Critics, amateur and professional alike, have made such frequent use of certain terms that they've lost all of their potency and are little more than cliches. The terms I'm referring to have been used in reference to Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick probably more often than any other pop-rock record, with the possible exception of one: A Passion Play, also by Jethro Tull, which directly followed TAAB. It isn't that the terms pompous, pretentious, or self-indulgent, are without meaning, or that they are totally inapplicable to the aforementioned works, it's simply that those three terms, to name a few, are so hackneyed that it surprises me when someone who seems intelligent and informed uses them nowadays in a review, in the very same way it would surprise me to see a fine poet use the simile "red as a rose", or "soft as silk" in a new poem. As any reader of poetry knows, those two cliches are completely impotent to a modern ear, they convey nothing, they do no work, for the simple reason that they are worn out with use and are so familiar that as soon as the eye and ear register them they are passed over and given no attention at all.
Jethro Tull's 1972 follow-up to the tremendously successful Aqualung album, Thick as a Brick, is one of the great grand-daddies of early prog and is to many minds perfectly representative of the so-called excess and self-indulgence of seventies art-rock, or whatever you wish to call it. In my opinion progressive rock was, unlike today, literally progressive at that time. The bands that flourished in the seventies were moving things forward at a truly amazing pace, and in that decade the biggest acts in rock were all unique, in that there was something about them, musically speaking as well as theatrically, which set them apart from everyone else and which was in its most genuine sense inimitable: Tull, Zeppelin, Sabbath, Queen, Yes, Floyd, to name a few. When Punk came along you had bands that were basically conservative to the core, bands that insisted on bringing rock and roll back to its roots. Those young tories had had quite enough of rock and roll as art, they were tired of poetic, narrative song lyrics, musical experimentation, innovation; they wanted the old anger, the bad reputations, the snotty, leather-jacketed, three-chorded rebellious conformity. There were some great punk bands, like the Clash for example, but overall punk seemed much more like a social movement than anything else and music was a tool, an expedient means of making a stink, whereas with prog and other types of forward-moving rock music of that era, music was an end in itself.
As for self-indulgence: it's precisely because of this trait that we have some truly outstanding art to consume and enjoy, and it's the opposite of it which results in so much flimsy and ephemeral aural debris coming over the airwaves. I'm not just referring to bland top-forty crapola, but to many a recording artist across the popular-music spectrum, from rap and hip-hop to so-called alternative rock, industrial, and metal. Unlike the premier artists of the seventies, you could play mix-and-match with personnel from many of these bands and you'd hardly know the difference. Everyone wants to look the same, sound the same, create the same effect, convey the same emotion. I can't flip through a music-mag anymore without seeing the same angry eye staring out from under the same barbed eyebrow, the same f-you finger sticking up from the same tattooed forearm. Who is impressed by these flagrant concessions to conformity anymore? These people are not self-indulgent, they are selfless, in the worst possible sense, and selflessness doesn't enhance creativity, it puts a stop to it. That isn't to say there isn't some great music being made. There is; but many of the prevalent musical genres, rap, hip-hop, and all the various sub-genres of metal in particular, are so deeply infused with the punk esthetic of angry, mean-spirited uniformity that one has to wonder if there is any real concern among them about taking music into the unknown.
When Thick as a Brick was issued it was virtually unheard of in the pop music industry. It's easy to use twenty-twenty hindsight and see that songs of epic proportions would become the norm for prog-rock acts throughout the decades to come, but you have to put yourself in 1972, when this sort of thing was only just getting underway. Not only was TAAB in most respects a novel and momentous release, it was also a great risk. Aqualung was tremendously successful, and Thick as a Brick sounded nothing like it. Aqualung was fraught with heavy, memorable riffs. Thick as a Brick was a spacious and evocative piece of music, a single song that gathered momentum as it went, and there was almost no heavy guitar at all, let alone any of those catchy riffs. Naturally such a piece of work makes certain demands of its listeners, and because of those demands many people have decided that TAAB is a pretentious and pompous record. How dare Ian Anderson think we should spend forty-five minutes of our time listening to something he dreamt up in his moments of self-delusion? Not that I think TAAB should be everyone's cup of tea. If you don't like it you are entitled to your opinion, and your opinion is probably as good as anyone else's. As I said in another review, it's senseless to render judgments about one another's tastes in music (and here I mean music strictly as music, not as socio-political posturing or fashion statement), since music appreciation is firmly in the realm of the subjective; but what bothers me is labeling a record as pretentious and pompous simply because it doesn't cater to your particular tastes, or because you haven't got the time to give it a fair listen, or, worst of all, because those terms are so common and easy to use.
To be fair about it, there are some things about TAAB which I don't like. For one, it seems too fast-paced, which might sound ironic considering the song's length, nor do I think the production was top-notch. Also Ian Anderson had not yet gotten total control of his voice and his singing is full of youthful bravado and that pinched, sarcastic tone that we hear all over Aqualung. Contrarily, there are some more subdued, delicate passages throughout the piece, a particularly notable one being the "Do you believe in the day" section on side two. TAAB is the first outing for what was arguably Tull's best line-up, but in my opinion the truly great period for the band was to commence the following year, in 1973.
Jethro Tull's 1972 follow-up to the tremendously successful Aqualung album, Thick as a Brick, is one of the great grand-daddies of early prog and is to many minds perfectly representative of the so-called excess and self-indulgence of seventies art-rock, or whatever you wish to call it. In my opinion progressive rock was, unlike today, literally progressive at that time. The bands that flourished in the seventies were moving things forward at a truly amazing pace, and in that decade the biggest acts in rock were all unique, in that there was something about them, musically speaking as well as theatrically, which set them apart from everyone else and which was in its most genuine sense inimitable: Tull, Zeppelin, Sabbath, Queen, Yes, Floyd, to name a few. When Punk came along you had bands that were basically conservative to the core, bands that insisted on bringing rock and roll back to its roots. Those young tories had had quite enough of rock and roll as art, they were tired of poetic, narrative song lyrics, musical experimentation, innovation; they wanted the old anger, the bad reputations, the snotty, leather-jacketed, three-chorded rebellious conformity. There were some great punk bands, like the Clash for example, but overall punk seemed much more like a social movement than anything else and music was a tool, an expedient means of making a stink, whereas with prog and other types of forward-moving rock music of that era, music was an end in itself.
As for self-indulgence: it's precisely because of this trait that we have some truly outstanding art to consume and enjoy, and it's the opposite of it which results in so much flimsy and ephemeral aural debris coming over the airwaves. I'm not just referring to bland top-forty crapola, but to many a recording artist across the popular-music spectrum, from rap and hip-hop to so-called alternative rock, industrial, and metal. Unlike the premier artists of the seventies, you could play mix-and-match with personnel from many of these bands and you'd hardly know the difference. Everyone wants to look the same, sound the same, create the same effect, convey the same emotion. I can't flip through a music-mag anymore without seeing the same angry eye staring out from under the same barbed eyebrow, the same f-you finger sticking up from the same tattooed forearm. Who is impressed by these flagrant concessions to conformity anymore? These people are not self-indulgent, they are selfless, in the worst possible sense, and selflessness doesn't enhance creativity, it puts a stop to it. That isn't to say there isn't some great music being made. There is; but many of the prevalent musical genres, rap, hip-hop, and all the various sub-genres of metal in particular, are so deeply infused with the punk esthetic of angry, mean-spirited uniformity that one has to wonder if there is any real concern among them about taking music into the unknown.
When Thick as a Brick was issued it was virtually unheard of in the pop music industry. It's easy to use twenty-twenty hindsight and see that songs of epic proportions would become the norm for prog-rock acts throughout the decades to come, but you have to put yourself in 1972, when this sort of thing was only just getting underway. Not only was TAAB in most respects a novel and momentous release, it was also a great risk. Aqualung was tremendously successful, and Thick as a Brick sounded nothing like it. Aqualung was fraught with heavy, memorable riffs. Thick as a Brick was a spacious and evocative piece of music, a single song that gathered momentum as it went, and there was almost no heavy guitar at all, let alone any of those catchy riffs. Naturally such a piece of work makes certain demands of its listeners, and because of those demands many people have decided that TAAB is a pretentious and pompous record. How dare Ian Anderson think we should spend forty-five minutes of our time listening to something he dreamt up in his moments of self-delusion? Not that I think TAAB should be everyone's cup of tea. If you don't like it you are entitled to your opinion, and your opinion is probably as good as anyone else's. As I said in another review, it's senseless to render judgments about one another's tastes in music (and here I mean music strictly as music, not as socio-political posturing or fashion statement), since music appreciation is firmly in the realm of the subjective; but what bothers me is labeling a record as pretentious and pompous simply because it doesn't cater to your particular tastes, or because you haven't got the time to give it a fair listen, or, worst of all, because those terms are so common and easy to use.
To be fair about it, there are some things about TAAB which I don't like. For one, it seems too fast-paced, which might sound ironic considering the song's length, nor do I think the production was top-notch. Also Ian Anderson had not yet gotten total control of his voice and his singing is full of youthful bravado and that pinched, sarcastic tone that we hear all over Aqualung. Contrarily, there are some more subdued, delicate passages throughout the piece, a particularly notable one being the "Do you believe in the day" section on side two. TAAB is the first outing for what was arguably Tull's best line-up, but in my opinion the truly great period for the band was to commence the following year, in 1973.
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