Don’t be misled by the title of this album, it’s not about Canada. There are no musical portraits of Burton Cummings; no vast, noisy murals depicting Paul Muni’s discovery of the Moose; no sonic-sculptings of Gordie Howe’s reportedly grotesque looking feet; and no pop-playlets concerning the sins of a certain Prime Minister and his wife. None of this rears its surly head on this particular Tull-toon. Too bad, if would’ve made a great concept album, y’know, Bungle In Manitoba.
No, the concept on A is a little different, but a concept it is nonetheless. Therefore, A) A qualifies as yet another in a long line of irksome concept albums; B) A walks that slippery thin ledge between gory pretentiousness and misunderstood brilliance C) A is so boring that it could dry your clothes off even if you were stranded in a rain forest with the Ooogie-Boogie Tribe and Sheena of the Trees.
But first let’s have a word about “concept albums.” BOOOOOO!!! Now let’s have a few more in order to clarify that declaration of teenage rudeness. Right from their innocuous beginnings concept albums have been nature’s way of paying rock’n’roll back for its impertinence and cocky attitude. They’ve developed as a major influence in rock’n’roll as rock’n’roll itself developed in its understanding of its own technology. A technology that was being created just to soothe the savage creations of the demon rock spirit. And therein lies one of the reasons that rock’n’roll is simply NOT what it used to be. As it became more and more aware of that special technology that was being created in order to keep it going and growing, rock’n’roll leapt headfirst into the seas of ohms, wires and impedances that would eventually enable it to recreate note for note, sound for sound, noise for noise, absolutely anything that rock musicians, be they talented or simply hackmaster, wanted.
Now, some of you are going to say what’s so bad about that? Well, the basic fissionable material that made rock’n’roll at all POSSIBLE was that it was created on a simple, fundamental level, at all times lacking sophistication. All the innocence of the psychedelic wars, and all the power of its music which is just NOW being fully re-appreciated came from the sense of wonder being enjoyed by musicians as they went into a studio, not knowing exactly what was going on, creating, from raw nerve (attitude, if you wish), a sound that influenced an entire generation of listeners. Production values weren’t cluttered, as they are now, simply because the equipment lacked the complexity to accomplish everything. (Let’s just say that back in those days, properly miking a drum set was not the most important thing on everyone’s mind.) Whew--talk about concepts!
Anyway, to get back to A and Jethro Tull. How can anyone take seriously an album that was admittedly (and proudly) written in the studio and on the road? A scrap here and a scrap there--it makes for fine fragmentation stuff, but a concept?
The other thing about A is that it is the same album that Ian Anderson’s been making since the burbling days of Aqualung. Repetition is fine in nuclear physics, but in rock’n’roll it’s simply old and in the way.
I can’t seriously judge this album because it sounds the same as everything else that’s been clumped together under the title of “progressive” music. Kansas, Genesis, Yes, Tull--all these bands have about as much to do with rock’n’roll as Ernest Angley has to do with salvation.
Get your own Free Home Page