Tag: music

Last time we discussed the second side of the Jethro Tull album Aqualung, and a fine album that was.  It was critically and commercially well received, but many of the critics expressed the opinion that it was a concept album, with which Ian Anderson strongly disagreed.

There are various accounts of the reason behind Thick as a Brick, and Anderson has been quoted as saying that he wanted to record it to be a parody of “serious” concept albums.  However, in an interview he mentioned some bands that had yet to release a concept album before Thick as a Brick hit the stores.

My personal feeling after reading quite a bit about this is that Anderson did indeed want to write a parody of concept albums, probably because Aqualung was perceived to be one and Anderson had not intended it, and Anderson’s huge ego made him misremember certain facts about just what albums he was parodying.

It has been a while since the last installment due to several reasons, all of them good.  Tonight we shall finish up Aqualung, one of their better efforts.

The link above has the history around the album, so tonight we shall just concentrate on the music.

Aqualung is the forth album by Tull and many people think that it is their best.  I favor Thick as a Brick, but it is still an excellent album.  Rumor has it that critical comments about Aqualung spawned Thick as a Brick, and we shall discuss that in a bit.

It was released on 19710319 on Island Records in the UK and Reprise in the US.  By this time Anderson had completely taken control of the band, and all of the songs are written by him except for the title track which was cowritten by his wife at the time, Jennie.  Anderson, along with Terry Ellis, produced it.

The band lineup was different than that of Benefit, with Jeffrey Hammond replacing replacing Glen Cornick on bass and Barriemore Barlow replacing Clive Bunker on drums.  Remember, Jethro Tull has had more personnel changes than many bands.  Otherwise the lineup was the same as on Benefit.

One of the most complicated bands in many ways is the British band Jethro Tull.  They are complicated in their music, extremely complicated in their personnel, and almost mind bogglingly complicated in insofar as why I adore a limited set of their work and either care not a fig or actually dislike the rest.  I have such a love/hate relationship for any other band.

I do not understand why I feel this way, but I do.  At their best, they are superb.  When they are a bit off they are still better than most bands, but the material that I dislike is just awful, at least in my view.

This is why it has taken me so long to get started with this series.  I generally try to write about things that I have unambiguous feelings, usually bands that I really like.  Sometimes I write about horrible acts, like Ray Stevens, who really never did anything of real merit.  But to write about a band that can move me greatly with some material and with other material make me say, “What IS that?” is quite different.  Please bear with me!

I apologize for being absent last week.  I had a nasty cold and started on this very piece but just did not have the energy to finish it.

I am still doing background on the series about Jethro Tull, but and not ready to start writing the piece yet.  They were much more complicated insofar as the band lineup goes than most of the bands about which I have written, so it is taking some time.

Tonight we are going to look at who I consider to be the greatest rock and roll bass player who ever drew breath, Thunderfingers, aka The Ox.  But he was much more than a great bass player.  He was outstanding on brass instruments, and much of the early work by The Who has a lot of French horn in it.

He was also an accomplished songwriter and singer, and many of his songs were performed by The Who.  Songwriting is much more lucrative than merely performing, so he was always to get more of his songs on records.

Some of you may have observed that I have been sharing my WeaveMothers series elsewhere…or maybe it’s better to say I have been presenting it and most people have been ignoring it.  The offerings are here:

Weaving Reality

Picking up the rhythm

Nebulous answers to cogent questions

Looking back at the present

Diversity



This is the sixth episode, originally published as part of Cafe Discovery:

The Storyteller took a deep breath and cast back for another memory, another story to tell.  The Listener was patient, but did require the occasional feeding.  The Storyteller chuckled at the observation.  The Engineer glanced backward and nodded.  And the Train switched to another happentrack.  

The Storyteller began to sing.  The Listener leaned forward.  The passenger turned over, but otherwise remained sleeping.

We shall finish this rather long series with some live material from the canonical work of The Moody Blues.  My aim is to present some of my personal favorites, recorded during the period that they were contemporaneous at the time that they were released.

There is a really nice set of videos on YouTube about the Isle of Wight festival in 1970, but they do not fit into the format for this series because they were excerpted from a documentary about the festival and have lots of talk and not much music.  They are worth checking out, but this in not the venue.  When you do, check out the first on when they have some cameras on the back of the sound system.  Notice that many of those Hiwatt amps are labeled “WHO”, and a few are labeled “TULL”.  Yes, they also played there.  What a concert!

Last time we discussed the peak and decline of The Moody Blues and in particular the studio part of the album Caught Live + 5.  I was going to stop with their studio material at that point, but several readers asked me to complete the Mark II band by including the music and my critique of Octave, Mark II’s eighth studio album.

For details about the production, release, and artwork on this record, please use the link just provided.  I think that you can already tell that I am not wild about this record, but it does have its moments.

I do find it to be exceedingly weak in comparison with their canonical material, and the passing of the Mellotron and Chamberlin leaves it without the signature, hauntingly beautiful sound of The Moody Blues.  Another thing that really bothers me is that they had a studio musician to sit in, and to me that is the antithesis to the canonical albums.  His name was R. A. Martin, and he played the exceedingly annoying saxophone parts and some less annoying horns.  In any event, we should just jump into the music.

Last time we discussed Seventh Sojourn, considered by many to the finest album made by the band.  Tonight we shall examine the time after that record.

After Seventh Sojourn was released, The Moody Blues were the top record selling band at the time, and had reached their zenith.  Their success brought a huge world tour.  As a matter of fact, the tour, although broken up into a couple of legs commenced in October 1972, in the US (with at least 13 dates played in late 1972).  They then took a break until the European leg started in September 1973, playing at least 33 dates (some were back in the US).  They played another 12 at least sets in Japan, Hawaii, and California in January and February of 1974.  

Last time whe discussed Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, and this time we shall discuss Seventh Sojourn, which is the last of what I term the “canonical” Moody Blues albums.  I say this because there were some major changes after the record which we discuss, and their sound was never quite the same.

Many people consider this to be their finest record, and I do not intend to argue with them.  Although my personal favorite is still In Search of the Lost Chord, Seventh Sojourn is certainly a wonderful work.  I have an hypothesis about what that is so, and shall share it with you in a bit.

Once again Tony Clarke produced the record and Phil Travers provided the cover art.  It was a gatefold album, in accordance with the deal that Threshold Records had with Decca because of the expense of the cover format.  I also have an hypothesis about why they insisted on that format.

Last time we discussed A Question of Balance, and tonight we discuss their next album.  Released on 19710723, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour was the seventh album by The Moody Blues, and the sixth one with the Edge, Hayward, Lodge, Pinder, and Thomas lineup.  As we shall see next time, by then they had pretty much determined that the original lineup were really quite a different band than the one that was created when Hayward and Lodge joined.

Although not my favorite album by them, it has some really high parts (punintentional).  It charted at #1 in the UK and at #2 in the US, not a trivial accomplishment considering the great music of the period.  Once again Tony Clarke produced it and Phil Travers supplied the cover art for the record.

The album is unusual in several respects.  First of all, the title itself, according to Wikipedia, is a mnemonic memory aide for the treble clef:  E, G, B, D, F.  Secondly, the cut “Emily’s Song” was written by Lodge for his new daughter.  Finally, it is contains the only work written by all five band members.