Jethro Tull - Thick As A Brick (Vinyl)

Description

Born from a desire to really produce a concept album after the rock critics so dubbed the previous year’s “Aqualung,” the record features a rock first: one continuous song on both sides. The music, and the lyrics, are challenging to the listener and reflect complex influences of folk, jazz, and rock. With “Thick,” Anderson and company broaden rock beyond the limitations of the short song format. Understanding “Thick” requires recognition of the popularity of Monthy Python in the early 1970’s. Anderson meant for the album to be a send up of rock pretentiousness, critics, and the band itself. The album cover claimed, outrageously enough, that the lyrics had been written by an eight year-old boy, Gerald Bostock, and set to music by the band. Even today, Anderson still gets the occasional person asking about Bostock or commenting about the prodigy’s advancing age. While the “Aqualung’s” lyrics are fairly straightforward, “Thick’s” metaphorical tendencies ” are intentionally intricate, obscure, and bewildering as part of the running joke. If there is any true central theme, perhaps it is the sociological experiences of gifted youngsters in the modern world with a touch of paternal relations again. The lyrical incohesiveness, far greater than “Aqualung,” leads Craig Thomas, who penned Tull’s 25th Anniversary Set booklet, to seriously question whether it is properly deemed a concept album. Rather, he views it more of an adaptation of the “kind of free-jazz…improvisations of the 1960.” Indeed, several segments were recorded in just one improvisional take. The 2012 Steven Wilson Stereo Remix. No mp3 download voucher. Issued in a single sleeve, a black poly die-cut inner sleeve and 24-page booklet.