Customer Reviews

Thick As A Brick

5 star:		(89)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I still listen to this album once a month or so, and have done so with at least that frequency since I bought it on vinyl when it was released in 1972. I love it, perhaps more than words can say. Hope the younger generation who don't know Tull buy it, you won't regret it!

My favorite from the 69-74's Prog.

Not as cohesive as other great concept albums from this period,
but the most passionate of them all.

After hundreds of listen, the river is still flowing free & easy.

Fresh as the rare ould mountain dew!

this record was way ahead of the time of
1972,it showed how progresive tull really
was,and there was not any bands doing music
like this,this was probably the best music
I have heard from tull,along with passion play
there was so much creativity going on with these
records,it was great to hear that back then,I am glad
to own the remastered versions.I
also seen tull thick as a brick as my first concert,its still the
greatest one I have seen.

This recording still has amazing energy after all of these years!

Nobody can make their sound!

I can remember the first time I listened to "Thick As A Brick." From the intro guitar picking and gentle flute accompaniment, I knew what I was listening to was special. Those intro lines, "Really don't mind, if you sit this one out..." kind of gives you a feel for Ian Anderson's feelings as he was making this. A single rock song that spanned both sides of a 45 minute vinyl album. It was pretty much a great big experiment...that went right. On side one, there's not a bad moment. Through absolute calm acoustic moments and blazing electric moments, the listener is taken through all aspects of being "Thick As A Brick." Every mood is transitoned just right. This album displays a high degree of musical harmony. As side one fades into the gentle hum of nighttime sounds, side two also opens with atmospheric sounds and has several false starts, and for the first 7 or 8 minutes there's several extended discordant moments that make the listener feel like this song is pretty much over. Think of the first 8 minutes of side 2 as a sort of intermission. After intermission, the song starts up pretty much where it left off, but here, Ian Anderson doesn't have much left to say. The rest displays the same high degree of musical harmony as side one, but not really as much creativity or unexpectedness. So, side two would be better titled: "Thick As A Brick, A Reprise." A very essential album to any rock fan. If you like this, check out Jethro Tull's other 45 minute single song album, "A Passion Play" which is better than this in several respects (the main one being that it was done after "Thick As A Brick" with more experience and expertise).

Wow! is all I can say after listening to Thick as a Brick by Jethro Tull. When I first recieved the album, I was quite skeptical as to how much I would enjoy the album. After listening through the album for the first time, I was amazed, yet quite bored of the 40+ extraneous minutes. But after I listened to the album for 3 times, I was hooked on it, despite the fact that there are some slow parts in the album. All of part one is completely excellent, while part two from about minute 30 to minute 40 went extremely slow. But at the end of the album, Ian Andersen really picked up the slack with one of the best endings I have ever heard of a song. This album releases the true potential of Ian Andersen, unlike his most famous (but still excellent album) "Aqualung."

Thick As A Brick (1972.) Jethro Tull's fifth album.

By the time the early seventies had rolled around, Jethro Tull had begun to make the transformation from a blues-based rock band into a highly progressive one that incorporated elements of medieval folk music. Their recent LP, Aqualung, demonstrated that they were capable of combining rock with medieval folk stylings, and that they could produce excellent mainstream-based rock tunes. Come 1972 and the band was going to try something different - One big long song that took up two sides of an entire album. And later in the year, Thick As A Brick hit stores. Read on for my review.

Thick As A Brick is an excellent song, for a number of reasons. For one thing, it's the most medieval-sounding hit they ever scored, which confirmed they were more than just another classic rock band - they were a highly progressive one. The song explores a plethora of different styles in its forty-five minute duration. Of all of the band's albums, this is by far the most difficult one to review - but that doesn't mean it isn't excellent. Just talking about this album doesn't do it justice - you actually need to listen to it to get an appreciation for it.

The nineties Tull reissue of Thick As A Brick include two bonus tracks - A live version of Thick As A Brick and interview clips. The interview is nothing too special, and it certainly won't be of interest to anyone other than die-hard fans of the band. The live version of the title track isn't much better. The sound quality is quite lacking - Anderson's flute is virtually inaudible! And since his flute is one of the things that make Tull such an amazing band, that's a real shame. What really pisses me off is that the edited version wasn't included as a bonus track - they had room to put it on here.

Although it could be considered their strangest album, Jethro Tull's Thick As A Brick is also one of their most excellent compositions. If you're a fan of progressive rock, Thick As A Brick is an album you really need to check out. It stands as proof that Jethro Tull always has been and always will be considered masters of progressive rock stylings.

For Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick" album, Ian Anderson writes the lyrics, composes the music, sings the songs, does the arrangements, and then finds time to play the flute, acoustic guitar, violin, saxophone, trumpet and whatever else is lying around. On top of that, he creates Gerald "Little Milton" Bostock, the eight-year-old prodigy whose scandalous poem "Thick as a Brick" was deemed unfit to receive first prize from The Society For Literary Achievement And Gestation (SLAG), and Julian Stone-Mason B.A., who reviews the Jethro Tull album "Thick as a Brick."

All of this is chronicled in the four pages of the St. Cleve's Chronicle, all of which is faithfully reproduced for the little booklet that comes with this CD. The review by "Stone-Mason" concludes: "One doubts at times the validity of what appears to be an expanding theme throughout the two continuous sides of this record but the result is at worst entertaining and at least aesthetically palatable." Who am I to argue? I enjoy the satirical articles in Anderson's faux newspaper (e.g., "Non-Rabbit Missing") almost as much as I enjoy the music on the album.

Thematically "Thick as a Brick" is similar to "Aqualung." Again the writing is dense and enigmatic, but of course this is part of the fun. Anderson bemoans the social decay but he sees salvation down the road, but ultimately the lyrics take a back suit to the music and the brilliant arrogance of creating sections on the "single track" that are unique and yet clearly part of the whole. The thematic unity of the songs on "Aqualung" is now more than matched by a musical integration of various styles into a complete whole. You can recognize aspects of English folk music and classical bits in the mode of Handel, along with various types of jazz.

One of the nice results of this grand design is that for the first time Anderson's singing seems well suited to the music. By this point in the group's history Anderson had surrounded himself with the musicians who would finally allow him to explore his unique artistic vision. In the end just remember: "your wise men don't know how it feels/to be thick as a brick." This is Jethro Tull's best album from start to finish, although certainly they come close to reclaiming the magic in "Passion Play."

I remember seeing Tull at MSG for the Aqualung Tour circa 1971. The show ended and they came out for the encore. Ian announced this new work called Thick as a Brick (...)The performance was such a departure from Aqualung that it felt like a second concert. I recommend Thick as a Brick to anyone interested in hearing the departure point of the band into what we know now. In many ways this album sent them on their way and enabled them to avoid becoming a one trick pony.(...).

What was this record about? Was it a complete joke or was there ever a serious motive or theme? There's a "conundrum" in here: actors don't know and don't want to know but if only they knew they'd "break wind and be gone" (but every parent endeavors to raise a mindless actor with the active connivance of the encompassing society or something to that effect). Maybe the composer ran out of time or inspiration to finish a coherent story so....somebody came up with the bright idea of pinning responsibility on a fictitious schoolkid (taken at face value by radio jocks at least for a couple days!) and Jethro & Co. worked harder on the packaging than the music according to the faintly Spinal Tappish interview that closes this reissue. Possibly the fabricated local newspaper that made up the original packaging was cleverer than the music. In any event the record went to #1 during the dull weeks of early 1972. Thus the final joke: Jethro & Co had to perform this number at concerts for the next year! Medieval folk? Indeed, with renaissance marches and medieval jazz fusion!