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Jethro Tull - Nothing Is Easy: Live At The Isle Of Wight 1970 CD (album) cover

NOTHING IS EASY: LIVE AT THE ISLE OF WIGHT 1970

Jethro Tull

 

Prog Folk

4.23 | 179 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Uruk_hai
5 stars Review #71

Absolutely mind-blowing!!!

One time I was talking with a friend of mine about the Monterey, Woodstock, and Isle of Wight festivals and he asked me that if I could go back in time which one of those three concerts I would attend, I said something like "are you kidding me? Jethro Tull played at the Isle of Wight, I wouldn't go anywhere else".

Among several artists of the size of Chicago, Procol Harum, The Moody Blues, Cactus, Jimi Hendrix, Mile Davis, The Doors, Family, Ten Years After, Donovan, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Sly & The Family Stone, Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen, The Who, Joni Mitchell, the Brazilian Bossa Nova singers Gilberto Gil & Caetano Veloso and many, many others, Jethro Tull gave an amazing performance in the isle featuring songs from their first three albums and the premiere of "My God".

The line-up of Anderson, Barre, Burke, Cornick, and Evan was in its better days: you can almost touch the energy in the air when you play this record. The performance is very energetic as they used to be back in good 1970; it's not that they were competing with anyone, that was the beauty of the hippie era of music: the bands didn't play music to compete against each other, but for playing in the same festival that a band of the caliber of let's say Ten Years After, they HAD to be extremely energetic on stage so they will be well received by the audience.

The concert starts with "My Sunday feeling", which is the first song on the first album. I must admit that this is my favorite song in all Jethro Tull's discography. Anderson gives a little introduction before the song starts in which he explains that Martin Barre had listened to the original album in which Mick Abrahams was the guitarist and he was going to play it. During the little speech, we can hear Bunker, Barre, and Cornick tuning their instruments. The live version is considerably stronger than the studio version.

The performance of "My God" (which was a song later included in their legendary "Aqualung" album) sounds mind-blowingly intense; it's not that Jeffrey Hammond is a bad bass player, but the work made in this version by Glenn Cornick is astonishing.

The version of "Dharma for one" is great too: the band added lyrics to this originally instrumental song (along with the addition of Evan's organ lines) and the drum solo by Bunker was really well captured in the recording. The performances of songs from the "Stand up" and "Benefit" albums such as "Bouree", "Nothing is easy" and the immortal "With you there to help me" present an undeniable high level of improvisation. Man! I wish I was there in the audience!

This is how a live album should sound like.

SONG RATING: My Sunday feeling, 5 My God, 5 With you there to help me, 5 To cry you a song, 4 Bouree, 5 Dharma for one, 5 Nothing is easy, 4 We used to know/For a thousand mothers, 4

AVERAGE: 4.63

PERCENTAGE: 92.5

RATING ALBUM: 5 stars

I ranked this album #97 on my TOP 100 favorite Progressive Rock albums of all time.

Uruk_hai | 5/5 |

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