Thick as a Brick - Jethro Tull - Summer of Prog

[@dumcasta9327]

Hi, as a kid this was my first concert ( my dad waited outside)! Thanks for talking about this.The title doesn’t mean stubborn, it means stupid! I know he backtracks in interviews now but he was attacking both music critics and his audience who considered him equivalent to their favourite football ( soccer) team.

[@kevinyoung4548]

Thank you for the lyrical quote at the start of the video....."where the hell was Biggles"....is probably my favorite lyric ever!

[@JTCurtisMusic]

@@kevinyoung4548 glad someone picked that up 😂

[@larrysmith5249]

This came out in my senior year in high school. First time I heard the whole album I was driving home from somewhere and it was playing on the local FM station. I pulled into our driveway and sat there for another 20 + minutes until it was finished. I couldn’t bare to miss a single minute of the music by running into the house and turning on my stereo. I always considered this my favorite album of all time.

[@rowcon359]

This is one of my favorite albums of all time. I really love how it ends with how it began with the acoustic guitar part.

[@AudioAl5195]

I really enjoy your videos and your style of reviewing. You are unique. TAAB has been one of my favorite albums since it was released. Yes I bought it in the very beginning. Loving “Stand Up” “Benefit”, “Aqualung” and “Living in the Past”, TAAB was an automatic purchase. My original copy is still pristine but I did buy the Steven Wilson remastered version. I think TAAB only gets better with repeated listenings.

[@JTCurtisMusic]

@@AudioAl5195 appreciate the kind words

[@AudioAl5195]

@@JTCurtisMusic you are very welcome I imagine that you put an awful lot of time into that video with all the added clips.

[@AndrewAmbrose]

Aqualung is one of my favorite albums, and it's one of the first rock albums I remember listening to from front to back. I was obsessed with it back in 2020. There is honestly a connected feeling with each song going into the next, especially with the religion theme and Aqualung being namedropped in the second track Cross-Eyed Mary. Thick as a Brick I finally listened to this summer (of prog), and it certainly lives up to its reputation. The Monty Python ties are really cool to learn about. 😄

[@masudashizue777]

This was my senior year in high school, and Jethro Tull was riding high. I naturally had this album but rarely played both sides.

[@williamlangan5902]

My sister got this for Christmas in 1972. It was on the Reprise label. Side 2 started out kinda creepy with the guitar riff slowed down. Your dancing made me laugh as does that look of exasperation every time someone comments and interrupts your video. So far I counted 10 Monty Python clips. Have a great day and remember- nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

[@johnhantsuk8461]

Enjoyed the review and the Monty Python clips. I'm old enough to have seen some of the episodes the first time round, occasionally staying up late to watch with my parents - which must have been embarrassing at times (occasional nudity, etc). I never got into Jethro Tull in a big way but my favourite tracks are the more riffy rock ones, especially Teacher and Minstrel in the Gallery.

[@victormartinezcancino9290]

I remember buying this album just because I thought the cover was so eye-catching. I didn't know that at the time, I would buy what would become one of my favorite albums of all time.

[@FrankD-t5i]

Great job JT. It’s been awhile but time to give this a listen again.

[@-brackets-]

0:47 and thank god you did, because it introduced me to one of my favorite prog albums ever

[@riggedyouupvr9616]

Likewise 🎉

[@KingFilth]

That Monty Python voice is spot-on!

[@benjamingk567]

What a great series! Made me appreciate progg in a new way, and Jethro Tull especially means a lot to me ❤️

[@riggedyouupvr9616]

I love this album! thanks JT!!!!!

[@loveshankme]

This was a really cool series, all things considered! I really liked the idea of going through a few chosen albums from a subgenre of rock and seeing what you liked. Would be cool to see you do this again, either with prog or another style!

[@daemonspudguy]

Would they really be able to perform this live? ELP performed all of the Tarkus suite live despite literally only being 3 people, so I have no doubts that Tull could play Brick with more people.

[@unacuentadeyoutube13]

Invisible's El Jardín de los Presentes is an amazing prog album that could easily compete with the best worldwide. It's like a proggier Wish You Were Here with hints of tango and jazz, or something like that, recorded during the darkest moment in Argentina's history (a coup d'etat took place just 6 months earlier that year).

[@BenFreund]

Well done! I'd love to hear a Passion Play follow up 😄

[@riggedyouupvr9616]

Passion play goes hard but is very dense. I am curious what JT thinks of it

[@Kaze-xu6rv]

Underdogs of prog is true. Shout out to Gentle Giant, tho for being the biggest underdogs of classic prog

[@pattardn]

My favourite piece of music by my favourite band.

[@Fripp234]

So JT, what's your ranking of this four album that you're review? Mine was. 1. Close To edge 2. Thick As Brick 3. In The Court Of Crimson King 4. Tarkus

[@JTCurtisMusic]

@@Fripp234 a good question! Might have to think about that a bit.

[@realmonologue]

Tarkus is last?! Ouch

[@Fripp234]

@@realmonologue Sorry mate, I put it in four because i only listen to the title track only.

[@realmonologue]

@@Fripp234 for me the ranking is actually 1 Tarkus 2 In the Court of the Crimson King 3 Close to the Edge 4 Thick As a Brick 1-3 are practically tied, near perfection, but for the life of me, I can’t get into thick as a brick. The first 13 minutes is actually amazing, but then it feels like the verses are just repeated over and over till the albums finished with nothing new to show.

[@julesotis13]

U got me at Monty Python

[@prestonperk30]

Don’t know this album at all but I gotta support the channel

[@JTCurtisMusic]

I appreciate that, but definitely give it a listen, it's an experience.

[@RC-gf8cs]

My fav tull album still have org vinly.saw frm warchild msg nyc thru 95 .every tour.." wholelottatull"..now?? Im old

[@Robomatic]

Thick as a Brick means you are stupid rather than hard headed in this case. The lower class deemed to be irretrievable brainless and the upper class needing to lead them. It is about class issues in Britain as is plain in the lyrics. Also Biggles was a comic book hero for English schoolboys that was published beginning in the 1930s. Monty Pythons used it for comic effect. I saw Jethro Tull on the Brick and the Passion Play tours back in the 70s. Fun times

[@JeremiahPickardMusic]

Hmm, I wonder what the essential track will be this time 😂

[@theFILMNERD653]

Probably Thick as a Brick! Possibly even Thick as a Brick!

[@ImmutableUniverse]

Track 1 is soo good honestly.

[@JTCurtisMusic]

@@theFILMNERD653 shhh! Don’t give it away!

[@fran98832]

so glad to see you reviewing this album, loved it, the whole album is the prime example of a journey in music, i understood it on the first listenings as the story of a young prince who challenges his father and becomes his own form of authority and leads the kingdom to prove himself...and i remember the first time i heard the record i was amazed by part 2 with all the reprisals and ideas they threw in, especially at the finale when ian says the album title and i was like "he said the thing!!" as if he also didn't at the beginning xd great video man, keep cool!! p.s. will you ever make another one of these but aimed at classic double albums? i think it'd be cool!!

[@julesotis13]

I'm in patient 🎉

[@julesotis13]

Summer finally effed off

[@musicfanfromohio]

Amazing series, you should do a Winter of Fusion 😂😂😂

[@JTCurtisMusic]

@@musicfanfromohio well we’ll definitely dip our toe into fusion with the Zappa playlist.

[@acsoccerlunch]

@@JTCurtisMusicor winter of folk maybe. I’d love to hear some James Taylor, Cat Stevens, Harry Chapin, and of course, Gordon Lightfoot being talked about.

[@realmonologue]

I know your doing Frank Zappa next, but are there any other albums next in line this autumn? Or is that a secret…

[@JTCurtisMusic]

Nah that was just a Summer project, this was supposed to come out in September, but alas. Maybe I'll do it again next summer though, it was fun.

[@arshiahomayoonmehr2420]

This album Is Unique for having only 1 song and it is one of the best albums ever But Seriously even if the music was "John Lennon and Yoko Ono" experimental album or even Worse a "Taylor Swift" album 😁😁😁 Its still Worth Having it On Vinyl because of that cool Cover!!!! The Book/Magazine cover itself is Goldfish Worthy Edit:Wait a Minute you said that too at the end 😅😅😅

[@teddyfurstman1997]

Thick as a brick is a fun Prog rock album. 💿

[@gibsonfan159]

Barlowe is very underrated still.

[@Dinerboy11]

My play count for TAAB is easily in the triple digits.

[@gwzirkle]

Do you have a link to that Pink Floyd performance video of "Echoes" you show at the 14:50 mark?

[@JTCurtisMusic]

It's from Live at Pompeii

[@gwzirkle]

@@JTCurtisMusic Thank you

[@JPproductions303]

I broke my hand recently and i understand how shitty it feels not being able to play guitar

[@JTCurtisMusic]

@@JPproductions303 it definitely sucks. Hope you’re feeling better.

[@julesotis13]

Ive been awake about two horus and most of it has been filled by no active intent with michael Palin python and of course cats and misic

[@barreleskoglund711]

I cant belive you chose thick as a brick as the essential track 🙄

[@daubreyjaneweirdsley]

I saw Jethro Tull play for the first time at a psychedelic bash at the London School of Economics as a seventeen year old hippie girl in 1968, with Soft Machine and the Crazy World of Arthur Brown. I seem to remember the flyer for the event read: Mind Dragnet - Bubbles - Happenings - Mark Boyle's Liquid Light Show. Arthur Brown was superb, sort of Screamin' Jay Hawkins meets Grand Guignol on acid. Soft Machine - second only to Syd's Pink Floyd in the London UFO underground - blew everyone away with their collision of Dada Esque English whimsy, avant garde, psychedelic improvisational jazz rock. As for Jethro Tull they were an unremittingly dull third rate blues band. Their only stand out feature which I guess got them noticed, was their singer who was passing himself off as a kind of Worzel Gummidge who did the great jazz musician Roland Kirk impersonations rather badly. Twenty minutes into their set two thirds of the audience, who all being pretty stoned, who were quite prepared to listen to most rubbish if it appeared at the very least a little outré or a bit weird, left like me for the bar or went outside to smoke a joint or impart some piece of universal wisdom to a passing stranger as 200 mikes of 'Blue Cheer' went ripping through their frontal cortex. The summer of that same year - '68 - I went to the first free hippie music concert in Hyde Park. Included on the bill were Pink Floyd sans Syd Barrett - hugely disappointing - they had lost their viscerally dangerous, improvisational edge and other World 'Alice Through the Looking Glass' strangeness that Barrett had brought to the band, and Tyrannosaurus Rex first outing. Marc Bolan went from Mod maven to fey androgynous hippie pixie who scrubbed his acoustic guitar and bleated like Larry the Lamb. Sort of 'proto punk' Incredible String Band does Eddie Cochran. The music was a bit useless but at least Bolan was pretty - this was before his fat boy turkey in baco foil glam rock period. Finally there was the 'Tull' as they would affectionately become known as by their aficionados. In the six months that had elapsed since I'd had the misfortune to see them at the LSE they hadn't improved, in fact they were even worse, but this time they had acquired a little more pretension. Little did we know that we were witnessing the beginning of that most terrible of music genres, the dawn of the age of 'prog' rock!!!!' Shriek!! Shriek!! The singer still dressed as Wurzel Gummidge gurned his way through the entire set, wheezing asthmatically into his flute while attempting to stand on one leg without falling over, and the band rumbled relentlessly on bludgeoning the audience with a combination of cod metal/folk/prog rock with a side order of pedestrian white boy blues. Luckily it was a wonderful English summers day, the vibe was beautiful - as we used to say - as were the 'Beautiful People.' There was an abundance of cheap red wine, 'California Sunshine,' 'Strawberry Fields' and 'Lebanese Candy' to ameliorate the tedium of the 'Tull.' Little did we know that the Tull represented a counter revolution to the counterculture and the wonder that was late 60's underground music. Little did we know that they presaged the horror that was to come, the horror that would be - Genesis, Yes, ELP, King Crimson, Gentle Giant, Van der Graaf Generator, Barclay James Harvest and all those juvenile dystopian futures, Tolkien sword and sorcery obsessed pseudo symphonic 'pomp rock' rock bands . Lots of ersatz virtuoso showboating, embarrassing 6th form lyrics and widdly widdly time signatures, signifying nothing other than their own ineptitude and lack of imagination. 50 odd years on to paraphrase William Whitelaw, dear old Jethro Tull are still "Going round and round the World stirring up apathy."