What does Cred Forums think of Jethro Tull?

What does Cred Forums think of Jethro Tull?

I love em. I also think Thick as a Brick is fucking brilliant.

Everything up until the folk phase was top tier shit.
Thick as a Brick is probably one of my favourite albums. The vinyl cover is pretty much an entire newspaper. Pretty funny to read as well

if you dont know what im talking about

Made one the best singles ever made

the folk phase was fantastic though

it was the 80s where they fell apart and went to shit. A and Broadsword were alright but everything after was fucking horrible.

No crap. Prog died out in the 80s and Ian Anderson's voice went with it.

This Was [Reprise, 1969]

Ringleader Ian Anderson has come up with a unique concept that combines the worst of Roland Kirk, Arthur Brown, and your nearest G.O. blues band. I find his success very depressing. C-

Stand Up [Reprise, 1969]

People who like the group think this is a great album. I don't like the group. I think it is an adequate album. B-

Benefit [Reprise, 1970]

Ian Anderson is one of those people who attracts admirers by means of a principled arrogance that has no relation to his actual talents or accomplishments. He does have one undeniable gift, though--he knows how to deploy riffs. Nearly every track on this album is constructed around a good one, sometimes two; play it twice and you'll have the thing memorized. But I defy you to recall any lyrics. For all his e-nun-ci-a-tion and attention to wordcraft, Anderson can't or won't create the impression that he really cares about love/friendship/privacy, which I take to be his chief theme--the verbiage isn't obscure, but he really does make it hard to concentrate. I'm sure I hear one satirical exegesis on the generation gap, though. B-

Aqualung [Reprise, 1971]

Ian Anderson is like the town free thinker. As long as you're stuck in the same town yourself, his inchoate cultural interests and skeptical views on religion and human behavior are refreshing, but meet up with him in the city and he can turn out to be a real bore. Of course, he can also turn out to be Bob Dylan--it all depends on whether he rejected provincial values out of a thirst for more or out of a reflexive (maybe even somatic) negativism. And on whether he was pretentious only because he didn't know any better. C+

Thick as a Brick [Reprise, 1972]

Ian Anderson is the type of guy who'll tell you on one album that a whole side is one theme and then tell you on the next that the whole album is one song. The usual shit--rock (getting heavier), folk (getting feyer), classical (getting schlockier), flute (getting better because it has no choice), words. C-

dont stop

IA was kind of the British Frank Zappa--he had this ironic deconstructivist view of rock music.

That was all the reviews of JT he did.

TAAB is good but Aqualung is the best Jethro Tull album

"Yet Anderson is careful to give the audience its all-important money's worth. If the people pay for weird, he will be weird for a while. If they pay for heavy, he will program in one of those tedious unaccompanied solos. If they pay for rock, he will include several of the brilliant, intricate, hard-driving passages that are well within his reach as a composer and his band's reach as technicians. If they pay for meaning, he will perform religious commentary like "Aqualung" and "Windup."

There's no need to belabor the obvious when Frank Zappa himself has set it down in an album title: We're Only in It for the Money. The real question is whether the audience gets value, and the answer is "probably." Despite Anderson's veiled contempt, people seem to have their own good time, clapping spontaneously on many occasions, getting off on the drugs that Anderson himself eschews. However unoriginal Anderson's attacks on organized religion--and for that matter, on the rock star trip itself--may appear to the matoor observer, they obviously serve a function for the audience that's listening. And Tull's music does have its virtues, summed up for me by one young fan: "It isn't corny."

But a young fan's corn can be an older one's manna, and when I want to see an embodiment of the spirit of self-conscious critical intellect on the stage, I'll wait for Mick Jagger, who seems positively innocent because he is still capable of having a good time. The Tull concert lasted over two hours, and I got pleasure from perhaps ten minutes of ensemble playing. Such ratios are antilife, and all the anticlerical bull in the world will never redeem that dead time for me. I wonder how the percentage really ran for the rest of the thirty-two thousand."

ewww someone got mexican on it

DO

>Benefit better than Aqualung
This is why I hate Christgau. He has these awful contrarian views backed up by nothing more than egotistical waffle.

Kind of explained in his whole problem with JT, they were too snarky and lacked the Rolling Stones' innocent capacity for fun.

>poptimism

I bet Anderson can't play a flute on one leg anymore without his 70 year old bones ending up in traction.

Solid 4/10.

I can thank them for this at least

REAALLY DOONT MIND IF YOOU SIT THIS ONEE OOOUT

>lacked the Rolling Stones innocent capacity for fun
He clearly never saw them live. I give him a C-

And by that I mean, I don't know how he can watch them live, have them stop the show as a phone rings and have the drummer come out on a bunny suit to answer the phone, and say they lack the capacity for fun.

Blasphemous.

But is he crescent fresh?

he tullity toots his flutilly flute
it may seem un-cresc but he rocks with the best

Their first 2 albums are easily their best, TAAB holds a special place for me because it got me seriously into rock but the first 2 are just better.

Songs from the Wood is great.