IT ONLY TOOK TWO DECADES

I had a friend Tom in the 80's-he was actually more Rich and Terry's friend Tom. At  Terry's wedding, Tom told me all about this band Marillion who sounded like "old Genesis" that I had to check out. The next day I picked up a copy of "The Theiving Magpie" and was hooked.

Since then, they've become my second favorite band (edging out Springsteen but behind Todd). I've got everything they've ever released, inclduing the 40 or so "authorized bootlegs" released on CD (stopped after they went download only), the remasters, the studio series, the holiday releases, all the live DVD's...you name it..

Marillion are not a household name anywhere, and even less so in the United States. They tour here infrequently and tend to stick to the big cities.

And as much as Phoenix AZ wants to think of itself as a big city...I got bad news for ya, desert rats-we ain't!

So for two decades, every time Marillion hit the USA, events conspired against my being able to travel to see them.

As a result, when their 2012 US tour was announced, I was going even if I had to quit my job to do it.

Since I was going to be on the east coats for a wedding in early June, I opted to see the band at their second Los Angeles show, at the House Of Blues on Sunset. My friend Dfly was up for the show, and also was up for flying us there.

Dfly has a small experimental plane that he built from various household appliance parts, and while it looks like it may be small, it is almost as roomy as my Mazda Miata convertible.

But I've flown with him quite a bit and have not died in a fiery explosion, and it saves a s#!tload of driving time, so what the heck-we only live once.

Thursday June 24 was a perfect day, so Dfly and I pop-started the plane and were on our way! Did I mention that the plane does not have conditioned air? And that it gets hot in Arizona? Hey, I'm not complaining! We got to LA by 10:30 and were at Amoeba Music by 11.

Now, Stephen T. McCarthy has the distinction of having gotten to Amoeba Music before me. Well actually, every customer at Amoeba before 11 am on Thursday has been there before me, but I know him. And to spare Dfly the agony of waiting all day for me to pore through their bins, I only pored through the used CD bins, and very quickly. Stephen did a nice post mentioning Amoeba on his blog here, so I will not do a half-assed review here but will refer you to Stephen's comments...as well as stealing a couple of Stephen's images!

Suffice it to say that it's a good store. One thing Arizona does have going for it is Zia Records (see my post from last summer if you wanna know more), and Amoeba may be as good. It's bigger, but I'd need more time and multiple visits to see if the store yields the same number of finds as Zia. But if you are in LA, you'd be a fool not to stop in.

After some other touristy stuff, Dfly and I donned our Marillion shirts and made our way to the House Of Blues to see a progressive legend!

The show opened with “Splintering Heart”, and we were off. Dfly made the comment that he thinks they come across better live than on record, and I will say that the live show demonstrates just how well H's voice and Steve's guitar suit the music's mood.

H can belt out rockers when he needs to, like the second number, “Cover My Eyes (Pain And Heaven), bleeding right into a blistering “Slàinte Mhath.”

But when he needs to be ethereal because the music is a jam that washes over you, his voice works, too, and Steve's guitar always seems to match the mood as well.

The first encore was the epic "This Strange Engine," and the band returned for the obligatory "Kayleigh," along with a couple of other classics.

The whole set list:

1. Splintering Heart
2. Cover My Eyes (Pain and Heaven)
3. Slàinte Mhath
4. The Other Half
5. Afraid of Sunlight
6. Cannibal Surf Babe
7. Lucky Man
8. Estonia
9. The Great Escape
10. Between You and Me
11. Neverland
12. This Strange Engine
13. Kayleigh
14. Easter
15. Three Minute Boy

So there it is-after more than twenty years I finally get to see Marillion, Dfly finally gets to see Graumann's theater, and I'm going to have to go back to LA to really do Amoeba Music justice!

Hey Dfly-all kidding aside, thanks for flying us out there and getting us back safe!