| "Welcome to the ‚Garden Party‘" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Single by Marillion | ||||
| from the albumScript for a Jester's Tear | ||||
| A-side | "Garden Party" (7") | |||
| B-side |
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| Released | July 1986 | |||
| Recorded | 1983, 1984, 1986 | |||
| Genre | Neo-prog | |||
| Label | EMI Electrola | |||
| Songwriters | Fish,Steve Rothery,Pete Trewavas,Mick Pointer,Mark Kelly | |||
| Producers | Nick Tauber (7") Marillion and Simon Hanhart (12" A-side) / Marillion and Mark Freegard (12" B-side) | |||
| Marillion singles chronology | ||||
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"Welcome to the ‚Garden Party‘"[a] is a 1986 single by Britishneo-prog bandMarillion released exclusively inWest Germany to accompany a series of concerts the band played at festivals in that country as second bill toQueen, following their commercial breakthrough with the albumMisplaced Childhood and the hit singles "Kayleigh" and "Lavender" the year before. The single was released on 7" and 12" vinyl; neither version contained any new or previously unreleased material. The 7" and 12" versions contained completely different recordings from each other. The A-side, "Garden Party", originally thesecond single from the band's debut album,Script for a Jester's Tear, had reached #16 on theUK Singles Chart in 1983, but—like all Marillion singles before "Kayleigh"—had failed to chart in Germany. However, the single received little airplay and failed to enter the German top 100.[1]
While the 7" single contained the edited studio version of "Garden Party" also found on the original 1983 7" single (on which the lineI'm fucking was replaced withI'm miming to avoid airplay problems), the A-side of the 12" single featured a live recording made atDe Montfort Hall,Leicester, on 5 March 1984, previously released on the 1984 live albumReal to Reel (on which the aforementioned line is sung by the audience). The B-side of the 7" single was the edited version of the 1984 re-recording of "Market Square Heroes" (originally the band's 1982 non-album debut single) first released on B-side of the 1984 7" singlePunch & Judy. In its place, the B-side of the 12" single featured the two live tracks "Kayleigh" and "Script for a Jester's Tear". These versions, recorded at London'sHammersmith Odeon in January 1986, are the same as onBrief Encounter, anEP released only in the USA a few months earlier. Accordingly, the title printed on the 12" version was "Welcome to the ‚Garden Party‘ (LIVE)".
The cover was, as usual, designed byMark Wilkinson and features artwork based on promotional material for the band's series of open-air concerts in the summer of 1986. As the band did not release any new material domestically in year following their commercial breakthrough, both this single andBrief Encounter were in demand by fans in the UK and thus widely stocked by record shops as imports. Today it is a sought-after collector's item.
Having been released in Germany only, "Welcome to the Garden Party" was not part of the collectors box-set released in July 2000 and was re-issued as a 3-CD set in 2009 (seeThe Singles '82–'88); however, both tracks of the 7" single are included as they featured on the singles "Garden Party" and "Punch and Judy".