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Midge in Midst of Upswing in Blues

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Description: The information for this image was taken for a story that ran in The Manawatu Evening Standard on 20th March 1991.

"Blues has suddenly become a very big thing in pop music, and for Midge Marsden -- celebrating 30 years in the business with his new album Burning Rain -- this new awareness fits in nicely with his career. "Blues has come of age, and that's good for where I'm coming from. It's become a very acceptable commodity now. The young people are turning on to it, and they're so much more sophisticated, with such a wide input of information. You have acts like BB King touring with U2, turning a whole new generation on,"

Marsden says the present resurgence of sixties music is happening because modern pop music has become bland and boring. "These kids keep coming up to me and wanting to hear John Mayall or Savoy Brown, and I'm just blown away. It's almost as if the progress of modern music has slowed down, doing a double take and looking sideways." Blues of the nineties, Marsden says, has dropped the sexism of the past, being relevant to today's society and today's problems.

In America, audiences have shifted from black and white, and the venues have gone from clubs to stadiums. "Blues is just a state of mind, an expression that covers a way of feeling, no matter the time and place. I look up at my audiences at The Albert, and they're half my age. But that becomes irrelevant. It's what you're doing that they come to see." Sometimes he admits, that's not always easy. Being stuck in the van, with the band becoming tired and irritable, life on the road tends to lose its appeal after several decades. "Then the time comes, and you snap yourself out of it. You look at the faces and think 'let's do it'. So you're into the first five songs, and you're picking it up. My band hate me for this, but at the end of the night, they're exhausted, and I keep wanting to play more."

With his new album Burning Rain, Marsden used veterans Ross McDermott, Gary Verberne and Mike Fowler. Production is crisp and polished, with punchy songs and accomplished musicianship. Marsden is singing and writing -- with Mike Farrell -- better than ever. "We didn't want anybody coming back to us and saying it sounds low budget. We paid most of the $90,000 recording budget ourselves, and we're proud that we can take this CD to any country in the world and be told it's as good as anything they've got going."

The band are on an Australian tour to be followed by a guest appearance -- at the Memphis in May festival. New Zealand has this year been selected as the country to be profiled. Although Marsden comes across as pretty up-front on most issues, he tends to play down his winning of the NZ Entertainer of the Year award last year. "I got it because somebody finally perceived you don't have to be a high-profile star to win. It's also a recognition of the countless musuos who relentlessly entertain people in small places that nobody has ever heard of. To me, that's what entertaining is all about."