Herein I shall attempt to explain what in the hell is going on here; I can't resist a good bandwagon, and the concept of the oeuvereblog is a truly exemplary one. In case you're reading this out of love for Marillion, rather than love for oeuvreblogs (I assume it has to be one or the other), the concept is simple; take a band that you love, and write a blog entry about every single song they have ever recorded. In this case, that adds up to 159, by my count (you might come out with a very different number depending on which unfinished demos and aimless jazz noodlings and the like you actually class as 'songs'), at least as of now. I'm aiming for one song per day, no more, no less, and Marillion are claiming album 15 will be released in Spring 2008, so it may be a close run thing as to whether or not I finish before that happens.
Anyway, the next question after "What the hell is an oeuvreblog?" is, of course, "Why the hell would you choose Marillion?" Well. There are three bands; Pulp, James and, obviously, Marillion, that I would call my favourites. I love a lot of other bands, but for a while now, these three have been a level above, and I can't see that changing any time soon. I can't really explain why exactly that is, although I guess that somewhere in the following 159 entries I'll be giving it a pretty good attempt, but that is the way things stand.
Once I'd committed myself to writing an oeuvreblog (which basically took a conversation consisting of "Hey, have you heard about oeuvreblogs?" "No, what's an oeuvreblog?" "It's where someone writes a blog entry about every single song a certain band has ever recorded. You should do one!"), I did actually consider other bands than the Big Three, but I think somewhere inside I knew I'd always end up settling on one of them. Pulp were discounted from the running first, because while I love pretty much everything from Separations onwards, they have a whole lot of early stuff that I mostly think is kind of terrible. Plus someone else beat me to that one. Deciding between James and Marillion I found more difficult; I actually set iTunes to shuffle me three songs from each band to test which I found the writing flowed easier for to make that decision; the result of that test should be obvious. And a couple of totally trivial things that sealed the deal; the lyrics to every Marillion song, even the ridiculously obscure, are a lot more easily accessible, which I'm sure will be an enormous help, and I'll be linking to the appropriate page at the beginning of every entry; and "Separated Out" makes for a far more appropriate title than anything I could come up with for James, even if it has already been used as the title of a Marillion biography.
If you want to know more about Marillion, their official website is absolutely full to the brim with information (including the aforementioned database of lyrics), all flavoured with a delightful tinge of pomposity. Enjoy!
