WHAT I DID WITH MY WEEKEND...

Hello, ya'll.

Firstly... here's the Digi Mini that'll be going up later. Sorry I'm not getting these to you earlier - bit behind with them, having had a busy few weeks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1MX3mUMe6c&feature=youtu.be 

Also, I was away at the weekend. 

Where was I? Well, I'm not going to write about it on Digitiser2000, so I may as well indulge myself here.

I was at this year's Marillion Weekend. You know already that I'm a Marillion fan, and every two years they stage a bunch of three-day conventions around the world - Chile, Poland, Montreal, er... Leicester - with them all kicking off at a remote Centre Parcs in The Netherlands. 

For a Marillion fan, it's like a visit to Mecca. We're generally looked down upon and scorned by other music fans (Marillion are well aware of this, selling a t-shirt which reads "Uncool as fuck"), but it's somewhere we can talk about Marillion in relative safety, without the usual tedious risk of ridicule.

For most people there, it has become as much about the socialising as the music; you get a unique gig every evening, in a huge, temporary, tent, with the sort of massive production values Marillion can't usually usually afford. Plus, you can stumble back to your bed.

The Saturday afternoon has a quiz (our team typically finishes in the top three out of about 30 teams, but we've yet to win), and on Sunday afternoons there's a Q&A, and something called Swap The Band, where people can put themselves forward to take turns replacing members of the group. It was at this that then-PlayStation boss Phil Harrison - a big Marillion fan - went mad and failed to auction a PS3. 

We also had Neil Armstrong's son, Rick, take over the drums one year. He was there this time, as he always is, and I was sat next to him on the coach back to the airport yesterday, utterly failing to work up the courage to talk to him about his dad, despite wanting to desperately.

Not sure how I would've even gone about it. 

"Mate, mate... is it true your dad went to the moon? Did you know me and him had the same birthday? What's that like, having a dad who went to the moon? Do you know Ryan Gosling?"

Post-gigs, the nights offer rock and prog "discos", and something called Rockaoake - where audience members can get up and sing with a live band - but mostly... it's about sitting around and drinking, and chatting, and meeting up with people from all over the world, who you only see once every couple of years. 

We've got a core group we always go with (usually with a few one-time members), and we're a diverse bunch, from a broad spectrum of political backgrounds, sexual orientations, incomes, and opinions. Were it not for Marillion giving us that shared interest, we'd have almost nothing in common. But somehow the band, and these weekends, is enough to unite us all, and I count the lot of them among my best friends. It's quite a special thing to have.

The gang I go with - we call ourselves The Damage, for a variety of reasons - do two extra nights, one in Amsterdam, but I stopped that a few years back. I barely drink these days, and just can't keep up. Mind you, given the state of most of them on Sunday... they no longer have the stamina these days either. 

The following week, everyone in attendance seemingly comes down with the now-famous "Marillion flu" - where our ageing bodies suffer the consequences of the constant drinking,  the standing up for hours every evening, and the travelling... My wife and I had a travel nightmare both there and back this time, and that in itself took its toll.

Something that was really noticeable to me this year is how old we've become. Marillion have been doing the weekends in The Netherlands for 14 years now (they basically make enough money from the conventions alone to keep the band going), and we're all so much greyer, fatter, and more wrinkled. Seeing photos from this weekend has not been a pleasant experience, when pictures from earlier Marillion Weekends are somehow still fresh in my mind.

About the only thing stopping me having a complete existential crisis is the fact I'm one of the few men in attendance who - while I may have lost my jawline - at least still has his hair. 

Actually, that's not even true. I don't care about the hair, I just I wish I wasn't fat. 

Admittedly, it wasn't my favourite Marillion Weekend this year. The setlists focused on a bunch of rarely-played songs, which are generally rarely-played for good reason, in my opinion, and the travel hell we had on the way meant that everything felt very rushed. 

But... as fans... we're aware that as old as we are, the band are even older. We've only got a few of these left before they inevitably throw in the towel, and as difficult as it is to party like we once did... we're making the most of it while we still, just about, can. We're a bad influence on one another, and havoc was duly wreaked.

I got lucky with Marillion. I grew up on their music, hitting me at the right age - and with the right level of light and shade - to get under my skin. It frustrates me that to many people they're something of a joke - they deserve so, so much better - but I also know that some of their reputation is deserved. When they began, primarily because of their then-lead singer, Fish - who was full Peter Gabriel with his facepaint and storytelling - they developed a reputation (depending on who you spoke to) as either a bunch of Genesis copyists, or were mistaken for a Scottish heavy metal band. 

They had a rough period in the late-90s, where they were adrift without a record company, and churned out a couple of records, which lacked their usual quality control, just to stay afloat, but either side of those their music has more in common with the emotional art-rock of Kate Bush, Talk Talk and Radiohead, pre-Kid A.  

Devastated as I was when Fish left after the first four albums, they never quit. They found a better singer, their music got better, and they found ways of keeping going - through their invention of crowd-funding, exclusive fan events, and these weekends - which gave them the room to produce the best work they possibly can, and award their audience with pretty much everything they could ever want. 

Somehow, they've built a loyal audience despite all the odds, and it took them less than five minutes to sell out the Royal Albert Hall 18 months ago. They've repeated the trick for two shows later this year. 

They're big enough to have kept going all these years, but never so big that they became a remote entity like U2 or Coldplay, with a level of creative freedom that most of us could only dream of. By their own admission, they'll make no money from the Royal Albert Hall shows - they just want to be able to say they've done it. How many of the world's huge acts would play a show for the experience, rather than simply to line their pockets?

So, anyway. That's where I was this weekend. Back now, exhausted, and feeling fat and old. But what a brilliant thing to be a part of.

Paul