THICK AS A BRICK LIVE IN ICELAND

Ian Anderson has been in Iceland for 9 shows, mostly in Reykjavik where this show was recorded. The musician feel the presence of music here, because a lot of people plays an instrument or sings. Here on this concert, the band took the same instruments to recreate the first concept album "Thick as A Brick", originally from 1972. The performance has some additional theatrical input with actor, singer and dancer Ryan O'Donnell which allowed Ian Anderson to add some more flute to the music. Even is this album is a kind of parody, I was surprised to see Ian invite 2 peoples from the audience to make a standup comic stunt of a fake prostate test. But it didn't last long before the band were back to the music. The performance of this concept album let some space for a bit of improvisation and some added violin and flute. After 40 years, it's still a enjoyable piece of music where some theme are repeated a few times during this 50 minutes to keep the concept alive. As for the second part of the show "Thick As A Brick 2", if it's the suite of this concept about this young boy, it's different because we feel that each songs are independent to each others, the concept being to present 5 hypothetical stories around this boy. You can only identify a connection musically with the first album, when some short segments of this album have been included to the second album. Unfortunately, I didn't feel the same magic here that I found on the first album.

The theatrical aspect of the show didn't bother me much, except for the standup comic part. A better idea was to see and hear the violin of Anna Phoebe direct with Skype from her bedroom in London. The picture is ok, not the best for a high definition show, but the surround sound is really immersive. Is it a nice addition to a Prog rock collection when we already have heard the album? I would say probably not, but also because the second part was not as good as the first one.