the 2009 remasters :-)

On a more current note the Nearfest recordings are being mixed and mastered by Calum Malcolm this month and the video footage will be going into an editing suite in the US at the same time. I'd like to think we will have all the parts together by the end of May for compiling in June. This will mean the "13th Star" DVD will be ready for release around the same time as the Marillion titles.

Mark has completed the artwork for the Leamington Spa convention and I must say it looks great! :-)
Hopefully there will be a sample on the web site in the next few days.
I was lucky to get Mark's attention as he has been run off his feet getting material together for his new book "Shadowplay" as well as for a major exhibition in Denmark at the end of June.
KT and I will be heading over to Scandinavia for a long weekend and I will be speaking at the opening of the exhibition which will feature works of art by other artists as well as from our Mark.
I'll supply more details as to the venue and the exhibition nearer the event.

On the subject of the convention I can confirm that Glyder will be playing on the Sunday night before The Reasoning.
They have a new album out and I have been told it features a 20 minute Prog epic that the boys assure me will blow you away! :-)
Pendragon will be the only special guests on the Saturday and as such will have a slightly longer set than a standard support slot.
There are still a few spaces in the events log that need to be sorted out but I am confident that by the middle of next week everything should be pretty much firmed up.

Tickets for Leamington will go on sale at the end of next week and full details will be posted on the web site.
The "tickets" will be laminates with dual sided printing and holograms provided on a "Fish" lanyard.
These will be sent out last week of June with a full info pack for the weekend's activities.
Price for the laminate/ticket is 55 pounds inclusive of VAT and postage.
A laminate provides entry for one person to all the official activities on the schedule.

At the moment the schedule consists of:

Friday 7th
Get together night at "The Sausage". This is for early arrivals for the weekend's activities and not as such an "official event".
Entrance is for laminate holders only and entertainment on the night is provided by "Jump".
As the pub has a restricted capacity of just over 400 anyone attending should check in early to avoid disappointment.

Saturday 8th
1pm - Doors open to venue, film footage and videos on screen.
2pm - The Fish talk. Introduction to convention, general discussion and Q and A.
3pm - Mark Wilkinson Q and A and fashion show
4pm - Short acoustic set
5pm - Venue closes for soundcheck

7pm - Venue reopens for evening performances with "Pendragon" special guests followed by Fish set.
Post gig - Aftershow party in venue.

Sunday 9th
Morning - "Hunt the Penguin" competition. General pub crawl.
1pm - Doors open to venue, film footage and rare clips on screen.
2pm - Fish intro 2.
3pm - "Never Mind the Aardvarks" comedy quiz hosted by Will Smith and featuring two teams of various old and new band members and friends.
4.30pm - Venue closes for soundcheck.
6pm - Venue reopens for evening performances from "Glyder" and "The Reasoning" followed by Fish set.
Post gig - Aftershow party until 2am in the venue with Rock DJs.

This is the cunning plan so far and times and events are subject to change. I am still waiting on answers from a couple of people re their attendance availability and will have other events to add around both the dates.
I am still waiting to discover just how much Planet Rock want to get involved in all this but I think we could have some interesting ideas. ;-)

I met up with Gavin Dickie and Frank Usher last week and they are well up for the convention although baulking at some of the numbers I threw at them as ideas for inclusion in the set. ;-)
It is going to take us nearly three weeks of rehearsals to put this together and get it right for the nights and I think some of the band members will never be the same after this :-D

It is all coming together and judging from those of you who have already notified Elspeth that you are attending I think Leamington will be overrun that weekend :-D


As the weird and wonderful world of Fellini has it a couple of pointers were to be had in the last week.
The raised vegetable beds were finally completed in the front garden and another couple of tons of topsoil were dutifully shovelled into them by my beloved KT (it's embarrassing I know as the male sits in the office pummelling away on the keyboard and my better half is sentenced to manual labour in the garden, not my choice!)
I noticed that the bags containing the Rolawn topsoil all were manufactured in Leamington Spa! A sign! A sign!

This came soon after the grill on the cooker erupted in sparks and blew the main fuses signifying the end of days of one of my first purchases for my "new home" in 2001.
It was time to elevate myself away from the 4 hob, single oven mainstay of cooking in the last 8 years to something more suited to our culinary needs. A bit of Googling and searching and I was confronted with the object of my desire which after approval by KT moved into "must have" position. I was still shuddering a bit at the price and balancing budget against all the energy saving devices and promise of smoke-free cooking and being able to expand on our catering abilities etc. when I saw they were made in - yes, you've got it already - Leamington Spa!
Two hours and a lot of surfing later the credit card melted and we are now waiting on the all singing and dancing Rangemaster Toledo induction electric cooker that had better see us through to the end of our days! :-D
At least now we can have a Sunday roast without having to open every window and door in the Studio to let the smoke out!

The cooker wasn't the only casualty in the last week or so.

My Dad was in hospital for some minor surgery on his head last Monday and when I picked him up from Livingstone to take him home the subject of grass cutting came up. I knew he wasn't fit to get the tractor out and offered to cut the lawn. Normally this would be met with total refusal and a 'how dare I even contemplate riding his beloved tractor' routine but this time he acquiesced and told me where the keys were and how to put in the recharged battery. It was a spiritual handing over of immense significance which many males out there will relate to.
Two days later I charged the battery and fired up the mini tractor for the first cut of the season.
No one was more proud than me when my Dad came up next day and complimented me on the state of the lawn. I was well chuffed! :-)

The rain and the fertilizer had done their job well and I had to repeat the process soon after. The orchard I had planned to leave and sow with wild flowers but on advice I was told not to bother sowing seed which would be lost against the competition from the lawn but to go for plug plants. The estimate was 3000 plugs to cover the area.
Too much "kerching" and the idea was planted to sow my own for next year rather than buy in.
This meant another huge swathe to be cut and next time around after trimming the main grass I headed down to the orchard.
I'd watched with a smile as a couple of magpies pulled apart the jute matting which covered the immediate area around the base of the trees in order to line their nests. It seemed very appropriate and Fellini!
As I did my Mr Rusty impression weaving in and out of the regimented rows of fruit trees I was very careful to avoid the mats but after only a few runs a "stray" caught in the blades and I staggered to a stop, the engine cutting out and leaving me powerless and stranded at the bottom of the garden. I managed to extricate the matting from the blades but after restarting the engine I managed only a couple of rows before I lost power and had to retreat to the garage as smoke poured out of the engine.
I had been in command only a few days. I was disconsolate.
My Dad was sympathetic as we both knew that the tractor was close to the scrap heap, however losing your mower at this point of the season is a disaster.
And now I await the engineer and his diagnosis. I'm hoping it's just the belts rather than anything traumatic.
If it is then I could be swapping a cooker for a mini tractor pretty soon!

I'll send up some photos of the garden in the next week or so and you will get a better idea of what is happening up here.
KT has been a revelation in the greenhouse and we have far more seed than we can plant out in the beds.
The garden has taken over our lives just now and the thing taking prime importance in the next few weeks is sorting out an irrigation system for the raised beds.
The greenhouse ventilation is now sorted and the cold frames built and ready for the cucumbers and aubergines as the brassicas move out to the new beds. The orchard is in flower and the trees rooting down and happy.
I built another 2m x 1.5m raised bed from some discarded cherry wood decking planks which KT yacht varnished and are now home to the snowball turnips and assorted courgettes.

The kale, brussel sprouts, savoy cabbage, cauliflowers, summer cabbage, purple sprouting and ordinary broccoli are all being set up in the netted raised beds and away from the scourge of white butterfly and the new potatoes are just beginning to poke out the soil in the BB bed.
Carrots and beetroot thinned, onions, shallots and garlic splendid, runner and french beans heading to the skies and various other crops all doing the business.

The only blight just now is vine weevil who've taken an interest in KT's orchids and the fig and vine in the greenhouse.
Tomorrow is nematode day as I set about watering the garden down with a biological control. I hate the bastard things. Ugliest weevils on the planet and they deserve to die. Only slightly down from slugs on the garden hate list.
There's nothing quite as satisfying than the crack of a vine weevil twixt finger and thumb. Sneaky little bastards deserve everything they get as you know that when you see them they have laid hundreds of larvae who will all be chomping on the roots of your plants.
The only next good thing is knowing the nematodes are on their way to sort out the grubs underground and that next year the ugly bugs will be fewer on the surface.

And in all this verdant greenery the cogs whirl and the machine ticks over. The septic tank arrangements are complete and in working order, another dipped beam bulb fries on the Volvo, the cracks widen on the gable end of the neighbours "byre" above the Japanese garden whose black bamboo is around 20 feet "short", the goldfish - who number over 15 now in the "Peter Pan" pond - are happier with the new oxygenating plants and the diet of frogspawn, the phone continues to ring with offers of work I find hard to entertain just now and the weekends are ever more crowded with things to do that are never done.
It's not that I'm lazy. It's been a long time since I have had chance to sit back and enjoy the life I've worked for over the years.
I am most definitely not retired and more so not idle. I am in career neutral, parked up in the middle of a journey, taking a well-earned rest.
I can sense the lights changing soon though and when they do I will be raring to go.
Until then I can take the opportunity to listen to my own heart beat.

lots of love

Onkel Fish x

Dear FishHeads, Freaks, fans and the Company,

One other addition to the organic farming initiative at the studio is an even greater attempt to deal with the ever increasing issue of pests.
I already have nematodes for dealing with slugs and vine weevils but after discussion with a number of my friends in the pub one of the more aggravating problems not only in the kitchen garden but in houses in general are ant infestations.
You may have noticed yourselves that in the increasing dry weather in early summer late Spring ant colonies go on the move.
The familiar powders are highly toxic and have been proven, like slug pellets to move up the food chain.
With this in mind I am waiting on delivery of two breeding aardvarks that are being shipped over by friends of mine in South Africa.
KT and I are building a small house for them in the orchard and we will be training them up in the coming months.
We have read up quite a bit on them in recent months and found they are easily adaptable to domestic situations and can make great pets.
We discovered two existing companies in exactly the same line of work - 'Living Freedom Of Our Livestock' and 'Aardvark Pest Removal' - and have agreed to join up with them in this exciting new venture. We'll be calling ourselves 'Aardvark Pest Removal Incorporating Living Freedom Of Our Livestock' but will probably be using the acronym as it's easier to remember.
The aardvarks should be arriving any day now and I'm sure they will enjoy a great life here at the Farm.
You never know, we may bring them to the convention in August.

Love
Onkel Fish  :-) 

Dear FishHeads, Freaks, fans and the Company,

It's been a strange month right enough!

Most of my time has been spent in the garden and tearing down the paperwork mountain in the office.
Elspeth's lair has been redecorated and "Spartanised" as we cleared out all the junk which had been lying in nooks and crannies since the dark days of Kim Waring.
The streamlining is leading to a great easing of paper trails and ended some mysteries while making the entire day to day operations far smoother. After nearly 4 years on the road with only short breaks to deal with business issues the last 3 months have meant that I can get to grips with a lot of niggling historical problems that have kept on biting me in the ass every now and again.

Clarifying office procedures and tidying files means I can stop looking backwards and clear the decks for more creative activities in the next month.

The BT claim is still ongoing and at present silent as lawyers await responses and corporate mechanisms whirr through their corporate reactions to a situation they have already accepted the blame for but evade and dodge the actual pay out of damages due, hiding behind paper drifts and inflexible computer programmes that are incapable of a logic outside the minds of their creators who set them up with the view to harass, frustrate and protect the corporate dollar.

More and more on interaction with major businesses I encounter this top heavy bureaucracy far too reliant on computers and expensive programmes that were brought in to replace departments of people who used to know how things worked in the real world and were capable of imaginative leaps of judgement while dealing with problems. Now the systems seem to freeze far too frequently and a problem outside the box ends up spinning in cyber space or being shuffled around far too few departments none of whom communicate with each other as the digital operators urge us to press buttons for far too few options followed by the hash key in order to reach the mailbox of someone who may or may not get back to you dependant on whether they were made redundant in the last week.

It took me 7 months to get a payment through from Canadian promoters for the Quebec and Montreal shows thanks to the Royal Bank of Scotland. The cheques were handed in to the local bank and then disappeared as we chased for payment and those long periods of silence followed by a flurry of emails and occasional phone calls going over the same information, all going nowhere. No one seemed to want to take responsibility and I was bounced round chasing these cheques that no one knew where they were.
I eventually contacted the Canadians and had them arrange a wire transfer and still the RBS managed to miss the ball. I won't bore you with details but eventually the money hit my account and a couple of days later I received the original cheques in the post.
There was a bit of yang to all this as the exchange rates had dramatically changed since last June and I ended up on the winning side.
I did however send an email to my manager at the RBS asking why there was an 80 US dollar charge for an electronic transfer to which he replied asking if I had received the money yet!
I responded by offering an opinion that the entire screw up over these payments and the total lack of communication between the departments in question was perhaps an indication of how the RBS got into so many problems in recent months.
There was no reply.

With the ex-head of the bank, who in the last few weeks has been taking flack for his major pension and bonus payments on retiring at 50, it's hard to feel sympathy as he and other high ranking members of the RBS have to take on extra security after stones were thrown through the windows of his house in Edinburgh and the Merc in his drive got trashed.
Their decisions brought down a major Scottish financial institution, rendered hundreds unemployed and tore down the savings of so many innocent people while they set themselves up for a lap of luxury.
Scotland has lost its two great banks, RBS and HBOS, financial monuments and national icons through the negligent use of funds and appalling decisions inspired only by greed and ego. It would seem highly unlikely now that this small country I live in could ever entertain the idea of independence when its two great banking institutions are now hamstrung and owned by the British government.

But it's not just the banks and other financial institutions that seem to find it acceptable to award failures.
The CEO of Warner Music Group US walked away with a 3 million dollar bonus after the company lost 56 million and stock dropped 25%.
The music business is in a righteous mess and news that Guy Hands resigned from EMI after walking in with big ideas to an old regime means that we are staring at one of the great British music institutions possibly going to the wall as the company shrinks and jettisons staff with increasing regularity in an attempt to keep it afloat. And the programmers run out their new models and the imagination of the individuals who still stand under the flag are stifled by the constraints of accountants and a market place in Atlantis.
The pirates are in charge of the ship it seems and no one knows how to retake control.
Incomes on all levels dwindle and everyone is chasing their tails or playing catch up with a runaway train.

And the artists, the lowest member of the musical chain? They get the peanuts from digital downloads on the barrel organ and get mugged on the road by venues and corporate entities adding percentages to tickets and taking percentages from merchandise.
A friend sent me this article recently which really stuck in the craw. I'll let you read and rage.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music/2009/03/17/2009-03-17_pnc_bank_arts_center_charges_all_music_f.html

News from the front is bad. I am glad I am not in that circle anymore. The old model I joined in the '80s is redundant and rotten and no one working in it seems to have the perspective or the ability to bring on the changes to resuscitate the industry. Maybe it shouldn't be.

Meanwhile the CEOs plunder the holds and others grab what they can while they can. Others like me watch from the distance from our flotilla of small independent labels and hope we don't get swallowed when it does all eventually go down like some behemoth of an ancient liner that'll leave nothing but the detritus of memorabilia and the prospect of interviews with survivors to tell us where it all went wrong and why no one saw it coming and did something about it.

I'm dancing around themes here but they are all interlinked in the great scheme of things in a way I can't quite fathom but sense in that soulful way that you gaze at the stars and understand somehow.
I won't look back on its eventual guaranteed demise with regret. Nostalgia, yes, but I am welcoming the changes.

Two books I can recommend from different angles on this waxing of thoughts are "Last Shop Standing - Whatever happened to Record Stores?" by Graham Jones, which I have just started to read in the last week and am engrossed. It's released on Proper Music Distribution and you can find out more at www.lastshopstanding.co.uk

The other is a book I found really inspiring and quantify it as a "must read".
 "The Party's Over" by Richard Heinberg http://www.richardheinberg.com/partys-over.html
It's a very scary and fascinating piece of writing and I admit to getting quite depressed by it before recognising what is within is essential reading.
It really made me sit up and think about where we are as a world just now and considering it was written in 2005 it appears eerily prophetic.

Don't get me wrong I'm not on some major downer or in need of anti-depressants but, like most of you out there, I'm living through a very new experience and coming to terms with a world undergoing massive changes.

I've been propelled into a different line of thought on what I am doing in my life and on talking to quite a few friends I've been prompted to take the gardening side of my life a lot more seriously.
The 41 fruit trees went into the ground last weekend and the Company Orchard is setting down roots and showing some buds.
I had dillied and dallied over how much to expand the raised beds and eventually bought in six 3m x 1m x 0.3m units which will be filled with topsoil this week and planted up this month coming. There's another 9m x 1m bed and two 2m x 1m beds to be ordered this week.
It gives us an amazing growing space especially for brassicas and with hoops and netting it will be easy to keep the cabbage butterfly at bay and I won't be careering round the garden with the badminton racquet like some institutionalised window licker on speed swatting the air around me.
We already got a cloche together and have salads on the way, even in Scotland in a windy wet March.
Saying that, during the three days it took to plant the fruit trees I actually managed to get some sunburn on my shoulders on one afternoon.

KT's been a wonder in the greenhouse which is bursting with seedlings crammed in trays all waiting for me to get my proverbial together to build the new cold frame.
We've got all sorts of peppers and chillies as well as a range of tomatoes and the usual suspects.
The first early potatoes (Pentland Javelin) and second earlies (Wilja) are in the "BB" bed (Big Bastard named after the digging required! :-D) and all the existing beds have been filled with compost and manures and planted up with all sorts of vegetables including 4 types of onions, 7 types of garlic, 3 types of carrots, beetroot, broad beans and other legumes and an entire Tesco's line of salad crops.
It'll be a lot more than we need but we have already had offers from people to buy the surplus including the Tyneside Tavern who want fruit and veg for their restaurant.

I dug up the Jerusalem artichokes a few weeks ago as they had been left to grow for a couple of years. They grow really tall, over 2m and are stunning plants architecturally speaking but unlike the Globe artichoke which grows equally as tall and majestic but has edible leaves the Jerusalem has tubers underground. There were hundreds of them! We cooked them as you would roast potatoes, as they are seen as a potato substitute in some places, and then KT made soup from them. They have an interesting texture akin to a soft banana and are a bit bland without spices. The roasted ones were really crispy but it was as a soup that they delivered their punch.
In Carol Klein's great book "Grow Your Own Veg" (highly recommended for those of you thinking of going down the same garden path) it opens the section on Jerusalem artichokes with "the one vegetable that always raises chuckles from those in the know"!
As a suggestion for a fun evening I'd go for Jerusalem Artichoke soup followed by a bean and Brussel sprout pie and some rhubarb crumble before a game of Twister. Breaks the ice and wind at parties! :-D

My stomach was like a drum and the "digestive aid" recommendation in homeopathic journals was spot on. KT suggested we drop them from the kitchen garden menu but I'm just looking forward to surprising some future dinner guests. :-D

Last weekend was a mish-mash of events. A Friday evening in the revitalized Tyneside Tavern that started off as a two pint visit and ended up with us leaving the car and bending into the night, receiving text messages from new owner Neil who was over in Amsterdam for the footy.
He had offered me a ticket for the game but the late call meant the logistics of travel and board were out the question.
The pub sweepstake on this week's Grand National race reminded me I had a hundred quid on call on my on-line account at Ladbrokes.
I had set up an account for last year's race and had deposited funds to put on a bet on the day. By the time the money had cleared and I nominated my horse the race had started and I was seconds too late. As is my luck the horse won.
I'd forgotten about the Ladbroke account until now.
I wasn't looking forward to the game against Holland. Scotland were plagued by injuries and facing an expensive and classy Dutch side on home turf it looked like our World Cup dreams were over once again.
I came back from the pub and put the entire bundle on a Dutch win. I figured that if we lost at least I'd have another 30 quid to play with on the National and if we won I'd gladly pay the 100.
My Mum and Dad came up to watch the game and the usual events unfolded. Two bad defensive mistakes, a penalty, a disallowed goal just as we could possibly entertain the far-flung dream of a draw and it was over. We were toothless, outclassed and lucky the Orange didn't have it's dander up as if they had we could have been hit for another six like last time.
My only consolation was I was 30 quid better off and it did soothe the pain a little. I was glad I wasn't there.
My Company Holland buddies rolled in the texts. As a Hibby I get used to it and switched off the mobile.

My Dad is as used to it if not more so than me. A rolling of the eyes and a few epithets.
He'd just been told he had come into some money as well.
Her Majesty's government had just told him by mail that as he was now coming up to 80 years old he would be getting a raise in his pension.
The gargantuan sum of 25 pence a week. He was none too impressed.
If he was still smoking that would be a cigarette a week or one tenth of a pint. It wouldn't buy him half a bar of chocolate.
At Tesco's last week I bought 4 soft watery tasteless organic tomatoes that had originated in Israel. They worked out at 38 pence each.
It puts his pension in a sad perspective.
Its people like my parents that I feel most sorry for as their savings dwindle and the interests rates crumble to nothing.
Those people who invested in shares in allegedly reliable institutions like the RBS who are now cursing and staring at a bleak future while CEOs walk away with disgusting amounts in pensions and bonuses after destroying other people's securities through their own greed.
Someone somewhere out there will do more than throw stones in the near future. The anger is so palpable.

Sunday morning we received a visit from my Welsh Rastafarian sound engineer Sean. He is working with a band from Mali, Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni Ba. Sean is the only crew member and is driving them on their UK tour in his sparkling white splitter van, equipment in the back and aircraft seats and DVD screens in the front half. It was great to see him again and he was in good form.
It was like the old days of the Funny Farm studios as musicians lazed about the garden in the sun, drinking coffee, playing instruments and shooting the breeze. Bassekou is the main man in the band and his wife the singer. The band's native tongue was French so conversation was simple in the main although a few of them had a pretty good grasp of English. My mate Phil came over and he was pretty fluent in French having lived in Marseille for a few years. It was a great crack as they showed us their instruments and plucked through a few riffs on the Koras.
They were impressed with the garden and more so with the studio. Bassekou and the guys loved the acoustics and were asking about recording here and working together. It was the first time for a while that I started thinking about the next album and the cogs began to turn.
Although played on traditional instruments their last album "Segu Blue" which was album of the year in the 2008 World Music awards, has some great blues feel on it and the band are all into rock music, particularly Hendrix (You can find the album at www.outhere.de)
We swapped albums and hugged farewells. Sean led them back to the bus together with a large bag of DVDs they borrowed for the bus journey.
It was great to see Sean again. A great bear of a guy with the widest smile I know. He will be on the mixing desk at Leamington for the convention.
The van disappeared in a dust cloud on the road to Cambridge and we basked in the sun with another memory.

The Convention moves slowly along just now as I wait on responses from queries. I'd hoped to get "Panic Room" for the Sunday night to go together with the Reasoning but it appears Anne Marie is busy that weekend. I still have other options to look at and should know in a couple of weeks.
Will Smith will definitely be attending and will be the host of our Fishy take on "Never Mind the Buzzcocks" ;-)

Calum Malcolm is mixing the sound recordings from Nearfest in May and the DVD will be ready for the convention.
It all sounds pretty good even with just a rough mix of the material and is coming in at over 2 hours of material just from the US show.
I still have other footage to examine and sift through for possible bonus material.
As the Company Scotland membership is swelling as people register for the convention I plan to provide either discount on the price of the "13th Star" live DVD or supply a bonus disc for Company members only as part of the package.

It's quite strange listening to the rough mixes as it brings back a lot of mixed feelings about the tour and in particular what was going on in my head at the time.
I have to admit that after all has been and done I don't look back on the project with much affection as it may have been a fine album and provided some memorable shows but the shadows behind the scenes were dark and cold and there are some decisions I now regret in the long term.
I will be approaching the next album with those experiences in mind and won't be repeating those mistakes.
The monkeys are always on the typewriters and every now and again flashes of inspiration penetrate this domesticity.
I've learned in the past not to jump on them too soon and the Paul McCartney view of "a great idea never goes away and if you don't remember it, it wasn't that great in the first place" always springs to mind.
The album does have a working title which I think is indicative of the content. It's inspired by a quote from Robert Louis Stevenson.
"A Feast of Consequences" will take on a lot of inspiration from the voyages on the last tour, late night conversations and the images I brought back from Vietnam.
I'd like to try and link the album and the novel together somehow as the relationship between the themes is strong.
Musically I plan a far more diverse range of instrumentation than on "13th Star" and my meeting on Sunday with Bassekou Kouyate was perhaps more Fellini orientated than a passing coincidence.
It's a long way off till the meniscus on the bucket of inspiration breaks and I have the patience this year to wait it out and deal with it in a far more organised and disciplined manner than in 2007 when events clouded some judgements and my time was hijacked in a storm of emotional fallout.
I know for certain it won't be a "heartbreak" album and I know it will be an "angry" album to some degree.
As far as co writers go I already have some ideas and a lot of options which could prove really interesting but that will all come together when it's meant to. ;-)

Meanwhile I have other things dominating my mind.

I have to write the foreword for Mark Wilkinson's new book "Shadowplay", write up the sleeve notes for the forthcoming CD releases of "Live at Loreley" and "Recital of the Script" for Nigel and Hugh at EMI records, sort out the collapsed neck of the septic tank and get the "Clearwater" unit back up and running, order more raised beds from the nice people at "linkabord" (www.linkabord.co.uk) and another ton of topsoil, sort out the newly erected beds and get them filled up and planted, water the orchard, sort out the air vents in the greenhouse, worm the cats, listen to the Nearfest recordings, contact the Americans re the footage editing, clear out the garage, build a cold frame, sharpen the chainsaw and sort out the kindling and the platform for the water butt, get out on the bikes with KT some time this afternoon and post this to FishHeads!
It's definitely not quiet :-D

And I thought this might have been a short post :-D

Lots of love

Onkel Fish xxxx

"Everyone sooner or later sits down to a banquet of consequences." - Robert Louis Stevenson

Dear FishHeads, freaks, fans and the Company,

We've been getting a great response from those of you who have emailed Elspeth to let us know you are interested in "going Fishing" at Leamington Spa.

Just to remind you that you have to be a Company Scotland member to get a laminate and the weekend pass. The people who are Company Scotland members who have contacted us are on a list which is guaranteed to be first to get tickets when we start selling in April.
Those of you who are not Company Scotland members will not be able to attend the events and will only be able to buy tickets for the shows at night and these will not be available until July.
If the tickets are sold out to Company Scotland members then there will none available for sale to the general public.

Company membership is available to buy through the web site shop:
http://shop.the-company.com/acatalog/membershipetc.html

Please only email Elspeth if you are a registered and paid up Company Scotland member as checking the database and sending emails to lapsed members and non members is taking her away from more important things like processing orders and sending them out as quickly as she has been able to do before.

More news will be available soon.

Love
Onkel Fish xx

PS. Member and partner with their children only require one membership to buy tickets for the family. Due to the expected demand, friends of a member would not be included and must buy their own membership.

Dear FishHeads, Freaks, fans and the Company,

Things are moving ahead and we are already in contact with the local council for permission to launch 200 papier mache penguins into their local river. :-)
So far we know we can't have any nuclear powered birds over 20 feet in height! Reactors are a big no no! :-D

I have decided to name this convention "Gone Fishing" and Mark Wilkinson is putting together artwork for laminates, posters and T-shirts in the next month featuring our beloved jester in appropriate mode.
I'll be getting stickers made up with the logo which you can grace cars or houses with and inform all and sundry what you are up to that weekend. These will be sent out with the laminates for entrance into the convention.

I am still working on at least another act for the Sunday and hope to have confirmations this weekend.

If you are planning on coming I'd appreciate if you could send an email to Elspeth at sales@the-company.com with the subject of "Gone Fishing". Let us know how many of you are coming (and which days) in the main body of the mail and we will log you in our Convention database and keep you up to date with developments and exactly when tickets go on sale etc.
This will help give us an idea of numbers so we can plan and organise events.

I talked to Trevor White at Planet Rock today and as well as supporting the event we are looking at a broadcast from The Sausage on the Friday night of a special "Fish on Friday" programme. There is also a possibility of recording the shows for broadcast in the future.
On the subject of the station, recent official RAJAR figures show that the listening audience is now up from 600,000 to just under 700,000 and my programme is more than holding its own ;-)

The shows at night will be supported by projections and during the day I plan to put together a medley of different live and interview material to be shown between the events.


Calum Malcolm takes the Nearfest tapes away on Friday and our American friends will be sifting through the footage their end to bring together the 13th Star tour DVD. I hope to incorporate other shows from Europe on a bonus disc along with an in-depth interview and some wild footage shot on the tours. As always, Mark Wilkinson will be putting his magic into the project. ;-)

This will be yet another "official bootleg" in the ever expanding series across the years.

The question of bootlegs has been raised on the forum and rather than answer it there I thought it should be answered in more detail on a FishHeads post.
I am quite proud to be one of the first to use the term "Official bootlegs" (I think Bob Dylan was one of the first to issue his own in the '70s)

My first batch was back in '93 when the Polydor deal ended leaving me broke and hung out to dry.
I was just starting the Dick Bros label but had no funds and a lot of live DATs from over the solo years. Times were very hard and I decided to fight my way out using "alternative" methods.

I had been approached by a rather shady character in Holland who I'd been introduced to by a Dutch fan who himself had dealt with this guy over my recordings in the past (unbeknown to me >:-o ). I negotiated an advance on 4 titles for a limited run and they came out as a boxed set called "The Mask". Pressed in Italy, where it was easier to avoid questions, he sold them at record fairs and festivals as bootlegs.
Soon after setting up my own label using the advance I repackaged them as "official bootlegs" and distributed them myself as Battleside Records much to the consternation of the Dutch bootlegger who was himself now being "bootlegged". I figured it was evens as he had made a fortune off my back over the years and hadn't paid me a gilder.

"Sushi" was the first official release on the Dick Bros Record Company and enabled me to bail out the ship for a while and set me up for my first independent solo studio album release two months later - "Suits" - in May '94.
Without those live albums I would have gone down in '93 and the studio would have been sold and my house lost to the banks.
And the live albums have continued to support me over the years, "Candlelight in Fog" supporting my US foray and the various others all backed up my perilous financial situation as I stuttered and stalled through the '90s trying to keep myself and my studio together.

It wasn't just for my benefit. Over the years the musicians in the bands have all been paid for their contributions and the session fees have been welcome additions to tour wages. The albums don't sell tens of thousands but enough to give them a parachute after tour and me a back up on the balance sheets which in the late '90s were distinctly red as I got caught out with recessions and over ambition.
(The Sunsets tour went down for about £80k as detailed on the bonus interview disc on the DVD)

The other people who benefit are the writers as the official bootlegs are all licensed and monies are paid to publishing companies through MCPS.

And of course the fans benefit as we control the quality which in the main has been pretty good with some outstanding recordings amongst them.

I understand the desire from fans who collect as I have been there myself and been mostly disappointed by hissy recordings taken from the crowd with distortion and background noise making the gig unlistenable.
The first bootleg I ever bought was in Germany in 1976 in Hanover where I bought a vinyl double album "Crackers (Damn Braces: Bless Relaxes) - The Entire 1972 Hollywood Bowl Concert".

I walked round a number of record stores asking where I could buy bootlegs which felt like I was trying to score drugs as some owners looked at me with disdain and offered no clues. I'd been told boots could be found relatively easily in Germany but it didn't appear the case.
I eventually found a small dark shop up a staircase plastered with tour and promotional posters and on asking the question was shown a bunch of vinyl from behind the counter. These were the first bootlegs I had ever seen and to be honest it was a bit of a let down.
A white sleeve with a photocopied bit of pink paper with the track listing and dodgy Geisha girl riding a stork printed in blue.
It was supposed to be a 3 disc set but the third disc was missing and someone had scored out the track listing on the single sheet of paper that constituted the cover with a ball point pen.

I picked it because it was "Dark Side" live. I'd missed the tour when it had come to Edinburgh and thought this would let me experience to some degree what I had missed.
I packed it carefully in my suitcase and couldn't wait till I got home from the trip.

I laid the needle to the groove and closed my eyes.
To compare the sound that came from the hifi to a Floyd gig experience was like a jar of sand being given as an idea of what the Mojave desert was like at sunset.
The sound was dreadful, recorded from the crowd, tinny and hissy and in all a depressing couple of hours. It had been expensive and to be honest I felt ripped off.

And I had been.

I bought a couple more over the years but always only bought radio broadcasts that were out on vinyl.
It didn't enter my mind that artists didn't get paid or that I was buying into a huge illegal racket. I just wanted to collect live material of bands I loved that I'd seen on tour.

The reality of what was behind it all sunk in around the early '90s when a couple of German fans were asked to trace a recording for me and followed the route through a couple of ranks of sellers. They met a guy who was close to the main team and they were told to back off or they would be hurt.
The arrival of the CD had changed everything as it became so easy to press plastic rather than press vinyl and the runs were higher.

In the early '80s Marillion were solidly bootlegged out of Italy and Holland and although it pissed me off I just had to accept it as the major labels including EMI weren't interested in busting small outfits and were more concerned with pirates. As long as they sold the studio albums the live material didn't matter that much.
We put out "Real to Reel" to at least earn something from our live performances and EMI were happy to see our deficit balance decrease on the back of a cheaply recorded album.

"Magpie" was made for similar reasons and in retrospect I wish we had kept control somehow of the 82-88 live recordings and utilised them in a better way.
There will always be a demand for quality live recordings as shown by the sales of "Early Stages" which is a great box set and time piece of those early gigs.
The sound is great and captures the performances a lot better than those awful early cassette recordings some of which made it onto vinyl and then CD.
The CD era and the development of recording devices opened the floodgates and as old pressing equipment found its way East when the plants upgraded in Europe the pirates and the bootleggers joined forces.

I don't think bootlegging is a major problem when it comes down to live recordings but piracy is a totally different matter.
Anyone who copies material which is already available for sale from artists and sells it for their own profit at no costs is just a plain and simple thief.
No question. They should be prosecuted and are.

Live recordings are now more readily available than they ever were and more and more artists and record companies are recognising their value in an ever shrinking music market.
I am glad that this has happened so money can filter down to writers and performers rather than end up in someone's pocket who contributes nothing to the industry and who earns his money from the talent of others.

We will never get rid of this and to some extent I accept it happens.

File sharing just makes the question more awkward.

The problem I have is that apart from the fact that the artists etc. aren't paid - which is always met by the answer "well no one else makes money as it's shared for free" - we have no control of quality (and there are some performances artists would prefer not to enter the public domain after the event), you don't know who you are sharing with sometimes and when it appears as a live set in Poland on CD then it isn't a freely shared file.

In the end there is nothing I can really do about it but at the same time I won't promote it.
We don't allow dealing on the forum. If someone wants to do this, do it elsewhere.
If I find any sites where my copyrighted material is being sold without permission I inform the authorities involved.

I can only deal with the problem in my own way which is to embrace the issues and put out our own quality live "official bootlegs" and hope to some point that it keeps fans relatively sated and the bootleggers disinterested as the competition is too good and the demand weakened.

One thing I do hate is standing on stage watching someone on the edge of darkness hold a recording device up in the air or looking at me through a digi camera lens for an entire show. Watching a little red recording light trying to hold steady in the crowd in front of me all night? That's a gross insult and I have to question that person.
Why are they at the show? For the live experience which they are sorely missing as they check on gains and white balance and stereo panning? Or to collect something to sell onto others who are there for the real experience?
Either way it feels like you are having your soul stolen sometimes.

The size of recorders nowadays and the technology available on phones makes it so much more difficult to police and so we are really left to the discretion of the fan in the main. I will and have however brought it to people's attention when I have been on stage.
Or sometimes I am even more cruel and just pinpoint the red light and have Yatta pick up the recording on the encore >:-}

I hope that helped you understand my position a bit more.

Finally some good news on the Tyneside Tavern.

It has just been taken over by Neil Forbes and his wife Trish. A former member of the illustrious "6 o'clock Club", Neil is planning on taking the "Tynie" back to the good old days after a dark few months since Paul Kinnoch moved next door to open the Waterloo Bistro.
And I found the best Scottish mince pies I have ever had from Anderson's the Butchers in North Berwick.
Ironically it was when I was returning after dropping my mountain bike off for repair so I could get some sort of exercise regime in motion.
Ah the yin and yang of it all!  :-D

More news later this week.

Love
Onkel Fish xxx

Dear FishHeads, freaks, fans and the Company,

I just came back from an unexpected trip to Leamington Spa.
I had been planning to go down next month but KT had an opportunity to see her parents in Malvern this weekend so we decided at the last minute to head South.
We stopped off at my sister's near York on the Saturday and headed to Leamington on the Sunday night after spending the afternoon at Malvern.

All I can say is that the area is perfect and as far as amenities and the venue are concerned it makes Haddington look like the North Pole.
On the Sunday night we traipsed the town just getting a feel for the place and sampling a few bars.
It's pretty easy to find your way around as it's a relatively small place with the old town laid out in a standard Georgian grid pattern.

We visited the Jug and Jester and the Robbins Well which had been suggested by local fans.
They are only a matter of less than a hundred yards away from the venue.
The Jester has no outdoor drinking facilities and judging by the warning signs in the park at the rear of the Pump Rooms the local authorities frown on drinking in public. There's a notice near the gazebo which announces there is a £500 penalty for consuming alcohol in the park. To be honest that was the only downer but understandable.
There is a quite large paved area outside the Jester which leads up to a church and there are seats and also the church steps themselves for gathering. Right opposite there's kebab shops and other fast food outlets and on the street where the venue is there is a Chinese, an Indian and an Italian restaurant with Dockers, a '60s American diner themed cafe right next to the entrance to the Assembly rooms.
The Jester was pretty good and will make a fine watering hole as will the Robbins which is on the river by the bridge.
It's more of a student style pub and was pretty busy on the Sunday night.
As it has outside seating on the veranda overlooking the river I can see this proving more popular.

The assembly rooms couldn't be in a better area for overall amenities.

Although the Jester and the Robbins Well have reasonable capacities of over 200 and will be generously populated over the weekend I was still looking for  somewhere for the Friday night early arrivals.

We headed up to the old town where we were staying.
The restaurants were mostly empty and there were a number of other bars none of which captured us.
Over the bridge from the venue side and up past the Pump Rooms opposite the gardens, which were closed at night, we found another Chinese restaurant which seemed to be busiest in town, in a block overpopulated with Estate agents offices.
The streets were pretty quiet and police patrol cars cruised regularly. I didn't get the impression they had much business.

We passed the Travelodge which seemed pretty new and had an impressive restaurant area and bar. It's only about ten minutes walk away from the venue.
We were staying that night in the Angel Hotel just off Regent Terrace and decided to have one last drink in the bar next door.
It's called the Sausage. A great chill out bar with big leather seats and ample space we immediately saw it's potential.
There were only a few customers and I got into conversation with the bar staff, Mack and Becky, who turned out to be the owners.
As you know I am a sucker for Fellini moments and when I discovered that Becky's Dad used to own the newsagents in Gullane just down the road from us in Haddington I was sold.
Mack and Betty had just taken over the bar a few months ago and have created a really cool place.
The bar area downstairs holds around 250 people but there is also an upstairs room which takes another 70 and an outside area with tables and chairs and the ability to run a barbecue. They also can put on live music!
They are perfectly willing to let us have the bar for the Friday night.

To make things even better they also have a large field at their house a couple of miles away and could maybe offer us camping facilities.
If not they have a contact which I will be following up this week.

We will need to start getting an idea of numbers in the next couple of weeks so I will have to discuss with Mo the best way to go about this.
If you are coming along to the convention weekend we would ask you to send an email so we have you logged and then we can send out information as the plans develop and let you know when the tickets are on sale. I will let you know which address to send to in the next few days.

The idea is to issue laminates for Company Members which will get you into all the events over the weekend.
(Non Company members will only get into the gigs - families need only have one Company member. Any tickets left over after Company members have had the chance to order will be put on open sale closer to the event)

Events in the think tank at the moment are-

A penguin race where people can make papier mache penguins off any size to be thrown from the bridge into the river and the winner is first to reach the next bridge. Prizes! Prizes! Prizes!

A "Never Mind the Buzzcocks" style on stage performance with present and past members of the band and crew.

A "Call my Bluff" style on stage performance.

A "Catfish walk" where fans can dress up in their best Fishy clothes or apparel they have created over the years with Mark Wilkinson's artwork.
Best costumes etc will be photographed for Mark Wilkinson's new artwork book.

Mark Wilkinson's art gallery and Q and A session.

The usual intro speech and Q and A session with myself/stand up set.

A short acoustic set with various band members.

An aftershow party until 2am on the Sunday.

Other suggestions and ideas are welcome.

On Monday Yatta and his wife Kris came over from Wales and we cased out the venue itself.
In his own words he said "this is the best venue I have seen at this level in the UK."
It is a truly outstanding venue with every facility we need and more.
Spacious bars and areas where people can just chill out if they want as well as a fantastic hall with great sound and light specs.
In all honesty it couldn't be better.

The sun was shining as we walked through the nearby Jepson gardens with its stunning hothouse and adjacent restaurant. The fountains blasted away and flipped a rainbow over the host of ducks in the lake.
We sauntered up the street past a sushi place and had lunch in an Italian bistro; everyone agreed that Leamington provides the perfect setting for the 2009 convention.

We drove back to Scotland with big grins and I personally can't wait till August as I am convinced this could be our finest Company Convention to date!

The wheels are turning and the ideas are going into action.

To those we intended to meet down there for the recce, sorry we couldn't hook up but please get in touch on email and we can look at furthering plans and locking things down.

until next time

take care and stay alive

Onkel Fish x