Jethro Tull: Classic or Dud?

THIS MONTH: SLY AND ROBBIE SPEAK OUT ON THE MAKING OF BOB DYLAN'S INFIDELS

lol

they were certainly well-realized/fully-formed. really looked exactly like they should have looked with their sound

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqZmtq5LhFo&feature=artist

still pissed i lent Thick as a Brick to a girl in high school and never got it back

and spotify is reminding me that Thick is awesome fuiud

never had anything against them, have to admit. although I never really felt inclined to accept the punk rules (throw out a world of music because a couple 50s-revivalist punk bands said to? um, no thnx)

fuck there was a foo fighters ad between pts 1 and 2

Tull Rulez. I find it weird that some ILXors don't know this and/or have only listened to one album's worth of material

I dunno about Tull but I have a soft spot for Ian Anderson's "Walk Into Light" solo record. It has to be one of the best arranged/programmed synth-based albums of the period.

could not wring an ounce of pleasure from 'thick as a brick'. recently discovered that the whole thing is a giant pisstake, went back to it and loved it immediately. I've played the whole thing easily 10 times this week.

Ha that makes me happy. I'm a pretty big Tull-head but I haven't tried to listen to long-form Brick in a long time (usually reach for Songs From The Wood, Heavy Horses or Aqualung).

Does the same contextualizing trick work for A Passion Play?

don't know tbh, i've not yet gone back to any other tull stuff

I've been revisiting and enjoying War Child recently, unfairly maligned I think and supposedly a bunch of Passion Play offcuts and leftovers.

Skating Away is sheer magic but I really can't abide the rest of that record. Last time I listened, anyway.

Ha, the other night, the modern/alternative rock station did a whole 'feature' on Aqualung, citing it as a key influence on Mumford and Sons and the whole Brit neo-folk thing.

Real shit that those two cheapo box sets don't have all the bonus tracks because they collect 8 albums in total and that would have been very convenient. They have so many bonus tracks and it'd be missing too much to just stick with the box sets.

Have been on a tear with JT for the last few months, enjoying the remixed/boxed editions that have been coming out, so much great music.

They seem prolific even for a band of that time.

Bloody hell! Passion Play, War Child and Minstrel In The Gallery all have tall book remix expanded editions.

they're horribly out of fashion, but BENEFIT is a great early 70s British rock album!

Oh yes, Benefit is so great!

http://thisiheard.blogspot.com/2015/11/jethro-tull-outside.html

they totally sound like CAN and NEU! it's sad how few people get how great stand up is too

i think 17 is my favourite song from the Stand Up era, it's cyclical and droney, and I love the push when the flute melodies kick in towards the end, it really gets under my skin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dso9s98k_AE

yeah that song is a jam, like one long chorus. feel like a lot of the choogly template for T. REX is here

have been slowly coming around to the opinion - with help from idle Spotify long-looks -- that this band is pretty underrated, and that Anderson is an almost unique figure -- the things that are off-putting about this band are almost entirely on him. there's also no band without him, period. the nearest analogue I can think of is Zappa, where you have to learn to take the bad with the good. but here...tunes like "requiem" from minstrel in the gallery, just so gorgeous, so many great tunes like that, and then just enough lines/leers to make you go "eww this guy, I am not into this guy" per album to put you off a while

but honestly some of these tunes are just incredible, really incredible

I've got a few albums, don't remember much gross stuff apart from "Aqualung" lyrics but I didn't have a problem with them.

man Minstrel in the Gallery kinda knocking me out today. interesting & good popmatters review here

http://www.popmatters.com/column/195410-reappraising-ian-andersons-minstrel-in-the-gallery/

it's not specific lyrics so much as a condescending hippie all-knowing vibe I get. this could partially be a function of where & when I grew up (California in the 70s). Anderson's always seemed pretentious in a way that both serves the material well sometimes and distracts me from the music's strength sometimes.

I'm curious what other songs besides Requiem you put in that category

I keep meaning to re-investigate these guys. Listened to Aqualung and Thick as a Brick in junior high or high school, I forget now, but never went any further.

I suspect the recent Steven Wilson remasters would do wonders for any sort of relisten. A friend of mine in particular swears by the original band lineup's work -- he compares it (not sonically but in terms of simply overall band dynamic) to Alice Cooper. IE, whatever else happened later on as the lead figure became the sole or primary focus, there was a distinct, unique feeling the original lineup had that gelled and has been lost a bit with time. That said the Cooper comparison isn't entirely exact since Martin Barre was there for decades in the end.

Beyond that my small mutterings upthread stand. They are a band that are good for random/unusual finds throughout their catalog -- deep cuts or just unreleased songs that surfaced later. A favorite of mine would be "Overhang," recorded for The Broadsword and the Beast but only formally released a few years after that. Has a big stirring ending that works very well. And I still think "Farm on the Freeway" is a weird, strange lead-off single for the album that won them their metal Grammy.

Wilson's not infallible - I like his King Crimson remasters a lot, but I hate his version of Tales from Topographic Oceans. I suspect I'll start with the albums as they were.

Songs from the Wood remains one of my all time favorite records and I also swear by Living in the Past, Heavy Horses, Minstrel in the Gallery and Aqualung. War Child has some of his best ever songs but doesn't really come together even in the S Wilson remix. The 80s stuff is definitely good for deep cut hunting. The really late stuff like homo erraticus where he has become more of a speak singer was a lot better than I was expecting.

it's tough because he's been the flute/codpiece guy for, um, 50 years but yeah there's definitely a lot of great stuff

I was listening to the Wilson remasters on Spotify last night, they're good - I didn't do any A/B'ing but they felt more like careful staging rather than broad strokes

I'm curious what other songs besides Requiem you put in that category

well, like the title "track" from Thick as a Brick - such a fucking awesome tune, great line about the sperm there bro, haha the straights won't know what to do w/that they'll piss themselves, who cares if it shits all over the tune? 't's not their tune innit like

you know what I mean? and honestly much of Aqualung -- his narrative stance is what I've always thought of as Omniscient Condescending Hippie. as I say, this could be a fx of the time & place I grew up in, I am pretty allergic to O.C.H. A Passion Play is kind of a relief in that it's so self-serious / overtly theatrical that in listening last night its excesses seemed...kind of less pretentious than the persona telling old Aqualung what it's all about, man

"my words but a whisper, your deafness a SHOUT!" ok man

Stand Up definitely deserves another look, such a great album, especially if peak Anderson irritates you

that has always been a core trait of anderson and Aqualung is probably where it is most on display. IMO Songs from the Wood has almost no OCH content BUT it does have 'Hunting Girl' which is icky shake-the-squares weird sex stuff. But at least it is genuinely fringe, I mean pony play has yet to go mainstream even today.

JCLC otm re passion play, it's so pretentious it's unpretentious.

I think Songs From The Woods is a good album but I don't think anything really lived up to the opening title track.

"The Whistler" is great. First JT song I ever heard (outside of the radio stuff), I ripped a bunch of my buddy's CDs but forgot about them. It came up on shuffle and I was like, "who the hell was that?" (iPod was across the room), pretty stunned to find out who it was

Are any of their other albums as folky is that?

Benefit is kind of folky, no? And good!

Heavy Horses is folky in a somewhat similar vein to SftW but not as medieval in its pallette. It's the next album after SotW and forms kind of a trilogy with the not as good Stormwatch as conclusion. The songwriting on HH is really good. 'One Brown Mouse' is one of the cutest things he ever wrote.

There's stuff on Living in the Past with that antique feel also.

Crest of a Knave was a mid-80s self conscious revival of fantasy Tull; it's good but not near SotW's level.

^^^ sorry meant SftW

I think Songs From The Woods is a good album but I don't think anything really lived up to the opening title track.

This would be a great Wilson 5.1 remix if he gets around to it.

i tried listening to "heavy horses" this week when i was on a heavy "prog records from 1978" jag and it's just not the same for me (i preferred the granada and nu records from that year). it's simultaneously "the second record in their folk trilogy" and "the record where they stopped faffing around with all that folk stuff", and unfortunately i mainly heard it as the latter. the only time i've really liked tull is when they're trying to out-gentle giant gentle giant; anderson's solo "jack-in-the-green", the clonky tuned percussion on velvet green; hell, i'll rep for the whole of side two.

I'll never understand what people hear in A Passion Play... it's always felt like a bit of a snoozer to me. Thick as a Brick does the same thing with more energy and better playing - the overall result, of course, being that it doesn't put me to sleep.

man when I listened to it last month it seemed so...like, assured in a way that much of JT isn't. like it almost sounds like they're only making the music because they like it and want to hear what it sounds like once recorded and pressed. Jethro Tull often seems like a band who's writing/playing for an imagined audience -- not "imaginary," but, you know, they sound like they're thinking about how they'll be received a lot of the time. A Passion Play is kinda self-absorbed in all the right ways to me

I can only listen to them late at night when I'm mad tired. They sound great at that point