             |
CITY is a complicated composition, which I'm going to take the rare step of explaining in some detail. The basic idea resulted from a period in my life when I'd walk from my house to a pool hall about three miles away just about every night. As I'd walk, I'd be composing little vignettes in my head about the walk, and later that night at home I'd jot down what I could remember. As the whole piece began to take some form (and here, we're mostly referring to Book One, the first half of Book Two, and parts of Book Three), I had another composition that involved the usual female theme, and I began to blend them together. So, in the end, CITY is a story about a guy who leaves town to pursue his dreams, leaving someone behind with whom things are unsettled, and returns home to find things changed, even as he tries to find some resolution to the matter of the heart. This is the first composition of mine that was quite clearly and deliberately NOT intended for Travesty. Musically, it's entirely opposite of what we were doing; for those who are familiar with the way Marillion began to sound after Fish left, you'd have a really good idea, I suppose. BOOK ONE: "Then" is essentially the portion of the piece which details how things have changed in our protagonist's absence. We see that the city's become somewhat run down, and what was once a bucolic little inner suburb has turned into an extension of the urban core. "Chasm" specifically relates to the construction of a new freeway which cut off one part of town almost entirely from another as I was a teenager, and the effects were fairly immediate. The footbridge mentioned was built specifically so the kids in that part of town would still be able to get to a school which was only two blocks away, yet with the freeway became a three-mile drive. The other effect of the freeway was that the old downtown area of the suburb fell into disuse rapidly, as it became hard to get to and the freeway made getting to the more modern mall down the road an easier proposition. The instrumental, "Bridge," serves the dual purpose of leading into "Chasm," which is about a bridge, and as a musical bridge itself. BOOK TWO: Obviously, as the old downtown decayed, businesses went under. There were a couple of well-publicized suicides as a result, and the area quickly became sort of an area where less savory characters would hang out. The end of "Chapter Eleven (part one)" refers to an instance where what the police presumed to be a homeless man killed a librarian rather than being put out onto the street at closing time (which leads into "Then She Died," which is an instrumental take on that situation). "In Residence" begins the transformation from downtown to the still-healthy suburb on the other side, and the inevitable social barrier between the haves and the have-nots. Then, we begin to fold into the love story. . . BOOK THREE: This section mostly comprises some unspoken memories of better days, especially within "Left Field." "Antiseptic" is instrumental, and it's "about" a hospital which later turned into a mental rest home. "Business Strip" shows how we're getting back into the bright lights of the economy, and possibly foreshadowing the conclusion of the tale. The reference to "Utopia" is referential; there was a nightclub named Utopia right about where our hero is at this point in the story. "Chapter Eleven (part two)" refers specifically to the sordid tale of the Hudson Oil Company, a local gas chain which suddenly and mysteriously went belly-up; it was later revealed that the old matriarch who owned the company had been involved in lots of underhanded dealings. "Merry-Go-Round" wraps up the side instrumentally, and is again the name of a bar. BOOK FOUR: This section mostly reprises elements from Books One-Three, and wraps things up. I'm not sure, now, what the title of "Meal Ticket" had to do with anything, but the instrumental bridges the gap between "Intersection" and "On My Way," and reprises many themes throught the piece. At the end of the lyrical string, we still aren't quite sure what the ultimate fate of our hero and his unrequited love are, but the instrumental ending to "On My Way" answers the question. . . |