Jethro Tull: Classic or Dud?

iz crop rotation iz bifta alzo

yuzzah ahhl dddddddmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmd

Sweet Dream video from "Slipstream": CLASSIC!

I'd say more like every TEN years...just like the Doors!

Between that and Jackie Enx of Rhino Bucket, it shows that Jayne County was merely the start of something good.

you know, my dad and my philly relatives pronounce "ann" and "ian" almost identically.

I love "A New Day Yesterday" and "To Cry You a Song".

(though "Living In The Past" is a nice tune)

I love pretty much everything up to "War Child", plus "Songs from the Wood" and "Heavy Horses"*. I don't think "Stormwatch" is bad. The lyrics on most of "Minstrel in the Gallery" (except for the title song) start to make me cringe. "Broadsword and the Beast" has an unpleasant, bloated-puffy synthesizer sound as well as pretty uninteresting songs. "Crest of a Knave" is hard to imagine as the same band - I can't stand Martin Barre's guitar sound at that time, and the lyrics are brutal. "Rock Island" and "Catfish Rising", as probably everyone will tell you, are just embarassing. I haven't heard anything since, though a friend has told me that "J-Tull.com" (sp?) is not too bad.

*I do think that "Thick as a Brick" is a bit structurally clunky, but when I consider that it was kind of a big piss-take of a concept album, it makes sense that it's that way - it's a pretty funny idea for an album. "A Passion Play" is my favourite: the saxophone and synthesizer parts sound great and the melodies are really deft. I don't know why people got mad about "The Story of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles". "War Child" continues with similar arrangements and impressive playing (Barriemore Barlow is a superb drummer), though I'd have preferred "Bungle in the Jungle" as a non-LP single.

But it's not offensive like ELP (whose best moments were Greg Lake's Paul McCartney/Neil Young knockoff songs w/ cheap synth solos just to remind you who's IN CHARGE HERE). And the later dumb pop hits he had, around the mid-'70s, are quite enjoyable. Normally I don't bring up Lester Bangs but his piece "Jethro Tull in Vietnam" does sum it all up nicely.

1) Stand Up. One of the great, great psychedelic albums, stuffed with killer riffs and enough otherworldly moods to simulate or enhance being baked. If this album were a one-off by an obscure British folk band (a la Mellow Candle) it would fetch hundreds of $$$$ in collector's circles.
2) Aqualung. There isn't a bad song on it. The flute solo in "My God" is some scary shit. In my experience people who badmouth this are trying to prove another point, like they're cool, or even good music can get overplayed, or something.
3) Thick as a Brick. Some parts drag, but there's no other album like it (I guess besides Passion Play), and most of it's engaging, not an easy thing to pull off over the course of 40+ minutes.

Songs from the Wood, War Child, Benefit, and Minstrel in the Gallery aren't bad, either, and there are timeless singles like "Living in the Past" to get off on.

There's also a ton of shitty albums--Too Old to Rock & Roll. . ., A, Stormwatch, etc. but who cares, really.

and no, Bangs is not infallible. But his central insight into Tull--no rebop--is a good 'un. And I want rebop myself.

xpost

"Wond'ring Aloud"
"Slipstream" (I think)
"Thick as A Brick" (the intro, but many other parts, too)
"Skating Away On the Thin Ice of a New Day"
"One White Duck/Nothing At All"
"Baker St. Muse"
"Salamander" (again, I think -- it's been awhile)
"Dun Ringill"

My personal tastes tell me they also have a few very good hard rock moments, including "Minstrel In the Gallery", "Pibroch" and much of Aqualung. That and Songs From the Wood has a very cool electro-folk production

Thick as a Brick really is ridiculously good. Sweet tunes, fierce playing, beautifully arranged. The strings near the end are next level.

"Locomotive Breath" still rocks greatly.

1) ...If this album were a one-off by an obscure British folk band (a la Mellow Candle) it would fetch hundreds of $$$$ in collector's circles.

Yes yes yes. In the run up to becoming full-on prog, they created some moody and unfussy stuff. Stand Up layers all sorts of acoustic instruments with blues riffing in a way that is intuitive and natural, rather than the hyper-organized feel they soon took on. Really solid songs that would hold up outside of the textures and arrangements.

Their true masterpiece was "A Passion Play". Jethro Tull at their most progressive was also Jethro Tull at their best.

But they did some interesting folk influenced stuff later too.

To me, Minstrel In The Gallery through Stormwatch = classic. The expansive prog notions recompressed into concise songs without losing the progginess.

The stuff from the first heyday's great, but I don't get the urge to put it on very often.

The string of high-concept records (Thick, Passion, Too Old) I have no time for.

i own 'aqualung'. i like it and think it's pretty creative and inspired, but i don't listen to it often

I went to see them live a few days ago. I only really went along to the gig after a mate said he wanted to go.

I hadn't much listened to them for 30 years, and though I wasn't a big fan I had mates who were very keen indeed and back in the day I did have a soft spot for the quirkier, pop-eyed silliness.

Before the gig I was kinda worried about all that zany 70s catweazle'n'codpiece stuff, since I figured it wouldn't have aged well...

I needn't have worried as there wasn't much of it, indeed there wasn't nearly enough of it. Stripped of the theatrics, left pretty much the music unadorned, though that did reveal some elements which I hadn't noticed before (or didn't know anything about to notice) such as the Mingus influences (though I guess the Roland Kirk stuff was always obvious).

Mainly though they sounded polite 80s rock. Barre's guitar sounded especially cleaned up, Dire Straits and (80s) Supertramp.

So not great then, mostly not even good, but now and then there were flashes about what made them interesting and did confirm there were interesting bits in the War child and earlier albums.

Their guitarist kicks ass and besides that they are fucking Jethro Tull. So many songs to love by them.

Oh god, I had an urge to hear "Skating Away" so I downloaded the Anniversary collection and I'm kind of enjoying it.

Kill me.

They are classic beyond classic.

people who HATE this band hate fun

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2020/06/15/fired-after-joining-gay-softball-league-gerald-bostock-wins-landmark-supreme-court-case/

This threw me for a minute today.

Ha

Hey all, another recent D1me appearance that I thought worth sharing, this time it's from the very talented and well-known taper Mike Millard and it's really good.

https://we.tl/t-UlkSiN7hwN

Jethro Tull
Civic Auditorium
Pasadena, CA
January 14, 1977

01 Skating Away (On The Thin Ice Of A New Day)
02 Jack-In-The-Green
03 Crazed Institution
04 Fire At Midnight
05 Instrumental
06 Thick As A Brick
07 Songs From The Wood
08 To Cry You A Song
09 A New Day Yesterday > Flute Solo incl. Bouree & Quartet > Living In The Past
10 Velvet Green
11 Too Old To Rock'n' Roll
12 Bungle In The Jungle
13 Beethoven's Ninth Symphony
14 Minstrel In The Gallery
15 Hunting Girl
16 Cross-Eyed Mary
17 Aqualung
18 Guitar Solo
19 Wind-Up
20 Back-Door Angels
21 Wind-Up (reprise)
22 Locomotive Breath
23 Land Of Hope And Glory

I don’t think I know “crazed institution”!

It's on Too Old to R&R...

Lol that explains it

Thanks! A nice adjunct to the live set on the Songs from the Wood deluxe edition, which was from November/December of 1977.

In other news, the impending release of deluxe book editions of Benefit, "A", and the Broadsword and the Beast over the next year or two have been "confirmed" if you are willing to dig through some of the Tull threads on the Hoffman forums. I think only Benefit is on the cards for a 2020 release though (but nothing is really official yet).

Wilson remix or the other guy?

Wilson, supposedly (the Benefit is definitely him since it's been released in non-book format before)

Super amped for the shows that will presumably come with A and Broadsword. That band was spectacular.

(I realize there were changes between those two tours)

It seems the Broadsword era has a wealth of bonus tracks, but I've been spending a lot of time with 'A' this year so I'm kinda jazzed to see what that one will turn up (and as you note, the early 80s lineup was a fantastic one!)

One more, not as sweet as the '77 one but pretty solid nonetheless -

https://we.tl/t-z65mc72nmA

Jethro Tull 1980 10 6 Civic Center Hartford CT USA
101 Min. Aud. A-

Lineage: Sony D-6 Nak 300 / master tape > Sony TC-KE600S > Audigy2 > soundforge 8 > CD Architect 5.2 > Traders Little Helper

Black Sunday,
Crossfire,
Songs From The Wood,
Hunting Girl,
Jams O'Donnell's Jigs,
Working John Working Joe,
Fylingdale Flyer,
The Pine Marten's Jig,
Heavy Horses,
Skating Away... /solos .
Batteries Not Included,
Uniform,
Protect And Survive,
Aqualung,
Locomotive Breath/ Black Sunday (reprise)

Interesting to compare this set to Watchers on the Storm from March 1980... only seven months later they've erased every song from Stormwatch from their set!

After six months of no haircut nor shaving, I think this might be the year to be 1970s Ian Anderson for Halloween.

As I feared -

https://www.superdeluxeedition.com/news/jethro-tull-a-la-mode-40th-anniversary-deluxe-edition

great! keep 'em coming!

I was hoping they'd loop back around for Benefit, Broadsword excepted, I think I'm off the bus after this one.

I think the Benefit reissue in book format is going to happen later this year

A is great and that show they are including slays

Gone up today on D1me, I know we have some nice ones from '77 but it's ace, so I thought I'd share.

PRRP 054
Jethro Tull
Apollo Theatre
Manchester, England
February 5th 1977

Sound Board Recording

Lineage: SB/TDK Cro/NAD6050C/SB Audigy 2/Audacity>WAV/CDRCue/MediaCoder>FLAC Level 8

Disc 1
01 Wondr'ing Aloud 2:29
02 Skating Away 4:53
03 Jack-In-The-Green 3:43
04 Thick As A Brick 14:28
05 Songs From The Wood 5:07
06 Instrumental-Drum Solo 2:59
07 To Cry You A Song 2:33
08 A New Day Yesterday 2:49
09 Flute Solo 7:18
10 Living In The Past 1:37
11 A New Day Yesterday (reprise) 2:49
12 Velvet Green 6:57
Total Time 57:42

Disc 2
01 Hunting Girl 6:33
02 Too Old To Rock'N'Roll 4:01
03 Beethoven's Ninth Symphony 3:13
04 Minstrel In The Gallery 5:22
05 Aqualung 9:16
06 Guitar Solo 3:05
07 Wind-Up 4:41
08 Back Door Angels 4:56
09 Wind-Up (repise) 2:28
10 Locomotive Breath 5:46
11 Land Of Hope and Glory 2:24
12 Back Door Angels (reprise) 1:34
Total Time: 53:19

Personnel:
Ian Anderson - vocals, flute, guitar
Martin Barre - guitar
John Glascock - bass guitar
Barriemore Barlow - drums
John Evan - keyboards
David Palmer - keyboards, saxophone

Notes:
Acquired this from one of the Tull road crew several years ago & then promptly forgot I had it. Does not seem to have
surfaced anywhere, so this should help fill in the missing gaps at The Ministry of Information. The very first
track on the tape is the instrumental Quartet, played over the PA in the theatre, and which can be found on the
Nightcap album (highly recommended). The first instrumental is also incomplete - otherwise the this is the concert
in its entirety.

https://www.fromsmash.com/Ps6VeW.AHT-bt

nice, thanks

here's an oldie that we've utterly loathed for 16 long years, but now it's resurrected, in a slightly more trickier form that's a little more fun to play -- this one is CALLED . . . living . . . in the PAST

Thanks for the link, I really appreciate these shows you’ve been hooking us up with

Was talking upthread about Tull-related band Carmen, the debut album Fandangos In Space is seriously fucking amazing. Don't let it slip past you. The way they incorporated dancing into the music is so cool.

I'm placing them alongside Comus and Jacula as a great 70s band that never got very big at all. They were very well liked by some of the biggest bands of the time and toured with or were slotted to tour with them and everything could have went great if not for a series of shit events that destroyed them.

Still, there's 4 albums and I think Visconti produced them all?

Just got the second Carmen double pack, you can get all 4 albums in 2 double packs, first one is slightly scarcer. Trying to think why prog fans haven't embraced them more because there is enough of that in them.

I'm interested

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/m2ub0m/i_am_ian_anderson_founder_musician_singer_and/

Q&A with Ian Anderson from a couple days ago, not a lot there but some good (and funny) answers to various questions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpH_WkjC_Yk

50th Anniversary special about Aqualung... Ian breaks down each song and then it plays in full, very nice.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/484A9Ju4F8g/maxresdefault.jpg

Forgot about that

I don't know Carmen at all, but the wiki features some nutty stuff:

David Clark Allen continued to pursue a music career after Carmen disbanded. He played guitar on Michelle Phillip's solo album produced by Jack Nitzsche and was managed by Herb Cohen during the late 70s. He wrote two songs (Shame and Stay) for Agnetha's solo album, Wrap Your Arms Around Me - produced by Mike Chapman and a single release by Swedish band Katz - Heart Beats Stronger. David was diagnosed with thyroid/throat cancer in the early 80s. After a successful operation and radioactive therapy, he changed his name to Housk Randall - and became a sexual anthropologist/photographer. As Housk he had 5 books published in 4 languages: Revelations, Rituals of Love, The Customised Body, Piercing, Radical Desire and Bizarre Rubber - a photographic fantasy catalogue for fetish designers DeMask. In 1996 he married, changed his name to David Randall-Goddard and established a successful family photographic studio Family Portraits.

As probably mentioned upthread, I've never spent much time with Tull beyond whatever's come on the radio, but yesterday I heard "Hymn 43" for the first time in decades and it kicked ass.

David Clark Allen was a really stylish looking guy. He often posts about new flamenco fusion bands on his blog.

I feel averse to posting whole albums but their so obscure at this point I don't think it could hurt too much.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nIP_WlCdtM

Quite pleased to find this

"It's amazing," Opeth frontman Mikael Akerfeldt told Metal Hammer in 2012. "It's a crazy flamenco prog-rock folk record! They had tap dancing on the record and castanets too! Everyone I've played it to has been blown away by it."

For some reason the most popular version of the album on youtube cuts off half of the first song, so I chosen another one for the link above.

Benefit getting the book treatment now - https://superdeluxeedition.com/news/jethro-tull-benefit-50th-anniversary-reissue

I will buy this mainly for shelf consistency, since the previous deluxe edition isn't book-sized.

Me too, although good quality live recordings for that era are always interesting.

actually wow, they are including two live sets from 1970, including one on video! that's going above and beyond. especially since these cost around $40-50 and not $100+.

This and Stand Up are my two favourite Tull records, or at least the ones I return to all the time, then having Singing All Day, 17 and Teacher at the back end, so great!

I’ll be getting this tho would love to find a good indie retailer in the States instead of paying £17 shipping 😳.

Still hoping they may do a run of earlier ones at some point. War Child, Minstrel, and Passion in particular.

I found (to my shock) that I have a spare copy of the A Passion Play box, so I had a look at the Discogs price jfc!

Lmk if you turn up a spare copy of SftW

Bull Moose out of Maine is pretty good with these, if you pre-order you're reasonably sure to get one.

I found (to my shock) that I have a spare copy of the A Passion Play box, so I had a look at the Discogs price jfc!

I think I have two copies because my wife was tangentially involved in the reissue process so every time one came out, I would ask her to bring home a copy for me and one for my mate and I think I must not have given him this one for some reason? So, I'm going to message him first.

That seems eminently fair and sensible!

As would you selling it for the price of a kidney on Discogs, should you so choose.

My mate can have it for £350 :)