The More You Live, The More You Love

During the day I was trying to come up with titles for further entries. Since I was paying some attention about the progressive rock band Marillion it was an easy step to Steve Hogarth their singer since 1989. Hogarth started his career in the new wave / synthpop group the Europeans, which consisted of Geoff Dugmore (drums, backing vocals), Ferg Harper (lead vocals, bass), Steve Hogarth (keyboards, lead and backing vocals), Colin Woore (guitars, backing vocals). The band formed in 1980 under the name Motion Pictures, but changed names in 1981 after Hogarth had joined through an add in the music press. They released three albums before the band broke up in 1985. However their first track "Drink Pink Zinc!" appeared on a compilation album titled "The Snoopies Album" from 1981. Hogarth was the keyboard player of the band and did lead vocals on five out of eight tracks on "Recurring Dreams" and on one the nicest track of their debut album "Vocabulary...

Half the country is on a holiday nowadays. Half the working building is empty and therefore I am able to play my music a bit louder than normal these days. In journalistic terms it's called cucumber time, and you can see it everywhere. The newspapers are slim, the news comes with items, that normally hardly make the news and which are blown up to items to fill the time. Well it seems hardly anything is happening in this country these days. Even the musical world seems a bit quiet these days. So I thought which sleeve describes these days the best way and I came up with Marillion's "Garden Party". Cos besides the cucumber time it's great weather for BBQ's and Garden Parties. It was the first twelve inch I bought of Marillion. Already being a fan of Genesis I fancied the great songs Marillion were making in those early days. I still consider "Script For A Jesters Tear" And "Fugazi" among the best albums made in the eighties. Other neo progres...

A couple of days ago I was finally putting my vynil records in a cupboard again. On the attic we have created a nice listening and relaxing room with my old audio tower, a television, a DVD player and my old collection of vynil records alongside my collection of music DVD's. Going through my special singles collection I discoverd that behind every single there's a story. In the mid eighties I organised trips to major Dutch cities with friends to go on record hunting. Those days it wasn't just the big chains of stores you have nowadays. The Free Record Shop, one of the biggest in the Netherlands these days, was a small one those days, which offered the music lover a lot of import 7" and 12" singles, mostly not available elsewhere and sometimes hardly heard on the readio (I bought all my regular Marillion 12" singles there). They only had shops in big cities then like Amsterdam, Haarlem and Utrecht to mention some. Nowadays every small city has one and you fin...

The first time I got involved with music occured when I was about two or three years old. You wouldn't believe it but there was a concert of the Beachboys on the radio and my father had put on his taperecorder. This was around 1968-69 so you can guess by now how old I am. So dad had put on the taperecorder and I was singing along with God Only Knows and Barbara Ann. To be honest it became a legendary recording in my family. The only things I could sing was Pa pa pa and ba ba ba barbara ann as you can guess being only two / three years. It's fun to listen to the songs while typing this contribution to my blog. But small kids grow tall and ten years later I visit high school and get in touch with hardrock and progressive rock. To be honest I've never been a punk lover, and the punk scene somehow seemed to pass the Netherlands in the late seventies. My parents had tried to keep me away from modern day music by giving me Abba records every Sint Nicolasday and also uncles delive...

I never know how long I can obtain the returning updates of a Blog. I started one a couple of years ago and after a few entries ended it because I ran out of inspiration. This time I try to continu, although I can't promise anything. So what's the first thing to come up with to talk about. I love reading and I love music. the problem is for the first one I hardly have or find the time these days. This results in a bunch of unread books, that's on the shelf for some time now. Music is with me everyday. The first thing after turning on my computer at work is starting Winamp and run my eighties mp3 archive, which is on my hard drive. On last.fm you find the list of tracks I've been playing since I became a member in late April 2007. So what can you expect, or on the other hand what am I willing to write about. I have a vague outline for these pages, but will think it over for the next couple of days. For the moment enjoy a rare version of the title of this blog, which you ...