Fish
Raingods With Zippos (The Remasters)
October sees the start of Derek William Dick’s farewell tour or, as he is better known, Fish. That farewell tour will be much more than a retrospective of his years as Marillion’s frontman. And rightly so, because although his solo work maybe less well known than his Marillion legacy; whatever you do, don’t overlook that very period. To refresh your memory or to introduce you to his solo work for the first time at all, Written In Music dives into the catalogue of the sympathetic Scotsman and offers you an overview of Fish’s various studio albums. Previously we already shared our reviews of the EP A Parley With Angels, the albums Weltschmerz, A Feast Of Consequences, 13th Star, Field Of Crows and Fellini Days. Now Raingods With Zippos is up for a review.
Raingods With Zippos originally came out in 1998. A very good opportunity for the particularly metal-focused label Roadrunner Records and Fish to start their collaboration: Fish most certainly was in the mood to deliver! And with him also his long-time creative partner Mark Wilkinson. However, the relationship with Roadrunner Records was strained and difficult. Fish’s accompanying words go deeper into that.
The Dutch audience might have experienced Fish’s new album as a treat in the early morning. One of the songs was played on Radio 1 , a station where you would never hear Fish and suddenly there was, if my memory serves me well, Tilted Cross. A beautiful and hushed song that draws you in all the way through its vocals and which has appeal in its compactness. When you take into consideration, that it is about landmines in Bosnia, Fish having visited many battlefields during his career, the song may even hit harder. It’s not only beautiful vocals by Fish but also by Elizabeth Troy Antwi. Perhaps one of the most beautiful voices Fish ever sang with.
However, the album kicked off with Mickey Simmonds’ sophisticated keyboard playing, back with Fish in an intro that just about caught you off guard. You might just expect a long drawn-out ballad and suddenly that intro turns into a burst from the band. The music accompanies the feel of a Tumbledown wonderfully. Lyrics and music fit together, making it a fine rocky and swinging song. This is followed by the even more rocking yet poppy Mission Statement, which was created with collaborations with Rick Astley and others. Not hard to imagine how this could sound live, at the same time, Fish did not include it on the live disc of this set.
It’s an album that has some nice ballads or songs with a ballad-like build-up. You already read about Tilted Cross. Incomplete and Rites Of Passage are the other two. Both are very beautiful and describe two different experiences of a relationship. The feeling that everything was different from what it once was, that you can get to feel incomplete in your relationship. Or the relationship incomplete. With Fish’s marital situation not too rosy at the time, you might imagine something along these lines. Fish and his wife listened to this last song in the studio. That affected the both of them.
You will find those ballads, as well as the cover of Faith Healer, a cover by Alex Harvey in the first part of the album. The second part, Plague Of Ghosts, consists of six parts and is one fantastic progressive suite. Old Haunts, Digging Deep, Chocolate Frogs, Waving At Stars, Raingods Dancing, Wake-up Call (Make It Happen) are those six parts, and it is a beautiful and extraordinary musical adventure not a walk in the park in which Fish does not allow himself to be constrained by old song structures and sounds and instead allows himself to be challenged musically.
Mark Daghorn and Tony Turrell, who together formed The Positive Light and who had previously remixed This Strange Engine with Marillion, asked Fish to sing on one of their songs, so the collaboration ended up being quite different, with Tony also eventually joining Fish as keyboardist more often. So this meant not only a successful collaboration here, but a foundation towards the future was laid for -partially- further collaboration.
In his accompanying words, Fish writes about writing sessions at Chateau Marouatte in France, which also led to a number of songs on the album or belonging to it and which we find in this set. You’ll find these particularly on the first part of the album or on the third disc (Mr Buttons, Chasing Miss Pretty) and, yes, that’s also where he met Liz Antwi. Needless to say, this release from The Remasters series is again exceptionally well done. The sound as on all these reissues put down by Calum Malcolm and beautiful artwork by Mark Wilkinson that rightly deserves its attention. In terms of music, the second disc of fine demos from Plague Of Ghosts, also featured in its original title All These Christs does not count many songs, but given the length of the epic tracks that is not surprising.
The final disc of the set is also very special. Not just the aforementioned songs, also a beautiful acoustic demo of Incomplete, wonderful acoustic songs from Haddington and delightful live performances of songs from the album from the United States, with a very strong but also raw performance of Plague Of Ghosts dedicated to Fish’s former drummer Kevin Wilkinson who retired from life in 1999. Fish’s introduction on how the song came about shows again how very familiar Fish is with the darker sides of life as well.
With a host of musicians, the album was recorded at the time, again featuring Steven Wilson, this time not in the role of producer, but on guitar alongside also Til Paulman, Phil Grieve, Robin Boult and Bruce Watson on guitar, Mickey Simmonds and Tony Turrell on keys, Dave Stewart on drums, Steve Vantsis on bass and Elizabeth Troy Antwi, Nicola and Tony King on (backing) vocals, Mark Daghorn programming, Davey Crichton on violin and Dave Haswell on percussion. Production of the original album was in the hands of Elliot Ness. The remaster was once more handled by Calum Malcolm.
Raingods With Zippos presents us Fish who, although he collaborated with Steven Wilson again after Sunsets On Empire, this time in a different role. The album is varied and starts off relaxed and more poppy than the seasoned prog fan will want to hear from one of his heroes, but in fact the more poppy songs are certainly no less beautiful. It perhaps shows rigidity towards Fish, conservatism perhaps, to dismiss the first part of the album as the lesser part of the album. You wouldn’t want to cost the musicians who could never write a song like Tilted Cross or Incomplete. Granted, Plague Of Ghosts is the album’s prize suite, but it is the album’s variety and its build that shows how great the album is. This is a more than convincing release from the great man’s catalogue!
For all the releases in this series, you won’t find them at retail. If you are interested in purchasing the titles, go to www.fishmusic.eu. There you will find most of the titles still in stock. Suits and Sunsets On Empire will be available soonish in an edition of 1,500.