key_page: biog
The An Emotional Fish first appearance in Italy was in 18 october 1990 at "Garage Prego Club"  (now named "Rainbow") in Milan,   showing a great live performance. They came back to Italy  during the Simple Minds “Real life tour” in 1991. They attracted significant attention, also thanks to Whelan's charisma, despite they were only supporting the scottish band. They took part in our Rockheads Festival in ‘91 together with artists such as Ramones, Billy Idol and Iggy Pop. Paul Evans of the Rolling Stone magazine wrote: “ A poetic fervour and stupendous sound inspires the celtic spirits of these four musicians. There are allusions to that disillusion Lou Reed has transformed into arts in the lyrics of their songs, and the assertive bass played by Enda Wyatt remembers the big underground band from Athens, Georgia, The Pylon. Gerard Whelan is a passionate singer both when he whispers and sings rock; there are all the topics - loneliness, rage, simpathy, identity crises. All their songs are intense and provocative”.         Next, An Emotional Fish hit the road in support of their debut album. In the beginning of ‘91, the group toured Europe for a month, moving next to the U.S., where it spent two months wowing audiences with incendiary live shows. Fast forward to autumn 1991, when the group arrived at Ballyvourney, a little Gaelicspeaking village outside of Cork City, Ireland. AEF had come in order to get away from tour buses, airports, late-night club gigs, and radio, and to experience country life first hand. They'd also brought their guitars it was there that "JUNK PUPPETS", the group's second album, first took root. Alan (The Jesus And Mary Chain, Shakespear's Sister) Moulder's name came up quite a bit at talk session in The Hooded Cloak, a little pub that had become the band's local hang-out. Some telephone calls were made, letters and cassettes were exchanged, and Moulder agreed to co-produce the upcoming album with the group. "We'd settled on Alan about ten minutes after meeting him," David Frew explains,. "He'd listened to the demos, had loads of ideas for sounds and little arrangement bits here and there, and also talked good sense. I'm sure that the record company would have preferred someone more mainstream, a ‘name' producer, but we stuck to our guns and won out. The results, speak for themselves, I guess." "JUNK PUPPETS" was recorded over an eight month period at The Church Studio, Townhouse III, and Westside Studios in London. 0f the thirty-five songs demoed for the album, 17 were recorded, with 11 making the final cut. Dave Stewart (Eurythmics) co-produced four songs with AEF, with Clive Langer (Madness) handling the co-production on one cut. Gerard reckons that, "JUNK PUPPETS' is a better record simply because it's got a better collection of songs. But we've also learned from the debut. This time we took our time, trusted our own ideas, brought in other instruments, experimented with sounds, and, also, we had Alan to keep it all together. Right now we're just happy that the thing is finally going to see the light of day2". But what is "JUNK PUPPETS" all about ? Gerard: "I've always been a bit of a daydreamer, probably too much at times. I could never write a political song or a song that has a go at religion. I'm writing from the world that I know and from the places that I've seen. Recently, I've been reading loads, of folklore stuff, loads of Yeats. I've always been fascinated by legend. And that Baudelaire poem that's on the record acts as some sort of theme, probably. Translated roughly, it means that stuff like scorpions and tarantulas might be scary and horrible, but that ultimately there's nothing scarier or more horrible than boredom. Most of the songs are all about personal politics in a very vague and general kind of way. ‘If God Was a Girl' is about sex-roll stereotypes and that silly notion that we've still got, particularly in this country, that woman is man's servant. ‘Careless Child' is probably about envy, doubt, and mistrust. I'm still not sure." With the release of "JUNK PUPPETS", An Emotional Fish is on the swings and roundabouts again. Four young men, eleven songs, and one wonderful storm. They got back to Italy in summer ‘93 having the honour to open the U2 “Zooropa Tour” concerts, and the chance to let their second work “Junk Puppets” known. Little time before they took part in some Vasco Rossi tour concerts as a supporting band.           The Emotional Fish played free during the same period of time in Bologna in a social centre. When they begins to play their song “Celebrate” the audience explodes. Vasco Rossi released the song “Gli spari sopra” few months before as a cover of “Celebrate” with different lyrics. “Celebrate” was the song opening their first LP called “An Emotional Fish” , released from WEA in Europe and form Atlantic in the United States in 1990. Definitely the An Emotional Fish band has his roots in the psychedelic and expressionist rock. Whelan's voice is evocative and inspired (Bono, Jim Kerr, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop). He is an excellent singer and very well supported by the spoken guitar of David Frew and the rolling drums of Maritn Murphy. (From Rockstar July 1993)                       The band released three albums: An Emotional Fish , Junk Puppets , Sloper . By listening their three works we can realize that the band loves to search for new sound possibilities, without fearing to leave the past behind. We can say that the An Emotional Fish have not reached yet the expected commercial success they would deserve. Many musical magazines compared Whelan's poetic power with the one of Bono Vox. Who would like to see a concert of the band just has to take a plane to Ireland(!), since the An Emotional Fish often performs in their own country
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