Review of Jethro Tull's Stand Up

Released 1969

" Spent a long time looking for a game to play. My luck should be so bad now to turn out this way. Oh, I had to leave today just when I thought I'd found you. It was a new day yesterday, but it's an old day now."

I think that this was one of the first albums I bought when I moved up to Glasgow. It was either bought from Lost In Music in DeCourcey's arcade behind Byres Road in Glasgow or it was one of my last purchased from the outdoor market in Helston in Cornwall.

Either way, I shall be honest and say that my purchase was driven by a combination of the bands name (with echoes of O Level History) and that this was an original copy, designed to look like a wood carving complete with pop-up band members in the gate fold sleeve.

I knew nothing about Jethro Tull when I took the album home (or back to the halls of residence), but gauged from the year of it's release and the line-up of musical instruments, including flute and hammond organ, that this would be a worthwhile of spending £2.

The only flute playing I had come across thus far on my prog rock odyssey was by Peter Gabriel. I associated the hammond organ more with mainstream rock music than more obviously definable prog rock music, so I was intrigued to see what sort of animal Jethro Tull might prove
to be.

From the outset, I was surprised that this was considered a prog rock record. This was very competent, extremely worthy rock music, but it's roots were an odd combination of blues and folk. The rumbling drum and bass guitar and intermittent organ of the opening track is punctuated by Ian Anderson's highly unique vocal delivery, which was much more akin to the folk genre than any other, thereby potentially alienating a huge number of music fans in the process who couldn't see past the stereotypical image of the folk singer with the woolly jumper, the pint of real-ale with a finger in his ear, warbling on about past times and past peoples.

However neither the subject matter or the musical accompaniment has a great deal in common with folk per se, providing a unique dichotomy between the vocal and the instrumentation which
leans it nicely prog direction. On my first listen, the nasal vocal and blues rock accompaniment to A New Day Yesterday made me curious; curious as to when a normal style of singing would begin. In the same way that Peter Gabriel jumps from voice to voice, I expected Ian Anderson to suddenly shift gear and be more conventional. Realising fairly quickly that this wasn't going to happen, I found myself moving from curious to 'oh dear'.

With Jeffrey Goes To Leicester Square it started to fit; the flute, the various acoustic accoutrement's and the voice certainly fitted together, being resolutely folk and no worse for it.

I realised that I had heard Bouree before and loved the clever merging of classical music and mad grunting that somehow worked well as an innovative proggy instrumental.

The remainder of the album continued to add to a cornucopia of musical types. I began to warm to the very tight rhythms, blistering guitar interludes, gentle acoustic asides and the inexcessive use of flute. My curiosity regarding the vocal had morphed into a fascination.

Yes there was a wide use of instruments employed in a wide range of musical styles, but I struggled at the end of the album to see it as a prog release. If I had to sit down with a prog virgin and select examples from my record collection which demonstrated the various traits of prog, I would struggle to find any credible moments on Stand Up. It's a fine, fine album but prog? I don't think so.

I learned in the next few years of the generally regarded 'classic' Tull albums such as Aqualung and Thick as A Brick, which any measure are clearly shining examples of the genre. I subsequently went back and reappraised Stand Up, thinking I'd missed something. Even now, many years on, my opinion is unaltered.

Review of Genesis' Foxtrot

Released 1972

"MARK HALL OF STYX ENTERPRISES (OTHERWISE KNOWN AS 'THE WINKLER')
"I represent a firm of gentlemen who recently purchased this
house and all the others in the road. In the interest of humanity we've found a better place for you to go, go-woh, go-woh"

It wasn't until I purchased my third copy of Foxtrot that I saw any merit in it whatsoever. It now sits safely within my top ten albums. I can't think of any other album in my collection which has bewildered me as much as Genesis' third album proper.

There was a notable raising of the bar between Trepass and Nursery Cryme; a growing confidence and ambition, which dared to venture into realms of lyrical eccentricity that could only be carried off against a backdrop of highly proficient musicianship. As Foxtrot was their next album chronologically, and it contained the infamous side long Supper's Ready of which I aware of by reputation only, I was keen to see if the upwards trend had continued.

Paul Whitehead had again been employed to produce an inexplicably appropriate sleeve design, which, while it appeared to have little logic of itself or any obvious connection to the music, somehow it gelled perfectly. There was also a clever reference to the artwork of the previous album on the rear sleeve with the croquet hammer again being readied to propel a human head. Aliens dressed in full fox-hunting regalia, on horseback, on a beach, gazing out to sea (past a shark/dolphin hybrid) at a woman wearing a red dress, but with a foxes' head, who is standing on an iceberg with a submarine in the background. Utterly nuts.

For reasons I cannot explain, I absolutely hated the entire album first time around, finding nothing of merit in any way. Supper's Ready in particular left me totally cold; I saw it as a poorly connected series of shorter songs which were trying to be too clever and were failing badly. I put the album away and ultimately sold it a few years later having played it only once. Consequently, I found myself listening to the first two albums less and less, to the point where I gave up on Genesis altogether. Oddly, I did buy my first copy of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway about six months later - only because I found a second hand copy in perfect condition for £1 - but then gave up on that in exactly the same way, reasoning that it's mint condition was due it's previous owner having had the same opinion.

Out of the blue about ten years later, when I was in my mid-twenties, I read once more about the supposed brilliance of Foxtrot and it's universal long lasting acclaim (amongst prog rock fans at least) as one of the very best examples of the prog genre. On a whim, I decided to give it another go and bought my second copy; a cassette version. Again, I found it completely unlistenable and traded it in the next day.

Thus up until about three years ago, I hadn't listened to Trepass, Nursery Cryme of any of the Peter Gabriel era Genesis for the best part of twenty five years.

In the meantime, my prog rock collection had diversified and veered off in many other directions. At every turn though I was confronted with the resounding knowledge that I must be one of the few fans of old school prog who didn't like Genesis. However this didn't make sense to me, as there had been a time when the first two albums were regular visitors to my turntable.

I bit the bullet and started again, first with Trepass and then with Nursery Cryme. To my delight, I probably enjoyed Trepass more a quarter of a century on, and still had a fondness for Nursery Cryme.

Third time around, Foxtrot was a revelation. I could have wept at the brilliance of Watcher Of The Skies; clearly one of the archetypal prog songs: to this day I have yet to hear more emotive use of the mellotron. This was Tony Banks' album; his DNA was stamped indelibly across a large proportion of the album, with a strength of character and control that most other keyboard players would have killed for. Peter Gabriel took the obtuseness of lyric displayed on the previous album into a realm which no one else could touch. Phil Collins' underrated drumming was never better.

I was stunned, with the exception of the horribly twee Time Table, the whole of the first side was a masterclass in prog. What had I heard twenty five years previously that repelled me to abandon the band in the way I did? I'll never know. My enjoyment of the album was immeasurably enhanced by the contrast between my experiences as a fifteen year old and a 39 year old.

I still held my breath for Supper's Ready. As a twenty five year old I saw it as pretentious smart-arsedness at it's very worst.

It did take a few plays to be honest, but little by little, the merits of Supper's Ready have unfolded for me, layer by layer, revealing itself as an accomplished epic worthy of it's plaudits. I still think it is overtly and unnecessarily complex, but, three years on, I am still picking up snatches of brilliance which, with each new play, build on the undoubted foundation of the first side. Of all my Genesis albums, only Selling England By The Pound is played more often.

A classic. Eventually.

Review of Van Der Graaf Generator's Godbluff

Released 1975

"Here at the glass - all the usual problems,
all the habitual farce.
You ask, in uncertain voice, what you should do
as if there were a choice".

I doubt that anyone's first encounter with Van Der Graaf Generator is a pleasant or even a comfortable one.

One of the challenges of writing this blog is to divorce my later knowledge and experience of an album and the rest of the band's output from how I felt on that very first listen. Everyone will be able to cite numerous examples of albums which simply didn't work for them the first time around and in some cases, there are examples which don't become enjoyable until years later. My own view is that some artists are so far away from the Zeitgeist (what is the opposite to Zeitgeist?) that a only a minimal frame of reference can be applied to the work at the time; whereas it is possible to 'tune in' to most pieces of music, others are just too odd or 'out there' to be fully appreciated immediately.

I mention this of course because I believe VDGG fall into this category. In this instance I feel that the contrast between it's first airing and my view now is so pronounced, that I will reluctantly pass comment at the end of this review. Otherwise I run the risk of alienating any VDGG virgins!

As a keen and impressionable seventeen year old, I was voraciously consuming anything and everything I could lay my hands on regarding my new found interest in prog rock. Having purchased the first two Marillion albums, and being familiar with the obvious comparisons being drawn between the vocal styles of Fish and Peter Gabriel, I found it interesting that Fish himself saw Peter Hammill as a more direct influence. Therefore, when I stumbled across a copy of Godbluff at my local market, I decided I'd make my own judgement.

Although the prog rock section of my record collection was still in its infancy, I had already given up the on the theory that you could spot a progressive rock album from its cover. The band's logo was borrowed from the stylings of M.C. Escher, renowned for his warped otherworldly perspectives, but the feel of the cover overall, was one of starkness and minimalism, being both literally and figuratively dark.

Laurie Anderson's uber-weird 'O Superman' flashed into my mind when hearing those first few seconds of brief breaths made by what, a flute? a saxophone? This thought was swiftly followed by "Oh God, what have done?". A voice, initially whispering conspiratorially joins in. Words are delivered in a manner somewhere between speaking and singing, dense and dark, absolutely mirroring the feel of the cover art. An ethereal and yet angular keyboard sound combined with the voice and the wind instrument and floated around in the ether. The strangeness of the voice, a million miles away from that of the traditional 'rock' vocalist was very difficult to assimilate. The menace and sustain employed in the 'man' of 'undercover man' was very powerful and impressive allowing a crescendo of sorts to build throughout the duration of the word. But then the voice seems to take on a life of it's own, leaping with wild abandon and little logic into explosions of grandiose poetic mania.

On that first listen, it all seemed so uncontrolled, with no pattern or direction that I found it hard to be drawn along. There was just so much going on. I had considered The Nice to be eclectic, and Yes to be complex, but they both seemed like purveyors of nursery rhymes compared to the apparent tunelessness of this. Occasionally there would be something approximating a saxophone solo, but then the drums would be beating out something in a different time signature entirely and confusing any feeling that this was going somewhere.

I sat back and let the general effect wash over me, hoping for a light bulb moment. It didn't happen. Where was the guitar? What is he going on about? I was nothing short of bewildered as each of the four tracks, which all sounded very similar, wailed on and on. Safe to say, that first listen wasn't a success.

As I intimated at the beginning, I now see the album very differently. It is still a mad and very peculiar album, but I can now see why it ranks so highly amongst not just VDGG devotees but the wider prog audience.

The easiest way to describe why I see it differently now is as follows. Occasionally you will turn on the radio and hear a song that is familiar to you, but for several seconds, although you know you know it and know it very well, it may as well be the very first time you'd ever heard it. Then, out of nowhere, in an instance, and for no obvious reason, you recognise it completely and are mystified as to why it seemed so alien. With Godbluff, one day, for no reason it just seemed to work; I could see the genius of the vocal delivery, I was bowled over by David Jackson's singularly brilliant saxophone playing and I realised that the keyboard sound was at least on a par with the Tony Banks, Tony Kaye and Rick Wakeman's of the world. I could see what Fish was aspiring to achieve but only mimicking.

This may have been uneasy listening, and hardly one to get the dance floor full, but it's eccentricity and Nietzchian-like madness did, in time get it's hooks well and truly into me.