Music: Jethro Tull – Stand Up - MFSL - Repost

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Jethro Tull was a unique phenomenon in popular music history. Their mix of hard rock; folk melodies; blues licks; surreal, impossibly dense lyrics; and overall profundity defied easy analysis, but that didn't dissuade fans from giving them 11 gold and five platinum albums. At the same time, critics rarely took them seriously, and they were off the cutting edge of popular music since the end of the 1970s. But no record store in the country would want to be without multiple copies of each of their most popular albums (Benefit, Aqualung, Thick as a Brick, Living in the Past), or their various best-of compilations, and few would knowingly ignore their newest releases. Of their contemporaries, only Yes could claim a similar degree of success, and Yes endured several major shifts in sound and membership in reaching the 1990s, while Tull remained remarkably stable over the same period. As co-founded and led by wildman-flautist-guitarist-singer-songwriter Ian Anderson, the group carved a place all its own in popular music.

Tull had its roots in the British blues boom of the late '60s. Anderson (b. Aug. 10, 1947, Edinburgh, Scotland) had moved to Blackpool when he was 12. His first band was called the Blades, named after James Bond's club, with Michael Stephens on guitar, Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond (b. July 30, 1946) on bass and John Evans (b. Mar. 28, 1948) on drums, playing a mix of jazzy blues and soulful dance music on the northern club circuit. In 1965, they changed their name to the John Evan Band (Evan having dropped the "s" in his name at Hammond's suggestion) and later the John Evan Smash. By the end of 1967, Glenn Cornick (b. Apr. 24, 1947, Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, England) had replaced Hammond-Hammond on bass. The group moved to Luton in order to be closer to London, the center of the British blues boom, and the band began to fall apart, when Anderson and Cornick met guitarist/singer Mick Abrahams (b. Apr. 7, 1943, Luton, Bedfordshire, England) and drummer Clive Bunker (b. Dec. 12, 1946), who had previously played together in the Toggery Five and were now members of a local blues band called McGregor's Engine.

In December of 1967, the four of them agreed to form a new group. They began playing two shows a week, trying out different names, including Navy Blue and Bag of Blues. One of the names that they used, Jethro Tull, borrowed from an 18th-century farmer/inventor, proved popular and memorable, and it stuck. In January of 1968, they cut a rather derivative pop-folk single called "Sunshine Day," released by MGM Records (under the misprinted name Jethro Toe) the following month. The single went nowhere, but the group managed to land a residency at the Marquee Club in London, where they became very popular.

In late 1976, a Christmas EP entitled Ring Out Solstice Bells got to number 28. This song later turned up on their next album, Songs From the Wood, the group's most artistically unified and successful album in some time (and the first not derived from an unfinished film or play since A Passion Play). This was Tull's folk album, reflecting Anderson's passion for English folk songs. Its release also accompanied the band's first British tour in nearly three years. In May of 1977, David Palmer joined Tull as an official member, playing keyboards on-stage to augment the richness of the group's concert sound.


Tull's initial musical approach was torn between Mick Abrahams' blues vision and Ian Anderson's more unique approach. When Abrahams left, his replacement Martin Barre became the key player in Tull’s move towards a more progressive style. The recording sessions for this album started in April ’69. One month later, the band scored their first U.K. hit with "Living In The Past," which charted at #3 (included in the remastered release). Starting with "Stand Up," the band’s use of dynamics, Celtic Folk, and classically-oriented tonal structures, along with Ian Anderson’s flute playing and songwriting, became Jethro Tull’s signature. Simply put, "Stand Up" was the genesis of Tull's sound and, not surprisingly, is one of Anderson's favorite Tull records. Reflecting back, "Stand Up" seems an obvious career turn but at its release, the reality was Tull risked a great deal. The turn from the blue-orientated approach displeased important Tull radio and promoter connections.

"A New Day Yesterday" is almost a holdover from "This Was" with its blues-stylings while "Nothing is Easy," common in concert sets, is a blues-jazz fusion. "Bouree," a "cocktail jazz" (Ian's words) rework of a J.S. Bach classical piece, would become a Tull classic and an almost must for any concert set. Many Tull fans presume Far Eastern influences on the band's music begin with Anderson's solo album "Divinities." Yet, traces can be found in "Fat Man" (sometimes considered a jab at departed guitarist Mick Abrahams) and "Jeffrey Goes to Leicester Square," one of three Tull songs devoted to Ian's boyhood friend Jeffrey Hammond who would later join the band. While hardly a "concept" album, lyrically the album devotes a lot to Anderson's relationship with his parents (a subject continued on "Benefit") and coping with new found pop stardom.

This was the first album to be filled with songs written and arranged by Ian Anderson, the band’s first album to chart in the U.S. top 20, and their first album to hit #1 in the U.K. It hit #1 two days after its release and stayed there for eight weeks!

MUSICIANS:

Ian Anderson - flute, acoustic guitar, hammond organ, piano, mandolin, balalaika, mouth organ, vocals
Martin Barre - electric guitar, flute
Clive Bunker - percussion
Glenn Cornick - bass guitar

On this CDs:

01 A New Day Yesterday 4:10
02 Jeffrey Goes to Leicester Square 2:12
03 Bourée 3:46
04 Back to the Family 3:48
05 Look Into the Sun 4:20
06 Nothing Is Easy 4:25
07 Fat Man 2:52
08 We Used to Know 3:59
09 Reasons for Waiting 4:05
10 For a Thousand Mothers 4:13



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Jethro Tull

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A SONIC WORK OF ART. These Out of Print gems are the Ferrari of the audiophile CD market. Many over the last year have doubled or tripled in value. The future of these collectibles is so exciting because each piece is a sonic work of art that will never be reproduced using this expensive 24-Karat Gold mastering process. You will be one of only a few thousand in the world owning this audiophile classic Another one MUST HAVE... You need FEURIO,NERO, Alcohol, EAC to burn image to music CD; load CUE file... easy... :-)

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