B'SIDES THEMSELVES

I have started my digging into Marillion's discography after having listened to a tape that a friend brought me from UK in the early 80s. Where the hell was recorded that long song? I didn't know the title either, and of course it was Grendel.

Finally, after having found bootleg versions and obtained a copy of my friend's tape, EMI decided to release all that old material on an album.

The good is that all the most important early material is there, the bad is that this collection of songs lacks of continuity and worse, some tracks have been edited or re-recorded.

This is the case of "Three Boats Down From The Candy". It was with Grendel the goos reason to me to buy this album, but unfortunately this version is not as good as the one on the tape I had listened to years before.

Songs like "Tux On", "Lady Nina" and "Charting The Single" sound a bit immature and not very interesting. The last of the three based on just two chords to let Fish show us how much he feels like Peter Gabriel.

"Cinderella Search" is a good song but there was no need of another version. The one on Fugazi is enough, and the closer "Margaret" is just a closer.

What remains is Grendel, the only epic, or attempt to make an epic of the Fish period. However the concept is taken from Beowulf, so it's an epic by definition. It's an early effort of this band, a sort of patchwork of several short themes in a very Genesis mood, with a remarkable vocal duet from Fish and Pete Trewavas and a closing guitar solo that Steve Rothary reused later on Forgotten Sons.

It's everything but a masterpiece, but finding a song of this kind at the beginning of the 80s was an exciting surprise for me and it's the song that made me actually a Marillion fan.

This is the only reason to rate 3 stars an album that without Grendel would have barely deserved two.