A SONG FOR JEFFREY

Purists believe the initial album is best, “This Was,” the one before Mick Abrahams left. If nothing came after, Tull would be seen as English blues progenitors, but a hit changes all perceptions. There were no hits on “This Was,” but I’d start here, with the signature flute intro and then the instant groove. “A Song For Jeffrey,” all of “This Was,” is Jethro Tull for people who think they hate Jethro Tull.

MY SUNDAY FEELING

The opening cut on “This Was,” and probably the most famous. Most jam bands can’t hold a candle to this.

BOUREE

The instantly accessible rearrangement of Bach’s composition is the signature track on Tull’s second album, “Stand Up,” which did, i.e. when you opened the gatefold cover, the band popped up inside.

FAT MAN

Intense, it had a quiet acoustic feel long before Mumford & Sons, and required only one listen to get. It sounded like a group of like-minded fellows playing in the park, not for the adulation, but for the fun of it. Oh, not fun, this music is not tossed off and irrelevant, it’s life itself. It’s stuff like this that made you want to buy the album, what was buried inside was better than the hit, not that there was a hit on “Stand Up.”

NOTHING IS EASY

Sounds like it could fit on “This Was,” except it was faster, a bit more polished and more intense. If you don’t nod your head to this, you haven’t got one.

JEFFREY GOES TO LEICESTER SQUARE

You learned about geography via records. And the English ones were especially exotic.

BACK TO THE FAMILY

When it slows down in the middle and changes…risk was paramount way back when. Formula was abhorred. Ian Anderson is singing about the flaws of trying to make it, and thinking about going back to the family…don’t we all.

LOOK INTO THE SUN

My favorite cut on “Stand Up.”

Once upon a time we didn’t want to rush to the club or the tent to gyrate with the minions, we just wanted to shut the bedroom door, turn out the lights and listen…to this music we believed was made just for us.

This is so wistful and so right.

FOR A THOUSAND MOTHERS

The closing cut on “Stand Up,” it’s intense and frazzled and it leaves you so shook up you can do nothing but flip over the cassette and play the whole album from the top.

There’s not a bum cut on “Stand Up.” It still sounds fresh today, maybe because there was nothing else like it.

TO CRY YOU A SONG

Riff rock. From the Stones to the Troggs to Deep Purple, and in between, yes, Jethro Tull.

“Benefit” was the album that turned off the purists, but it was the one that clued me in, maybe because of the wild ride in John Morosani’s Trans Am without seat belts at 110 MPH on Route 125 the opening weekend of college. The soundtrack makes an indelible impact.

That’s how it used to be, before everybody had all the music. We learned about stuff from the radio, from friends, and then we had to buy it ourselves. I had to own “Benefit” myself. I read the mediocre reviews, but I loved it!

A TIME FOR EVERYTHING

Kind of like how “Have A Drink On Me” follows up “You Shook Me All Night Long” on “Back In Black,” “To Cry You A Song” segues into “A Time For Everything” which drives even faster and closes us too. Today we expect to be let down, Tull were showing us they still had something left in the tank.

INSIDE

Actually, it was three tracks in a row on the second side. “Inside” wasn’t quite as good as what came before, but was infectious nonetheless.

SOSSITY; YOU’RE A WOMAN

The kind of track the naysayers hate but the fans love, “Sossity” closes the record on a reflective note. This was an age when most of us were just growing up, when boys were becoming men and girls becoming women. Responsibilities were changing, and our music was guiding the way.

FOR MICHAEL COLLINS, JEFFREY AND ME

Sounds similar to Simon & Garfunkel’s “For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her,” and you’ll be missing out if you never hear this.

NOTHING TO SAY

Probably the second most played cut on “Benefit” after “To Cry You A Song.” Typical of the canon, but still good.

LOCOMOTIVE BREATH

Funny how at this late date this is the most memorable and most played cut off “Aqualung,” which turned Jethro Tull into superstars. It was the accumulated quantity of quality music and the riveting live performances, with Ian Anderson playing flute on one leg, that caused the fans to fill arenas. And yes, radio airplay…”Aqualung” and “My God” were all over the radio.

AQUALUNG

Another riff, but with a story to match, “Aqualung” was an epic that dominated the airwaves to the point that many people never need to hear it again. It was “Hotel California” before that cut was. But what puts the cut over the top is when it slows down and becomes reflective in the middle, a la classical music, there were multiple movements, little did we know what was coming down the pike.

MY GOD

The other epic, not played as much as “Aqualung,” but still in regular rotation. And “Aqualung” was 6:37 and “My God” 7:13.

THICK AS A BRICK

Really don’t mind if you sit this one out.

But few did.

Here’s where rock goes classical, where one song with multiple movements fills both sides of an album, “Tubular Bells” came after.

There’s not a baby boomer alive who does not know the riff and the opening lyrics.

You’d think no one would be interested in an album like this. But an edit was all over the airwaves, the newspaper-like cover was enrapturing and only hipsters were too cool to love it.

You’d think it would get old.

But it didn’t. We played “Thick As A Brick” over and over again.

And the love that I feel is so far away

Ain’t that the truth. We knew about love and sex from music, so many fans had never experienced it.

Spin me back down the years and the days of my youth

When music drove the culture and changed the world. When English musicians built upon the delta blues to create something new and different and the baby boomers followed them to a new way of thinking.

LIVING IN THE PAST

And finally, Jethro Tull has a huge AM radio track, over Christmas no less, when playlists are frozen for weeks and everybody’s home, driving around in their parents’ cars trying to escape.

It was a double album of what came before, but somehow mainstream radio was finally ready and suddenly the whole of America was hip to Jethro Tull.

FARM ON THE FREEWAY

And from there it went downhill. “A Passion Play” was a failed attempt to follow up “Thick As A Brick.”

“War Child” had the execrable “Bungle In The Jungle,” which was second-rate Tull, made for those with mush for brains. But the band was on an endless victory lap, all its previous work was paying dividends, live business was bigger than ever.

“Minstrel In The Gallery.” A good title track, that’s all you need to know.

“Too Old To Rock ‘n’ Roll: Too Young To Die.” Ditto.

“Songs From The Wood.” That’s three in a row with a good title track and not much more.

Then people stopped paying attention. There were endless albums and you needed none of them. “Songs From The Wood” was followed by “Heavy Horses,” “Stormwatch,” “A,” “The Broadsword and the Beast” and “Under Wraps.” To say they were for fans only would be charitable, Tull had lost most of its fans.

And then came “Crest Of A Knave.” In 1987. Almost a decade and a half after the band’s heyday. And it was GOOD!

Too good, by a band with a known name, the album beat out Metallica’s for the metal Grammy and Jethro Tull became a joke, a whipping boy, emblematic of all that came before and should rightfully be forgotten.

But the people loved this record, whose tracks were decided upon by focus group, and the biggest and best was…”Farm On The Freeway.”

A companion piece to Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi,” by this time the boomers had lost the war, they’d followed Reagan into the land of greed and AOR radio had become so corporate it had been eviscerated by new wave, pop and MTV. But “Farm On The Freeway” was so good, it climbed out of the ghetto into national consciousness.

We all lament what we’ve lost in the transition, from addiction to the radio to MTV to music made by people with little skill, and, ironically, this song is all about that.

LIVE/BBC

And that’s all you need to know.

Unless you’ve been hooked by the above.

If so, you’ll find a wealth of material to explore and devour.

Starting with the BBC tapes from the band’s initial incarnation. This was not a studio outfit, they could most definitely do it live. And, as the years have passed, more and more live material has been released.

My favorite place to start is the 1988 3 CD set, “20 Years Of Jethro Tull,” which is no longer available, however elements have been distributed here and there on rereleases of previous albums. Wanna be a true archivist, live the way we used to, search this out.

But before you do…

Listen to the following BBC material, which I’ve included here:

“Serenade To A Cuckoo”
“Cat’s Squirrel”
“A Song For Jeffrey”
“My Sunday Feeling”
“Fat Man”
“Nothing Is Easy”
“A New Day Yesterday”
“Bouree”

Happy hunting!

Rhinofy-Jethro Tull Primer

Welcome to the machine

How Sweden’s domination of the international pop charts started when a failed glam rock front man met a bootleg DJ who couldn’t play a chord (and neither one was in Abba)

Oh, baby baby, I didn’t know Max Martin wasn’t his real name!

Every month I get a care package from Ralph. A legal envelope from the U.K. filled mostly with obituaries, the English do it much better, and ski stories (Did you know you could go heli-skiing in Iceland in June? I’m gonna start a Kickstarter to fund my trip, ha!) and odds and ends like this story from a Norwegian flight magazine about…Swedish music producers!

That’s right, Spotify is not the only Swedish export, the only thing tearing apart the fabric of the American music business. Hell, I learned more reading this piece than in a year’s worth of “Rolling Stone.”

HIT ME BABY ONE MORE TIME!

That’s right, Britney Spears’s initial hit, the one upon which she built her career, paying dividends a decade and a half later, was a Swedish production, the Scandinavians not only wrote it, they produced it and played on it!

Do you remember 1998? The tail end of the MTV era? When we were learning the children of the baby boomers were discovering music via Disney? When we heard about a phenom coming down the pike that was gonna sell millions of records?

She did.

Sure, the video was great, where she was shaking her barely pubescent tits, but really it was the track. The keyboard intro. The sultry vocal straight out of the Stones’ “Stray Cat Blues.” It was like the progeny of Mick was showing up to show him up.

Ain’t that the truth. Mick hasn’t done anything memorable since 1998. But that cannot be said of Max Martin. Hell, between “…Baby One More Time” and “Since U Been Gone” he’s assured himself social consciousness and financial longevity, irrelevant of what the nominating committee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame might believe.

Oh, Max didn’t do “Since U Been Gone” alone, he wrote and produced it along with American Lukasz Gottwald, aka “Dr. Luke.” Nobody uses their real name anymore. Hell, Max Martin is really Karl Martin Sandberg!

You’ll find this out in this article.

And you’ll also find out that credit is given to the funding of the arts by the Swedish government. Music school pays off. The one in which you learn the scales and how to play as opposed to how to market. Because once you’ve mastered the fundamentals, you can go ANYWHERE!

“The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”

Those are the words of Matt Taibbi, and although they may not be as famous as the lyrics of a few rappers and Top Ten titans, they proved a lot more powerful. They’re the ones that got the government off its ass and holding the banking industry’s feet to the fire.

Not that anybody went to jail. Taibbi’s still pissed about that.

The Millennials see life differently from the baby boomers. Being a member of the group is much more important than sticking out. As a result, too many young artists are looking to be liked as opposed to significant. They check the data to see if their message is resonating, and then keep doing their best to be inoffensive.

The country acts are the worst. They won’t take a stand unless it’s a hard right wing one that supposedly resonates with the country base. Look at the Dixie Chicks, they were excommunicated for saying what we all knew…

And then there’s Bon Jovi. If you can find Jon Bon Jovi saying something negative about anything, being controversial at all, please forward it to me, I’d love to be proven wrong.

But the truth is artists have sacrificed their innate power, which is to challenge power, via the truth of their message.

The truth of their message today is that they want to be rich and famous and climb out of the hole the rest of the godforsaken underclass inhabits.

The truth is, if you’re afraid to be hated, your art is going to be worthless.

So…

Artists blaze their own path, not one prescribed by the suit or what came before. The reason classic rock is so is because the artists jumped off from their influences to create something unique.

Artists know the power of their work is much more important than marketing. Otherwise, Procter & Gamble would be in the music business. Oh, that’s right, there’s not enough money in it. Name a few P&G products. Kinda hard for the average consumer. But you can name a plethora of Beatle, Stones and Zeppelin tracks. Because artists have an identity. And their work is singular and memorable, not just serviceable.

Artists don’t apologize, they’re people of their convictions. Sure, everybody can make a mistake. But if you’re making an artistic choice, stand by it. Don’t double back once people start to complain.

Artists lead, not follow.

Artists are tuning forks. Their goal is to create resonance in the audience.

Artists don’t bow to the whims of society. They stay the path, changing only when it feels right inside.

Artists have no trouble saying no.

Artists make choices based on feelings, not spreadsheets.

Artists don’t have other career options. This is all they can do. But they know they’re not entitled to success, either monetary compensation or public acclaim.

The only thing more powerful than art is sex. And most people can’t have sex on demand and can’t do it 24/7, but there are people who listen to music all of their waking hours. And watch movies and television too.

But music is more powerful than movies and TV, because there’s less collaboration. Collaboration waters down the message. Great art is about dictators, about getting it right. Unfortunately, today more people are getting it right in television than music. As for movies…they’re so focused on playing around the world to instant grosses that they’ve turned into P&G above. You can’t name the purveyors…quick, who runs the studios, name the studios! And in most cases, you forget their films.

Art sticks, commerce does not. Not that you do it to last. Peter Grant famously sold out Led Zeppelin’s royalty interest because he thought no one would want their music in the future. Artists are so wrapped up in the moment, that the future is unfathomable.

Artists don’t have plans. Those are for corporations.

Artists know that one production can not only change their fortune, but the entire world.

Artists know it’s not how you look, but what you sing and play.

Artists are always learning.

Artists are always questioning.

Artists were not the popular ones in high school. And chances are they’re not the popular ones today. Oh, everybody might know their name, but they’re often socially awkward and unable to fully integrate.

How did we get so off track? How did the message get so muddled?

Blame MTV, it put a lot more money into the music equation. And the suits wanted more of it, so they took control from the artists.

And then income inequality left the creative class so far behind, it didn’t even know it.

And then reality TV made it possible for everybody to become a star, even without talent.

And then the Internet removed all barriers to entry.

And parents told their kids they were not only talented, but deserving of an audience.

And the end result is we’ve got a lot of me-too stuff that is almost a parody of itself. Because we no longer have artists, but wannabe business people.

If you can’t say no to the corporation, if you can’t leave money on the table, if you’ve got nothing to say…

Then we’re not interested, not for long.

“Raging Against Hacks With Matt Taibbi”

Relevant quotes:

“I think people are more willing to trust individuals than they are organizations.”

“…journalists should be dark, funny, mean people. It’s appropriate for their antagonistic, adversarial role.”

“I think it’s a lost art in this country – developing that narrative voice where readers connect with you as a human being. They want to see how you react individually to things. And if you think something is outrageous, and you write about it in a tone without outrage, then that’s just deception, you know?”

Nobody likes an expert, everybody believes they can go it alone.

Get a cold today and the last thing someone will do is say to go to the doctor. They’ll tell you about zinc and vitamins and all kinds of rubbish because it makes them feel powerful. There’s more junk science than ever, because the people who didn’t pay attention in school don’t like the fact that others did and are more informed than they are.

Furthermore, we live in an information age, and if you’re willing to do the research, to read, it’s amazing what’s out there. Kind of like this e-mail I got this afternoon:

From: Dave Fulton
Subject: RE: John Hamm, CEO of Pono, Calls

Couldn’t agree more….the original key creator and designer of the iPod echoes your sentiment regarding crowd funding hardware start ups @ 1:40 mark. He claims you really don’t make money until the 3rd version of anything you build.  They guy is super interesting…google just recently bought his company.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYj5X_dE2U8

Cheers
Dave

And then there’s tomorrow’s “Wall Street Journal,” which went live on the west coast at 9 PM:

“Venture Money Flows Into Hardware Startups – From Jawbone to Roku, U.S. Investors Pump $848 Million Into Consumer-Electronics Makers”

Read about the woman who raised 92k on Kickstarter for a bike light and found herself in way over her head.

You want to know why Doug Morris and Lucian Grainge have jobs?

EXPERIENCE!

And you hate that. You hate that someone is on top and you’re not.

But the truth is Mr. Morris and Mr. Grainge know what’s a hit, better than most, and they know how much to spend and how to market. Do they make mistakes? Of course, but everybody who comes in from the outside and says they’re going to institute discipline into music and get it right loses, whether it be Andy Lack or Guy Hands.

I don’t hate Neil Young, I love a great deal of his music. But in this crazy world where we revere people for their fame as opposed to their smarts I find it necessary to point out the truth, which no one seems to like, because it screws with their hero worship and their ignorance.

We live in an era of intelligence and technology. Somehow too many musicians don’t know this. That the only way they can win is to be anti, to speak truth to power as opposed to trying to compete with the big boys, like everybody in Hollywood investing in tech, what a laugh, as if to become a hedge fund manager all you’ve got to do is hang out your shingle.

Those bank guys know something. They learned it through years of dedication. Did you practice your instrument to get ahead or are you so busy networking online that you think it’s irrelevant?

Neil Young’s paid a lot of dues in music, almost none in tech, and it’s gonna come back to haunt him, the odds are long for Pono.

But I don’t care. Buy his device, hope it ships and hope it’s good. I want you to be happy.

But please stop ignoring the rules. Start being blinded by science instead of hype. Forget the cult of personality and get down to the cold hard truth.

But that would require you to realize where you are on the totem pole…

Turns out most wealth in America today is not inherited, it’s been made anew by the present generations. Sure, they may have had advantages, good schooling and generous parents, and a modicum of luck, but they’re pulling further and further away as we in entertainment focus on nitwits like Justin Bieber who are not only uneducated, but have nothing to say.

Once upon a time musicians were different. They learned in the best schools in the world. They knew you didn’t cozy up to the corporation, but questioned it.

But now you can’t question anybody, certainly not anybody famous.

That’s what we’re all looking for, crumbs from the famous entertainers, believing that Facebook pic from the show will burnish our image and make us happy.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Wake up!