The Judge
RAVES!
Date: 20/05/10
Marillion - "Garden Party"
One teatime in about 1982, I saw a music video which was being used by HTV to fill a gap in the schedule. I didn't see the beginning, and no announcement - either written or verbal - was given at the end, so I didn't know who it was.
What it certainly looked like was live footage of Gabriel-era Genesis. The lead singer certainly had a lot of weird and stark makeup on, and the music certainly fitted the mould of mid-seventies prog. But the other musicians certainly were not Genesis.
I recounted my experience to my friends down the pub a couple of evenings later. "Oh," said Alan Howells, "you mean Marillion."
"Do I?" I replied, knowing no better.
It was some little while after that before I heard of them again, when their Script From A Jester's Tear LP came out. I think I only heard a couple of tracks from that, but Garden Party became a top twenty single (in its edited form), and I recall seeing the video for it.
That video is something of a classic, in which the band members - dressed as unruly schoolboys - tease the upper-class guests at the eponymous 'do', before things take a more sinister turn and create a small but entertaining battle in the class war.
