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Description: Jethro Tull
Thick As A Brick (Golden Master)
1972
FLAC - Lossless
Tracks:
1 Thick As A Brick (Part 1) 22:39
2 Thick As A Brick (Part 2) 21:05
Release date: 10. March 1972 (UK) and 10. May 1972 (USA)
Recording location/date: December 1971 at Morgan Studios, London.
Guest musicians: David Palmer (string arrangement and conducting)
Production: Terry Ellis and Ian Anderson
Cover Concept by: -
Cover Art by: CCS
Musicians:
Ian Anderson (flute, acoustic guitar, violin, saxophone, trumpet, vocals)
Martin Barre (electric guitar, lute)
Barriemore Barlow (drums, timpani, percussion)
Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond (bass, spoken word)
John Evans (organ, piano, harpsichord)
Thick as a Brick (1972) is a concept album by the British rock band Jethro Tull. Its lyrics are built around a poem written by a fictitious boy, "Gerald Bostock" a.k.a. "Little Milton". The album only featured one song, lasting over 43 minutes. To accommodate the album on LP vinyl, the seamless track was split on both sides of the record. The epic is notable for its numerous time signature and tempo changes (not uncommon to the newly emerging progressive rock subgenre of rock), as well as a large number of themes throughout the piece, resembling a typical classical symphony in this regard, rather than a typical rock song. Released in 1972, Thick As A Brick was Tull's first true progrock offering, four years after the release of their first album. Not only was the musical structure complex, but many instruments uncommon in rock music were added. Whereas in prior numbers the band were content with guitars, drums, keyboards and (of course) Ian Anderson's signature flute, Thick As A Brick included synthesizer, harpsichord, xylophone, Hammond organ, violin, lute, and a string section (as well as acoustic guitar, electric guitar, drums, bass, piano, and flute).
While the previous album, Aqualung, stretched the band's wings further from the blues of the first three albums, it was still basically mainstream rock. Band leader Ian Anderson was surprised by the critical reaction to the previous album Aqualung as a "concept album", a label he has firmly rejected to this day. In an interview on In the Studio with Redbeard (which spotlighted Thick as a Brick), Ian Anderson's response to the critics was "if the critics want a concept album we'll give them a concept album and we'll make it so bombastic and so over the top." With Thick as a Brick, the band created an album deliberately integrated around one concept: a poem by an intelligent English boy about the trials of growing up. Beyond this, the album was a send-up of all pretentious "concept albums". Anderson also stated in that interview that "the album was a spoof to the albums of Yes and Emerson, Lake and Palmer much like what the movie Airplane had been to Airport". The formula was successful, and the album reached number one on the charts in the United States.
The original LP cover was a spoof of a twelve by sixteen inch (305 by 406 mm) multipage local newspaper with stories, competitions, adverts, etc., lampooning the parochial and amateurish local journalism that still exists in many places today. The "newspaper" also includes the entire lyrics to the song. The spoof newspaper had to be heavily abridged for conventional CD covers, but the 25th Anniversary Special Edition CD includes a partial facsimile; some content is missing, such as the original connect the dots activity and part of the "front page".
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