Robot Emperor
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Edited Dec 23, 2014, 04:25
Jethro Tull and Passion Play
Dec 23, 2014, 04:15
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Through a combination of circumstances too tenuous to countenance and too torturous and tedious to relate I find myself stranded in Lincoln penniless with only an MP3 player for company until trains come to life again at 5ish. Decided to hunt ghosts around the Cathedral whilst listening to the recent reissue of Passion Play. It's a revelation. Always intrigued by it but this has really bought it to life. The remastering that is, not using it as a soundtrack to late night wandering.
Got scared up the hill. Didn't see the ghosts but felt them in an invisible conga behind me. Now nursing a coffee in McDonald's. Passion Play. Wonderfully gothic British weirdness. Scary like the chickens on Victorian fairground roundabouts. Imbued with a folkish mysticism (not folk music, not yet for Tull) which we really don't utilise enough as a nation (Americana seems presumptuous in comparison with the weight of our weirdness potential).
Anyway, give it another chance if you have dismissed it in the past. They also remastered and included as extra tracks the abortive album prior to Passion Play. Now sounds like a better album than War Child, heavy as well. Martin laying down gigantic riffs.
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Squid Tempest
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Re: Jethro Tull and Passion Play
Dec 23, 2014, 11:44
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Tiz on my xmass list. Looking forward to hearing this even more now.
Hope you got home safely without the ghouls in tow.
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spencer
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Christmas Song
Dec 23, 2014, 12:35
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(...and have got some decent zeds) The topic title reminded me of their early single Christmas Song. Listen to the words, more apt with every 'festive season'. It was a hit Xmas single. No chance these days. Anderson may by his own admission not be a very nice person, but he's a great, canny lyricist. I've never heard Passion Play (!!)..you two's words tempt me to investigate the new version. Ta.
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Fatalist
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Re: Christmas Song
Dec 24, 2014, 00:03
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Passion Play is a tremendously underrated album, and the new mix really makes a huge difference. Thick As A Brick is often held up as the apogee of Tull's prog ambitions, but Passion Play is superior in every way for me. As the Emperor notes, it taps into a very particular strain of English weirdness/absurdity that might as well never have existed given the bland psychic soup that most bands slurp from now.
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spencer
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Re: Christmas Song
Dec 24, 2014, 02:12
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Ta for the further recommendation. I didnt get anything after Thick As A Brick... Kraut won
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Fatalist
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Edited Dec 24, 2014, 09:03
Re: Christmas Song
Dec 24, 2014, 09:02
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spencer wrote: Ta for the further recommendation. I didnt get anything after Thick As A Brick... Kraut won
That's an interesting comment, Spencer. How did you find out about the Kraut stuff - papers, radio, shops?? Did you have an anti-Eureka moment re prog?
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IanB
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Edited Dec 24, 2014, 10:06
Re: Jethro Tull and Passion Play
Dec 24, 2014, 09:54
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Squid Tempest wrote: Tiz on my xmass list. Looking forward to hearing this even more now.
Hope you got home safely without the ghouls in tow.
Oh Christ. I was worried someone might say it was worth buying. That's more money on cds then.
Is that another "definitive" Trane / Miles / Martyn / Floyd / Crimson / Lurkers box set I see on the horizon? I will run out of money way before the labels run out of ways to repackage this stuff.
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IanB
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Edited Dec 24, 2014, 17:51
Re: Christmas Song
Dec 24, 2014, 10:02
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Fatalist wrote: spencer wrote: Ta for the further recommendation. I didnt get anything after Thick As A Brick... Kraut won
That's an interesting comment, Spencer. How did you find out about the Kraut stuff - papers, radio, shops?? Did you have an anti-Eureka moment re prog?
That is interesting as I have no recollection of there being a separate category or a movement. At least not one that got dissected in Melody Maker and the NME. Might be an age thing.
I was 15 when Punk happened so had been getting into Rock for four/five years prior starting with Sweet, Slayed, Slider and Ziggy then working my way into the Prog, Art, Blues, Hard and Pub varieties by listening to anything I could lay my hands on. I bought/taped TDream and Faust records in the same way that I would PFM or Focus. It was just a sub set of what was around but with "funny" names in the credits. I guess if I had been five years older I might have been more aware of the politics and societal stuff and put it all together. It was all just long-haired music to me.
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Fitter Stoke
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Re: Jethro Tull and Passion Play
Dec 24, 2014, 12:02
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A Lurkers box set? I'm there...
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spencer
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Edited Dec 24, 2014, 12:22
Re: Christmas Song
Dec 24, 2014, 12:09
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I guess 'Peel Won' would've been a better summation... I certainly can't remember him or the co-broadcasters of his that I listened to playing anything of Tull's after TOAB, and still haven't heard, or remember hearing, any of Tull's subsequent output...I have taken note when the subjects been raised here, and 'when' I get a computer and thence the means to investigate unhampered by a phone tarriff I will certainly do, and purchase if I like. As it is, I haven't heard Heavy Horses, Warchild and Passion Play. Nada. I last saw Tull on the TOAB tour, and it just didn't connect, the record likewise. I think I found it too verbally bombastic/knowing at the time, got put off. I had bought Aqualung and wasn't overenamoured, then TOAB made me say 'nope'. How did I get into Kraut? Peel, and big bro, who had Monster Movie and Soundtracks, and early Duul, back then. I know it sounds 'ultrahip' maybe, but I bought Tago Mago off my own bat on the first week of release...thats the way it was. VDGG/Hamill was another passion - a bombast I liked. I listened to Peel like religious observance, lots of late night radio, taped stuff...yup, schoolwork suffered. Was a bit precocious intakewise too, played guitar in a band, etc. I still enjoyed some Prog, saw Genesis up to the Wind And Wuthering tour, Yes to Relayer's.. but Tull'd slipped off my radar a while before. Hi ho. Yup, would like to make amends. (well y'did ask : ) ) EDIT: forgot to say how much I LOVED early Tull, still do. Put me in front of a pair of speakers with Stand Up, This Was, Benefit or the Best Of coming out of them and watch the grin...
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