AQUALUNG LIVE

Jethro Tull

Prog Folk

3.47 | 105 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

I was pretty lucky to get this album on the local store. The seller told me it's a limited edition, and they have only few copies of it.

Here we have exactly what is written in the title, a live performance of the whole Aqualung album. This is a performance in the presence of a small audience, organized by XM Radio in order to re-create classics albums in live performance. The small hall, the semi acoustic instruments, and the calm atmosphere in general, gives a kind of "unplugged" show in the vain of the 90's shows done by MTV.

In spite of his vocals current limitations, Ian Anderson sings wonderful, and his delivery is warm, deep, and mature. His flute is great as usual, and varied utilities that done in the flute, succeed to amaze again, in God he spits into it! Most of the time it sounds more conventional, though, but still it's Andersons unique flute sound. Anderson is also a great acoustic guitar player, a fact that does not mentioned often.

The other crew is great also, consists from Martin Gore on electric guitar from the original recording, and the rest members, younger and as Ian A mention with a sense of hummer, "where babes-in-arms or even more embryonic when aqualung recorded back in 71". All of them are great musicians and give high contribution to the results.

In general the sound is quite close to the original, but got a new interpretation, as written on the CD cover. The major changes done in Mother Goose, its more developed here, with a nice section featuring accordion played by Andrew Giddings, the keyboardist, and a duo bass-percussion, by Noyse and Perry. The next major change is done in Hymn 43 (next song after God). Instead of thunders of distortion, comes a quite version of this song. I must admit that at first spins, I've missed the storms, but this version is very good and enjoyable also. Near the end of the song, it becomes more stormy, to remind the original version.

After the show we get some jokes and banters by Ian Andersons, for instance the riffs explanation (another monkey), which is wise, amusing, and true.

All in all, it's an excellent performance, a great addition to any prog collection, in addition to the original Aqualung. Ian Anderson mention in (non typical?) humbleness that this one could not concerned as a full price disk and therefore it's done in a limited edition in a low price, for charity. I don't agree with him. This is a great CD and tremendous show. So next time when you feel like listening to Aqualung it could be definitely done via this album. Now im just waiting that XM Radio would manage to convince GENESIS to do SEBTP in the same vein, with every member included, no excuses will be acceptable :-)

ShW1 | 4/5 | 2006-11-13

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