Customer Reviews

Crest Of A Knave

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This album ranks right up there with Stand Up, Benefit and Aqualung as releases that are classics from Mr. Anderson and friends.
If you thought they had lost it forever after the prog excursions of Thick As A Brick and Passion Play you would be justified in that viewpoint. They showed hints of a comeback with the sporadic brilliance of Songs From The Wood. Crest Of A Knave proves that writing them off for good was a mistake. There is not a clunker on the whole CD. Enjoy Ian's 'tongue in cheek' liner notes - they won the Heavy Metal Grammy for this release :-) While he may chuckle at this turn of events and sneer at his record company for not paying their airfare to attend the festivities (Alice Cooper endured the wrath of Metallica fans to accept the award on J.T.'s behalf), it is only fitting that, for someone who was so pompous in the aftermath of Aqualung, that the recognition be late AND also well deserved artistically. Yes, while it is a long way from Heavy Metal, excuse my laughter, it was classic Classic Rock! So, forget the Grammy trash-talk and focus on superlative music. Farm On The Freeway, Jump Start, Dogs In the Midwinter and Budapest rank up there with To Cry You a Song, Nothing Is Easy, Cross Eyed Mary, and, well, go on to name your personal favourites. My only crititcism is his new found affiliation for Mark Knopfler style vocals, most taxing in The Waking Edge and, no doubt, a result of a loss of vocal range. Nonetheless, this is more than compensated for by Martin Barre's outstanding guitar (he receives dedication from his boss in the notes) and the signature flute playing of Himself throughout.
Sound quality on the remaster is outstanding and the bonus track 'Part Of The Machine' works too! Like the best of the bonus track lot, there is no reason for this to have been left out in the first place, especially considering this was the first Tull digital release. Guess someone knew the value of keeping an ace up your sleeve. So, enjoy and raise a final glass of whatever, to one of the true original, and best, Classic Rock (NOT heavy metal) bands of the late 60's/early 70's. The music still stands up in the 21st century. Can't say that for too many bands before OR after Jethro Tull.

>You'd probably call Led Zeppelin a heavy metal band, wouldn't you?...

No, I wouldn't. The term hadn't even been invented yet. Black Sabbath was the first heavy metal group.

>...Did you ever listen to "Stairway to Heaven"? What's that instrument you hear? Could it be -- gasp! -- a _fl*te_?

It is NOT a flute. It's a recorder. (Several recorders, actually.)

This is one of my favorite albums from the 80's.
Included on this disc is the singles 'Steel Monkey' and 'Farm on the Freeway'.
As always great musicianship and vocals by Ian Anderson and great guitar work by Martin Barre.
It is definitely a Tull album that's worth giving a listen to.
Check it out.

The best of the 80's Tull albuns. Can't be compared to the old classics of the 70's, but has some good songs. Budapest and Farm on a Freeway are two of these. They have a Dire Straits mood in the storytelling lyrics and in the voice - guitar interplay.

I remember buying Crest of a Knave when it first came out, giving it a listen, then shelving it. Nothing really caught me at the time except "Farm on the Freeway". When "Rock Island" came out I pulled out "Crest" again, and for several weeks it stayed in my CD player. I couldn't get some of these songs out of my head, and Ian's flute work is haunting on this disk! Tull rebounded so well after the days of "A" and "Under Wraps" with such a musically strong album I was amazed. "Budapest" is a modern classic that holds up so well against classics like "Hymn 43" and "Songs From the Wood" and "Teacher". If you haven't heard "Crest" or only know the album because of it's Grammy win, then you should definately pick this up. This is the best of the 80's Tull, and alongside "Catfish Rising" and "Dot Com" is the best of modern day Jethro Tull. If you haven't heard Tull since "Aqualung" days then you have to get "Crest" to hear how the band has matured and grown, and for under $4 you can't go wrong.

This album is a real (grammy) winner. It is strange that it was very late in my "career" as a Tull-Fan that I discovered this album because: it is one of the best ones! The beautiful "Budapest" and "Said she was a dancer" are pieces of high quality. The whole album is more than worth a grammy! I promise: Just buy it and you'll become a Tull-Fan.

This is among my favorite Jethro Tull CDs. "Jump Start" is my favorite song on the album. But, "Mountain Men," "Dogs in the Midwinter," "Steel Monkey" and "Budapest" are also fun to listen to. The other four songs are entertaining and there's no need to hit the "skip" button on the CD player. Did it deserve the award for "Best Heavy Metal Album?" No. But, they could have simply removed "Heavy Metal" from the award and it would have been well deserved.

Also: This album won a Grammy for "Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance", a larger category that subsumes both hard rock and heavy metal; it did not win for heavy metal.

The first time I heard Tull was on MTV's "New Video Hour" back in 1987. The music video for "Steel Monkey" played. Normally, I would not have paid much attention but my favorite band at the time, Iron Maiden, named Tull as a major influence in numerous articles I read. So I recorded the video. It had an almost country rock sound which was very different from what I was used to hearing. I was a heavy metal fan. Still, I liked it and went out and bought Crest of a Knave, my first Jethro Tull studio album. It was the first of many Tull records I would buy so it definitely sparked a new musical interest in me. I'll always have a soft spot for it and was very happy Jethro Tull won the hard rock grammy. Now that I've listened to all of Tull's previous studio releases many times through the last 15 years, Crest of a Knave is towards the bottom of my top Tull list. It's not a bad album by any means. It is a soothing album at times with tracks like "Farm on the Freeway," "She Said She Was a Dancer," and "Budapest." A lot of the songs are about loss, whether it be a way of life or an intriguing woman. There is some sadness to this album. There is also two references to Jack the Ripper which might make a great Tull trivia question. My favorite track is "Raising Steam" which is, in contrast, a fun rocker. The single "Steel Monkey" is, lyrically, very clever. It gets three stars because Tull's earlier releases were so amazing. They raised the bar. As much as I liked this album in 1987, I found better music when I "discovered" earlier Tull albums one by one (a very fun time for me). Unlike most Tull fans, I wish Ian Anderson continued in the direction of "A" and "Under Wraps" (a more interesting and innovative path) rather than towards the more country rock sound of the late 1980s early 1990s. Note for those like me living in the vinyl and cassette past: this CD has two more tracks: "Waking Edge" and "Dogs in the Midwinter" (I've always thought 7 tracks was a bit skimpy).

Just kidding.

Back in 1987, a lot of people whined because this Tull album beat out Metallica for a Grammy award in the "heavy metal" category. Even some longtime Tull fans thought there was a problem here. But let's think this through.

The Grammy award for heavy metal was a _new_ category that year. And maybe the category wasn't (and isn't) quite as well-defined as Metallica fans would have liked us to believe. (You'd probably call Led Zeppelin a heavy metal band, wouldn't you? Did you ever listen to "Stairway to Heaven"? What's that instrument you hear? Could it be -- gasp! -- a _fl*te_?)

Besides, Tull had been around for _twenty years_ at that point and had never won a Grammy of _any_ kind. Considering how much the heavy-metal category owed, and still owes, to Tull's music (especially Martin Barre's searing guitar and Ian Anderson's manic on-stage presence), doesn't it make sense that the Grammy judges would think it appropriate to launch the new category with a bit of well-deserved homage to its so-far-unrecognized roots?

Then, too, this album was, and is, one of Tull's finest. Anderson was recovering from some severe throat problems and had recorded most of this album at home, with Martin Barre, Doane Perry, Gerry Conway, David Pegg, and some electronic instruments (notably a keyboard and a drum machine). But even so, it was a _lot_ closer to Tull's earlier rock than it was to the electronic-synth stuff they'd been releasing during the 1980s to that point.

Still not convinced this is "heavy metal"? Okay, maybe it isn't quite. But what category _does_ Tull belong in? If you wanted to give them a well-deserved Grammy, can you think of a better one?

The CD version includes a couple of tracks that weren't on the original vinyl LP ("Dogs in the Midwinter" and "The Waking Edge"). They're not exactly "extra" tracks, because they've always been available on the CD, but I still think of them as "extra" because I didn't have them in 1987. They're good.

My favorites from this album, though, are always going to be "Farm on the Freeway," "Said She Was a Dancer," and "Budapest". The latter two are especially funny if you're aware of Tull's reputation as the diametrical opposite of "party animals" and not a lot of fun for groupies to hang around with. Ian and the boys tend to read books and go to bed early, and none of them do d-r-*-g-s or anything. So it's kind of fun to hear Ian singing about a couple of times (one fictional, one not) in which he completely struck out with a member of the fair sex.

The word "singing" is sometimes a bit of a stretch, though; Anderson was taking it easy here, still recovering from those nasty throat problems, and he was keeping the melodies within a range that he could "speak" rather than roar. As a result his sound on this album has been compared to Mark Knopfler (aided, no doubt, by Barre's delightful guitar work on "Said She Was a Dancer"). That's okay -- the man was entitled to a rest and we were all glad he was in a condition to release albums at all.