Jethro Tull: Classic or Dud?

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 :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPTeqsBd1Ik

Not bad, but that riff is pretty monotonous. I get the feeling these older progressive musicians have made their recent music simpler not in the hope of getting played on the radio, but because even their casual fans won't listen twice if there isn't an obvious hook in a new song.
I'm wondering now who has done worse harm to the vocal cords, Ian Anderson or Roger Waters.

Snagged the Benefit box from Amazon for about $50. Still would prefer the mid-70s records but I can’t let these things slip away. The books and mixes are just too well done.

Hey all, this appeared on D1m3 the other day, it's a good one - 1979-10-15 Providence Civic Center Providence RI

https://www.fromsmash.com/tPy.t_yl1y-bt

Grabbing it, thanks! Been feeling a tull fest coming on.

Beastie next, I guess? The Benefit box was great to have though.

Beast tour is great, I’ll be excited to hear what they put together for the live bit of that box. Assuming it is coming.

found a good copy of Stand Up recently, what a cool record that is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqJpTQv9yH0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH1L0ix6_bg

Thought the revive would be about the new album.

yeah I'm oddly curious about it, though I'm kind of dreading what Anderson sounds like now, and can't get past the cover reminding me of Breaking Bad

Barre-aking Bad

I got the Tull dvd in the Classic Artists documentary series after enjoying the Yes and Moody Blues ones so much years ago. It's from 2008 and disappointingly it seems a great deal shorter than the others, it's a bit under two hours long. I was surprised by just how many lineup changes there was and the main controversy in their history seems to be Ian letting go of some members without a face to face meeting. Quite a few of the members who were let go seemed ready to go anyway but it's left mostly unknown why they were getting tired of the band. A lot of the albums are left unmentioned (the Yes doc spends a fair amount of time on each album).

Ian regrets letting the label persuade him to put the Jethro Tull name on the A album, I think he wanted it to be a solo album. I've seen this with American Music Club and as small a band as Lycia. I'm not sure whose idea it was with Yes/Cinema but I imagine there was a commercial incentive.

There's about an hour of bonus interviews and Ian says aside from an odd Elvis song and The Animals, he didn't have much interest in the big rock bands that preceded him.

Quite a few of the members who were let go seemed ready to go anyway but it's left mostly unknown why they were getting tired of the band.

I saw an interview with Dave Pegg describing how, at the start of his tenure with the band, Anderson told him the reasons each of the other members of the band had for hating him (Anderson). By all accounts, he's an autocrat in band affairs; and, in a way, despite its eclecticism, Tull's music (particularly by the late 70s) had a certain narrowness about it that the others may have found stifling.

One of things that was made clear in the doc was that Anderson was in control by the second album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKjNilF7WFE

I heard "Fylingdale Flyer" recently and it got me listening to the deluxe edition of A and I was a bit dismayed by how different the song sounded. Steven Wilson said the pitch shifting effect is really hard to preserve and he couldn't quite get it right; he also said that Bowie's Low and Heroes used this effect, but did the remasters of those albums sound so different?

Beastie!

https://superdeluxeedition.com/news/jethro-tull-the-broadsword-and-the-beast

I learned this week that they actually had a brand new album, RökFlöte, come out in April.
It seems that Tull and Yes are in a race to see which of the big-name prog acts can keep putting out records the longest.

wow they finally announced a release date for the Broadsword book!

I’m not sure I’d buy the box of it but there was a special place in my heart for Broadsword as a teenager. The dramatic Peter John Vettese synth orchestrations on songs like “Clasp” and “Seal Driver” are sort of unprecedented in Tull history but 16 year-old me kind of loved them. The hilariously awesome sleeve. And, while the songs weren’t top shelf Tull, it’s probably the last time they aren’t completely boring and/or terrible.

Worth noting: they reissued the Thick as a Brick book box last year and it’s terrific. Wilson’s mix is just outstanding.

Dear budding fiction writers, now's your chance to express your Tull love in print!

https://www.alphamercs.com/open-calls/stories-in-the-key-of-tull

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gCLHLNmGAE

Man, I have been a massive Tull bender of late having picked up a bunch of the box reissues (Aqualung, Minstrel, SftW). Not sure I’ve listened to these guys as much or as deeply since I was 16.

#tullbender

Yeah, I get those once a year.

All the way from from This Was to Broadsword, with only a few missteps, it's ridiculous really.

Interesting timing for a post of this topic — I’ve played Thick As A Brick probably four times this month and have been getting back into it — the last time I intentionally listened to any Tull prior (also Thick As A Brick most likely) was easily twenty years ago when I was also 16. I should probably branch out — I’ve never even heard anything by them outside of Aqualung, Thick As A Brick, and A Passion Play.

Try Benefit and Songs From The Wood next, perhaps.

Thanks! I will indeed start there as Tull has been off my radar for so long that really don’t have any reference points.

Oh cool, good to know that the #ILMTullSupportCircle is going strong.

I, too, have been digging into the Thick as a Brick box – a birthday gift from sometime ILM-er Save the Robot, who has super generously bought me more than a few of these boxes (and who I am also possibly driving nuts with my #EndlessTullObservations).

For the first time I’m actually pouring through the lyrics – I never had the newspaper LP of TAAB as a kid, only the garbage Chrysalis CD issue from the 80s. And they’re really interesting. Likewise with Aqualung the lyrics of which were always a little more ostentatious given the church commentary.

But I’m going down a bunch of rabbit hole websites expounding on the meaning of those records’ lyrics and I’m finding Anderson’s writing to be not only evocative and witty but more sensitive and thoughtful than I’d remembered. Wond’ring Aloud, Again (the complete version) and Slipstream are just gorgeous meditations on commitment, wealth and class that I just didn’t expect out of Anderson.

The TAAB lyrics are maybe a little more inscrutable as a proper “story.” But as a kind of parody, or wayward treatise, on social mores and male responsibilities in late-60s/early-70s England it’s a gas. And the newspaper (which Anderson says took longer to write than the album itself and which themselves were sort of the official record of said mores and responsibilities) is a hilarious complement to it all. The whole thing—lyrically and musically—is sort of simultaneously meaningful and insightful but also a bunch of bollocks and probdvly just what the doctor ordered ca. 1972.

Even though it's much more prosaic, it's interesting that he was writing such thoughtful and unlikely things as 'Back To The Family' as early as 1969.

I think Anderson is a great lyricist. In latter days his structural/linguistic approach has ossified (compare random lines off of RokFlote and Catfish Rising, and they'll feel like they could be from the same album) but I think his choices regarding theme and content are still fascinating. I love love love TAAB2 and Homo Erraticus, and The Zealot Gene most of all. The Secret Language of Birds and Rupi's Dance have several killer songs, lyrically. Roots to Branches, same thing. All of which to say, yes the Stand Up --> Broadsword run is awesome (I've never heard my way into This Was, and I like Under Wraps too actually), but for me the work from Catfish Rising to RokFlote is similarly interesting and rewarding, albeit recorded with lesser backing units than the glorious Bunker/Barlow Tull.

But yes, for sure, he was a lyrical powerhouse in the '70s. TAAB and A Passion Play don't make sense to me as whole stories either, but isolated lines and couplets here and there are clever and thought-provoking and well-phrased enough to repay the attention. Cheap Day Return is one of my favorite songs of all time. Wond'ring Aloud/Again, like NTI said, yes indeed. And so many gems in the decade's end trilogy: Jack-in-the-Woods, Cup of Wonder, Pibroch (!!!), Fires at Midnight (!!!), Moths, Weathercock, Dark Ages, and also Black Sunday, And Further On too... love A...

NTI (or anyone else), would you care to expound a bit on Slipstream? I've never been able to make much sense of it, always just enjoyed the imagery. It's the only Aqualung song Anderson hasn't talked about in interviews. I've wondered whether perhaps it's about his father's illness at a particularly bad moment.

For me, it's hard to push past 'A', I like Broadsword well enough but apart from the odd track everything after that has felt like a bit of a snooze, if somebody was to compile a later period album list of worthwhile tunes I'd be interested though.

It doesn't look like anyone has taken MaresNest up on this in the six years since he wrote the above. Sounds like a nice challenge. I'll get back to you all in a spell.

That's very kind, I've still never really dipped into anything post B&TB

I’ve never even heard anything by them outside of Aqualung, Thick As A Brick, and A Passion Play.

― Slim is an Alien, Friday, February 23, 2024 10:31 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Try Benefit and Songs From The Wood next, perhaps.

― Maresn3st, Friday, February 23, 2024 10:38 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

stand up is top shelf must-hear music, too, an all-time underrated classic imho

NTI (or anyone else), would you care to expound a bit on Slipstream? I've never been able to make much sense of it, always just enjoyed the imagery. It's the only Aqualung song Anderson hasn't talked about in interviews. I've wondered whether perhaps it's about his father's illness at a particularly bad moment.

In just one minute on “Slipstream” Anderson captures the opportunistic shamelessness of the materially rich but spiritually fallow weekend warriors who compensate (figuratively) for their nagging consciences in the confessional or the collection basket (“And you press on God’s waiter your last dime/As he hands you the bill”). On the literal levels these are the people we all know: our peers, parents and especially our politicians, whom Anderson contemptuously nails to their crosses of gold. In an era of too-big-too-fail and the wealthiest .001%, it’s difficult to conclude that Anderson was not predicting the future of a world totally off the tracks in “Locomotive Breath” (“no way to slow down”).

#tullbender

― mookieproof

never been one of those myself, though i greatly respect dee palmer's work with the group

Just seen the price of the new Broadsword & Beast deluxe edition (eek!) but it does have lots of discs, these things seem to get bigger as the series goes on.

Nice that the Chateau sessions got their own release (as a vinyl), I loved that as a bonus disc on Passion Play. Had a glorious time with it.

I think the Broadsword and the Beast was unusually large because they happened to have a ton of unreleased material from that era... I don't think it's a trend (as beyond Bursting Out, any further deluxe book sets being released at all seems to be doubtful)