How We Found The Tree

In September of 1995, I started working for Tower Records in Annapolis Maryland. One of the perks of the job was that we were allowed to pick free promo CD's from several boxes CD's that the sales reps gave to the store to promote their product. The guy in charge of letting us look through the boxes was my manager/soon to be PT traveling companion, Jason. When it was finally my turn go through the boxes, being the new guy at the store, most of the familiar CD's were taken by the long timers and I was left to blindly choose things from the leftovers that I thought I might like. Most of what was usually there was a lot of crap the stuff no one else wanted. Unknown rap and rock and country artists, some Latin and easy listening titles and a couple of handfuls of world music CD's. This one time, however, I saw the name PORCUPINE TREE amongst all the other CD's. I picked up the CD. It was called "The Sky Moves Sideways" on C&S Records. I looked on the back of the CD at the song titles. I liked how it looked like there was a theme running through the songs kind of in the Prog-rock tradition. Being a fan of bands like Rush, Marillion, King Crimson, and Yes, I thought I might like it. My manager, Jason, said that I might like it, but it wasn't really his thing. Something he would live to regret. (Kind of.)

So, I took the CD home along with a few others and I put it on and I thought to myself, "Cool. It kind of sounds like Pink Floyd, but maybe a more techno-sounding Pink Floyd." As it went into the "Wire The Drum" section of "TSMS", I noticed that the CD didn't have a lot of vocals which wasn't a problem. I did really like that "Stars Die" song though. Over the next few months, I was able to find a CD single in another box of promos at the record store. Other than that, there was nothing else available in the store's database. So, I just kind of shelved the two CD's with all of my other CD's which is more then I can say for a lot of the free promos that I got from that job. Very often, those free CD's sucked and disappeared over the years.


This all happened before every home in America got wired to the Internet. We were not online at the time. If we had been we probably would have realized that Porcupine Tree was playing a concert nearby in Baltimore on June 29 of 1996. We did not know though, and I'm still lashing my backside with a barbed-wire tree branch because of that. I guess I'm still trying to make up for missing that show. It wasn't until the next summer in 1997 that anything PT related came to my attention. This time, it was in the form of the new Fish album "Sunsets On Empire." Now, being a big Marillion fan from the Fish days, I was on top of it as soon as soon as it came out. I must say that I was more into what Marillion were doing than what Fish was doing at the time In fact, I really didn't like his previous CD "Suits", but "Sunsets" was very different, and I found the Mark Wilkinson cover with the pot leaves irresistible. So, I listened to it and found the album delightful from a musical and production point of view. Then, I noticed the producer of the album was named Steven Wilson. I wondered if that was the same guy that was in that band Porcupine Tree? It had to be. There can't be two guys named Steven Wilson making this kind of music.

Some more time passed up to January, 1998. While scanning through some printed data during a record store inventory, I noticed this title, Porcupine Tree - "Signify." So, I went and found the CD on the sales floor. It had just come out in the U.S. that week Ark 21 Records I believe. So, I bought it right away and took it home and listened to it that night. I had a little herbal enhancement and turned the lights off and turned the music up. After it was over, I thought, "Wow!" I have been incurably hooked on P-Tree ever since. Right away I started doing more research on the band. As I scanned the ads of Goldmine Magazine, I noticed more releases by the band. "On The Sunday Of Life", "Up The Downstair", "Staircase Infinites", "Coma Divine." I quickly ordered them at their rather pricey import prices.


At about this time, every home was getting wired to the Internet. Except ours. Jason would do research at the library for me and he'd bring home these stacks of printouts from some of the PT websites. (This computer stuff was all new to me.) Interviews, pictures, show lists, set lists, lyrics, discographies. All this info gave me a whole lot of insight into this wonderful band that was relatively unknown in the U.S. at the time. I still had more music to acquire though. "Voyage 34" and "Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape" were on the top of the list, but both were out of print so I was kind of out of luck. But, good fortune was right around the corner. First, I went to an in store CD signing by Tony Levin and Bill Bruford at a record store called Of Sound Mind that just sold progressive rock CD's and vinyl and I came across a copy of "Spiral Circus" on vinyl for $35, so I had some of "V34."

Then, there was this new thing on the internet called E-bay. At that time, there were usually only 5 to 7 Porcupine Tree items on there at any given moment. One day, "Voyage 34" (The Astralasia Remix) on vinyl came up for auction. It was being offered by a guy that lived about a half hour's drive from us, so we bid as did others and we won the auction for $51. We got in contact with the guy. His name was Phil. He was very nice. We drove to see him and make the transaction because he needed the cash and I needed the music. Phil had been following PT for sometime and had everything available plus had been to the only two U.S. PT shows at that time. He was more than generous and shared some of the harder to find things that I was so desperately trying to find and even a few that I didn't even know about. Now, had these recordings been available to buy or even on E-bay I would have certainly jumped at the chance to purchase them. But, since they weren't, it seemed okay and Phil and I were both from the same school of thought that sharing music is one of the ways to bring people together. It was all done in good faith, and I ended up buying it all when it was re-released anyway.

Phil told me some stories about the first shows like how in N.Y.C. the opening band, Poppyseed, went on way too long and when PT finally came on, they only played for a short while and then Steven's amp started smoking. Or, when they played Baltimore, they had left some sort of disc they used in N.Y. so that show didn't go as well as planned either. He said the N.Y. gig was one of the best concert values ever though. $5 to get in and you also got a copy of "TSMS" CD and a magazine with a SW interview. He took a few pictures at the show and told me that the Porcupine Tree guys are very nice to chat with, but they didn't quite like the heat of the northeast U.S. humid summers.

I kept in touch with Phil for a few years up through my first PT show at "Phantasmagoria" in Wheaton, Maryland, and on through about the time that "Light Bulb Sun" came out. I don't think that Phil liked the direction the band turned after "Stupid Dream" and beyond. He was more into the early psychedelic stuff. So, maybe he just passed the PT torch to me and inspired me by his kindness to share some of his PT rarities with another fan trying to find his way under the tree.

I was off and running...