Artist: Marillion
Title: “Early Stages” – The Official Bootleg Boxed Set 1982-1987
Label: EMI Music
Release Date: 11/28/2008
Genre: Progressive Rock
Rating: 5/5

I will be the first to admit to the readers that I am one of those fans that is referred to as a “Fish-head” when it comes to the music of the band Marillion. Of course I have to also offer up a little defense for myself as I am also one of those people who kept on following the band once the epic poet Derek Dick chose to move on from their ranks but those years are not the subject of the material that we are examining. While Fish was in the band he had recorded four extraordinary albums and each of them is presented in some fashion across these vintage concerts that were done for the BBC. Through these never before heard tracks we find early interpretations of the work we would come to find on “Script For A Jester’s Tear”, “Fugazi”, “Misplaced Childhood” and “Clutching At Straws”. Fish would move on to start a prolific solo career of his own and since his departure Marillion has released more than three times the amount of studio albums that he did with them along with an incredible amount of live recordings. Of course when Fish moved on there were also many fans that chose to move on as well because the band became a different group from the one that they had admired and was a lot less progressive in its song structure and seemed to be aiming for the ever elusive commercial market. While Steve Hogarth is a fine songwriter too many he was not the epic wordsmith that many felt that Fish was. Facts like these make an album set such as this one a terrific journey into the bands beginnings and time with Fish in the live sense because when it came down to the official releases we would only get “The Thieving Magpie” as the bands live effort. That album focused on “Clutching” and “Misplaced” the most and left far too much off for the heavy duty fan and that’s where these shows now come into play as an incredible find. They labeled this as “The Official Bootleg” boxed set and yet these are not the typical bootleg with lots of crowd noise and rumble instead of quality music and are instead high quality official recordings that were done with better equipment based on their audio sonics. There are six CD’s delivered in the set and they cover five different shows across the span of about five years and we’ve broken it down one by one to offer up some additional comments for your enlightenment.
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