Under Wraps is the one and only Tull album I don't care for at all.Originally Posted by zombywoof
Under Wraps is the one and only Tull album I don't care for at all.
"Me no saboteur" Hell yea! Tundra and Apogee are my favs off of UW. If memory serves (and it usually doesn't) Tundra did not appear on the original album. I found the UW CD in the bargain bin in an old Peguin Feather Records and I recall Tundra and General's Crossing (a horrible song. Use it to scare away zombies) were bonus tracks but the rest of the CD is solid and you won't find an artist taking such a turn in style for the better.
There arent many bands that even make as many as ten albums!
All the bonus tracks from UW that appeared on the cassette and cd versions were excellent...
Unfortunately, lots of older bands in that era were pressured "keep with the times," so to speak, often with lousy results.
The early '80s were a great time for synth-pop, but Jethro Tull didn't have much to add to the style, IMO, and were best off sticking with music that was some combination of hard rock and acoustic.
I'd even say I loathe it... only one weak track : Europe sumthin'... the rest are all horrendous to horrible
unless they're from the 70's or late 90's, I highly doubt that
maybe, but A and TB&TB were already quite weak in terms of respecting the Tull heritage.
my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.
Love Tull so much I don't even know if I can do this, but here goes:
1. TaaB: All-time desert island disc for me, bar none, I was 18 at the time and had a "rough" relationship with my dad, when I heard it the first time (purchased the British copy at JEM records in The Bronx before the US release) through my Koss Pro4AA headphones I swear Ian was singing about my life, cried during the "Where the hell was Biggles?" stuff at the end.
2. Benefit: First Tull I ever heard, courtesy of my friend's reel-to-reel tape deck while working as a camp waiter, was hooked at "In days of peace, sweet-smelling summer nights", had no idea what the band or singer looked like, was fascinated. BTW does Ian sound pissed off during that album, or what?
3. Aqualung: Sick of it now (who isn't?) but it was a fantastic follow-up to Benefit.
4. APP: Didn't care for it at first (too dense, too much sax) but it has grown on me over the years, Ian's most complex work no doubt.
5. Stand-Up: Embryonic Tull plus, Ian's feeling his way towards his own musical niche, some real interesting songwriting considering the band's first blues-oriented effort.
6. Minstrel: The line-up was secure, a really strong effort all around.
7. Songs/Heavy Horses: This was one long album, no?
8. Too Old: OK, shoot me, have always loved the softer acoustic side of Tull, and the soft orchestrated songs of this effort left me swooning.
9. Broadsword: Tull going back to it's roots so to speak, A left me cold but Broadsword once again piqued my interest.
10. Everything else is just a blur.
Up early on an Easter Sunday morning while my wife sleeps and I sip my coffee in peace and quiet... and what do I do for fun? Tally the votes in this Tull thread! Sad as it seems, it actually WAS fun for me. Or at least, it was interesting in a few cases. Only Dot Com received a big fat goose egg of Zero votes, with every other studio album getting at least one or two nods (aside from the IA solo releases, that is - although TAAB 2 did find it's way into the list with 1 vote).
Not a lot of surprises in the upper echelon, but I would have liked to see War Child have a slightly higher ranking than it does. Also nice to see Roots To Branches place respectably - although it's not on my list, I do really like that album, it's quite unique and has a moody, mystical feel to it. And I'll hold my head up high that my beloved "A" got five votes.
The rankings by our esteemed colleagues....
Thick As A Brick - 24 (literally in every list except the OP's)
Songs From The Wood - 23
A Passion Play / Aqualung / Minstrel In The Gallery - 21
Stand Up / Benefit / Heavy Horses - 20
Living In The Past - 13
War Child - 10
Stormwatch - 8
Roots To Branches - 6
This Was / "A" / Crest Of A Knave - 5
Chateau D'Isaster Tapes / Bursting Out - 4
Too Old To Rock And Roll, Too Young To Die! / Live At Isle Of Wight / Christmas Album - 3
Broadsword And The Beast / Under Wraps / Rock Island / Catfish Rising - 2
Thick As A Brick 2 / 20 Years Of JT / A Little Light Music - 1
J-Tull Dot Com - 0
(Too Old To RNR was listed four times, but Sturgeon's Lawyer then replaced it with Bursting Out)
(The "Life Is A Long Song" E.P. was listed, but in the same list as Living In The Past, which contains that E.P. anyway)
Last edited by Progatron; 04-05-2015 at 09:47 AM.
Interviewer of reprobate ne'er-do-well musicians of the long-haired rock n' roll persuasion at: www.velvetthunder.co.uk and former scribe at Classic Rock Society. Only vaguely aware of anything other than music.
*** Join me in the Garden of Delights for 3 hours of tune-spinning... every Saturday at 5pm EST on Deep Nuggets radio! www.deepnuggets.com ***
Who's to say that I wasn't including them in the statement you quoted?
I think that both of those albums are better than UW, but I'm not a big fan of either of them.
absolutely. Both are more Tullian than UW... and both are obviously better - though it would be near-impossible to do worse than UW.
I mean, even ELP, Gensis, Yes and Floyd never stooped so low as Tull did with UW.
my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.
UW is a far better album than either Invisible Touch or We Can't Dance imo. Double that for Black Moon/ItHS. And personally I'd rather hear it than Momentary Lapse or Division Bell too.
I am a big Under Wraps fan. I put aside my pre-conceived notion of what Tull is, and found that the LP succeeded on its own merits. The songs are good, the concept is coherent, and the overall atmosphere is compelling. The playing suits the music. I too would want the e-drums replaced by a live drummer and I hope Ian will actually get around to doing that in a remix (he has mentioned the possibility...)
If you want a sense of how a real drummer might sound with the material, here are two YT full-concert vids fro the UW tour. The first one is far better in terms of sound/visuals but has less UW material. I think these are some of the best Tull shows from the 1980s.
I think it's in the same ballpark as Invisible Touch, though still a bit worse. At least Invisible Touch has some nostalgia value for me, whereas none can be said for Under Wraps. I do not think it's as good as We Can't Dance, but I actually like We Can't Dance (it's a long album and if you hack out the 4 or 5 worst songs, you get 35-40 mintues of pretty good stuff, IMO). Better than Black Moon. As far as Momentary Lapse and Division Bell, I don't think that those are good comps - the Tull comps for those albums would be Crest of a Knave and Rock Island. Momentary Lapse and Division Bell were attempts to invoke the classic Floyd Sound. At the time, Crest of a Knave and Rock Island were marketed as Tull getting back to guitars and sounding like they were "supposed" to sound.
I think that Tull's forays into synth-drenched '80s are worse than Genesis' and Yes' from roughly the same era, probably because Tull's '70s virtues are the farthest removed from that kind of thing, of the three bands. In other words, Tull's synth period is less satisfying for me not only in terms of what is there, but what is not there, if that makes any sense. Synths had already been a significant part of the music of Yes and Genesis in the later '70s, so the transition from what they were doing then to what they did in the early '80s was not quite as huge.
I also think that Genesis and Yes were just better at doing soing simpler, catchier songs with synthesizers than Ian Anderson was. For Tull, I don't think that they need to be intricate and proggy to be good, but I think that they are better off being simpler with guitars than keyboards and drum machines. I think that Crest of a Knave is a much better product of simplification than Broadsword or Under Wraps (even though the keyboards and drum machines weren't completely gone) because it brings back the big guitars for most of the tracks.
Last edited by Facelift; 04-06-2015 at 10:58 AM.
My take would be that Crest and Rock Island are the nadir of any music from any of those bands. Rock (Island) bottom. Even the ELP albums are betterPlus, Tull became a synthy band the moment John Evan departed and Eddie Jobson came in. They really evolved that way only a couple years later than Genesis. At any rate, for my the songs on UW are what work, and that was the last album prior to Roots To Branches that was true, or that I could stand.
I thought Roots to Branches was pretty awful - almost a parody of the band. They still sound vital and genuine on Crest of a Knave.My take would be that Crest and Rock Island are the nadir of any music from any of those bands. Rock (Island) bottom. Even the ELP albums are better
I actually bought a copy of UW at the used cd store today so I could drive around with it. I still like it but I realize this seems to be the point where Ian started repeating the name of the song ad freaking nauseum in almost every song. Also I never quite realized what an influence Thomas Dolby must have had on Ian. He's even doing his vocal hiccups and affectations. I can't help but think if TD had done this album people would have a generally higher regard for it.
BTW I bought the remaster of the album and it seems to sound pretty good but there's even less bass than I remember. Has anyone compared the original to the remaster?
1 Songs from the Wood
2 Minstrel in the gallery
3 Aqualung
4 Thick as a brick
5 Stand up
6 benefit
7 heavy horses
8 This was
9 Roots to branches
10 Broadsword and the beast
Never was a fan of Ians sax-playing so no Passion Play and Warchild in my list. I also quite like Under Wraps. I think it is an album with great songs that were made ugly because of the use of those horrible drum machines and 80ies synth noises. With a real drummer this might have made my top 10.
Rankings in polls mean diddely squat! The thread is about YOUR top ten Tull, no one elses!
Ian also plays sax on This Was (I think he called it "claghorn" or sumthin'), if memory serves
Personally, I saw the UW tour, and TBH, the concert was rather atrocious as well, because all the UW tracks played were done as if a druml machine was playing like on the album. I personally did not like at all that line-up of Tull: Vettese, Pegg and a drummer (was it Mattacks on drums, though? I know it doesn't stick with the dates, but I seem to remember him on that tour)
my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.
Everyone please send a PM to yourself listing your top 10 and disregard this thread. There's no need to read anyone else's responses. And by all means, do not attempt to have some harmless fun... as you can see, that is frowned upon.
Interviewer of reprobate ne'er-do-well musicians of the long-haired rock n' roll persuasion at: www.velvetthunder.co.uk and former scribe at Classic Rock Society. Only vaguely aware of anything other than music.
*** Join me in the Garden of Delights for 3 hours of tune-spinning... every Saturday at 5pm EST on Deep Nuggets radio! www.deepnuggets.com ***
"a strange bamboo flute with a saxophone mouthpiece attached to it called a claghorn – a dreadful instrument that I invented"
—Ian Anderson, interview with BBC Radio Scotland, 27 August2001
In no particular order, my list would be all the studio albums from Stand Up through Songs From the Wood, plus Crest of a Knave.
Living In The Past
Thick As A Brick
Benefit
Aqualung
A Passion Play
Minstel In The Gallery
Heavy Horses
Catfish Rising
Songs From The Wood
Christmas Album
That was unexpected and random. (I assume this was meant to be funny-which it was. So out of the blue!)
Here's my two cents worth:
Thick As A Brick
A Passion Play
Aqualung
Benefit
Songs From The Wood
Heavy Horses
Stand Up
Minstrel In The Gallery
Broadsword And The Beast
Stormwatch
The Prog Corner
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