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Thick as a Brick: Overrated on Progarchives
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Argo2112 View Drop Down
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Points: 4452 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Argo2112 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 12 2019 at 08:35
I think the good & bad thing about TAAB is it's one song, one massive piece of music. It's an ambitious project.  I love parts of it but find it really hard to get through in one sitting. That's what makes is such a polarizing track. 
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I love TAAB. I think it's JT's best album (by a mile) and rank it easily in my Top Ten all-time.
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Top 5 prog albums of all time for sure.
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I love TAAB and don't think it's overrated at all. Brilliant song in my opinion.
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Originally posted by octopus-4 octopus-4 wrote:

I'm one of those who thinks that TAAB is good but overrated. I think it has some fillers and it would have been a great 30 minutes epic. I suppose it's because of the vynil limitations, but I don't perceive it a s a masterpiece. It' my own opinion, but I think Aqualung is their best adn it's the JT album that I listen to more often.

I think of TAAB and Aqualung as co-favorites.  They are both so superlative, t's pretty much impossible for me to choose between the two.  If I do declare a fave, it may change the next day.  Much like Dark Side of the Moon and and Wish You Were Here.  Many have their favorite, but I just can't do it. 
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Rant away! It's part of the fun to be had here.

I'm always happy to see TAAB in the top three. As someone who somewhat detested Aqualung for a long time (and that was my only experience of JT), I'm pleased to say that it was discovering TAAB that helped me come to appreciate and love Jethro Tull. I think it completely deserves its place right up there. 

That placement also just reflects some of the quirks of who comes to this site. It's true that other sites or critic-produced lists don't tend to rank any JT very highly at all (or if they do place it's usually Aqualung, probably just because they feel that it's supposed to be there because it's supposed to be there). Perhaps the bigger quirk of the top ten list on Progarchives compared with other sites and lists is the complete absence of ELP. But once again that just reflects the unique demographics of who happens to come here.
The damage that we do is just so powerfully strong we call it love

The damage that we do just goes on and on and on but not long enough.

--Robyn Hitchcock
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Originally posted by AFlowerKingCrimson AFlowerKingCrimson wrote:

Because for a single track that is 45 minutes long or whatever it is it flows really well with no boring parts(unless you consider drum solos boring). 
 
Wow.. it didn't take too long for someone to say it. Thumbs Up

Being often a rock/guitar-strum style of guy (though nothing resembling metal), in general I greatly value these rock pieces, alongside with Close to the Edge, and is also why I'm a big fan of Rush and it's not too long before I urgently need my dose of distorted strumming or power in some form (CTTE).

Certainly my best ranked Jethro Tull (5).

Also, in this forum I have come to realise that I'm largely in the 'mainstream' side of progressive (PF, Yes, Genesis, Rush, EL&P, etc.) with rarely an addition from the subgenres (among other reasons that's why I'm here by the way and value this site so much!)

Another thing I've come to realise is that, among those bands, with time, the works I've come to enjoy the most, having passed by all their respective catalogues, are, or near, the band's pinnacle of maturity (what I call 'maturity', though more or less coincides with dates...), at the risk of losing raw beauty or a bit of progressiveness in some cases (not so intricate, abrupt changes, etc.) or becoming more commercially appealing in others:


Genesis -> The Lamb. followed very closely by Selling..
Pink Floyd -> Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall, Wish you were here
Rush -> Moving pictures, Hemispheres, Farewell, Caress
Yes -> Close to the Edge
EL&P -> Trilogy followed close by EL&P
Marillion -> Script for a Jester's Tear (exception, but another timeframe… '83)
Jethro Tull -> Thick as a Brick


1. Close to the Edge
Perfectly fine with this.
Big fan of Relayer and all… but, in the same line as TAAB, some minutes of the most concentrated form of agile progressive rock ever! (IMO) and it has Bruford... big big plus for me (not for whom he is obviously, but for his playing! ...that is nothing short of amazing in CTTE).

2. Selling England by the Pound
I'd have prefered Lamb or closely followed by Lamb (by no means 35. Lamb !)

3. Thick as a Brick
Not a problem.

4. Wish you were here - … - 7. Dark Side of the Moon
I don't get angry.. Big smile

...

9. Animals 
Not a chance in my world.. good one and all, love it, but there are many that come before.


Marillion - Script. would be top ten.

Also, I'm a 'Chocolate Kings' guy, so Chocolate Kings would be my first PFM to appear on the list along with Maxophone in the top... 15 or so.





Edited by Machinemessiah - July 12 2019 at 11:17
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The idea the TAAB is rated higher than a extraordinary, almost flawless album like Wish You Were is nothing short of an utter travesty. The two shouldn’t even be mentioned in the same breath. It’s like a guy parking his Chevy Malibu (very decent car, btw) next to a Lamborghini and thinking them equals. Jethto Tull was a decent albeit pedestrian band IMO. Whereas PF were gods. There is again IMO no comparison. 30 years from now ppl will still be raving about PF. I doubt JT’s legacy will endure in the same manner.
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Points: 10377 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote BaldJean Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 12 2019 at 12:14
to fully understand TAAB you have to have the original newspaper album cover and read it completely, down to the tiniest ad and including doing the join-the-dots to see who Fluffy the duck is talking to. you will then understand that the album is a brilliant gigantic hoax


A shot of me as High Priestess of Gaia during our fall festival. Ceterum censeo principiis obsta
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Points: 20468 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote dr wu23 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 12 2019 at 12:33
^ LOL
One does nothing yet nothing is left undone.
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^^ OK, i just found this online & did the connect the dots  on my computer. Too Funny!! (Kids corner)
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dr wu23 View Drop Down
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Points: 20468 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote dr wu23 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 12 2019 at 12:42
Well....I rarely play it....for me the first 4 by Tull will always be the best and my favorites....it was before Tull (Anderson) got 'delusions of grandeur'. I do like Minstrel, Songs, and Heavy Horses and play them also.
One does nothing yet nothing is left undone.
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Originally posted by BaldJean BaldJean wrote:

to fully understand TAAB you have to have the original newspaper album cover and read it completely, down to the tiniest ad and including doing the join-the-dots to see who Fluffy the duck is talking to. you will then understand that the album is a brilliant gigantic hoax

Exactly. Taken as whole, 44 minutes of continuous and superbly composed music and lyrics, the contextual album cover parody, and the fact that it went to #1 in sales without the benefit of a single, is an extraordinary slice of rock music history that will never be duplicated. Because record companies would not even allow something so outlandish to be released (and marketed) in today's downloaded singles-driven travesty called music.
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Hear, hear!
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Originally posted by BaldJean BaldJean wrote:

to fully understand TAAB you have to have the original newspaper album cover and read it completely, down to the tiniest ad and including doing the join-the-dots to see who Fluffy the duck is talking to. you will then understand that the album is a brilliant gigantic hoax

Wow, I thought he was saying "fluffy dog." LOL
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Three years ago, I wrote my first review just on Thick As A Brick, trying to explain the reason why, in my opinion, it's overrated.

Here's my short review:

In my opinion, "Thick As A Brick" is a good album but not a beautiful album. Not one of the greatest in prog 
history. It's important, I know, for prog history, because for the first time a group produced an 
album with only one suite. But musically, the inspiration is not high. Melodies are not 
remarkable.

 
First side: the beginnig is very good, maybe the only melody easy to remember in the hole 
album. But minute after minute the rhythm became too supported or repetitive, near to 
math rock of Gentle Giant, and the final is compulsive. 


Second side: overexcited beginning, then acoustic melodies, 
then a lot of variety of arrengements; but It seems to me that the 
passages are forced. In the end returns the initial melody. 


This is an album without anticlimax but even without climax. Homogeneous, and with a good 
execution; the arrangements are very neat and varied. Ian Anderson proves to be able to brush 
music from many musical styles (the early blues is just one of many contributions to the record) 
and to know how to do without his flute for long breaks. 
But the suite does not flow easily, it results too built, more forced than spontaneous.

 
It seems to me that one reason for the great consideration Thick As A Brick enjoys is due
to the fact that the whole album is composed by a suite. The Jethro Tull
are to be commended for the evolution they have had, in fact this album is a very great effort 
for this band and even for the progressive rock, but, in my opinion, a record made by 
a single suite doesn't make automatically
the greatness and the beauty of an album.

Vote: 7,5/8.
Three stars.  
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In one phrase:

Thick As A Brick is absolutely one of the most important album of progressive rock from an historical point of view, but if we consider the quality of the music (beautiful melodies, inspiration, creativity, originality of composition and arrangement, sperimentalism, singing and musical execution), it shouldn't be in the top 10 (IMO). 
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Typical O-word thread... "I like it less than it is ranked on PA's, so it's overrated".

I think it's hard to argue against its relative uniqueness, and the success of its concept. For somebody like me who is less interested in lyrics and lyrical concepts, it is still pretty enjoyable. For a prog "epic" it is quite cheerful and light, full of nice folky melodies and ideas, and it has a pretty good flow and consistency. The music is not extremely complex or multilayered, but that on its own was never required for a good rating.

That said, when it comes to memorable melodies and flow, the second part is indeed quite a bit weaker than the first. So the album is not without its weaknesses, and that alone would probably be enough for some to call it overrated, thinking that number 3 must be 99.8% perfect or so. But I don't mind, I like it a lot as a whole and don't get me started about what's wrong with  some other top 20 albums (Wish You Were Here for example is in my books nowhere near the top 5 Pink Floyd albums, let alone the top 100 overall, but that's just my taste of course, except I'm not alone - and even that's still a pretty good album and I can see what some people find special about it).     
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Originally posted by Logan Logan wrote:

1) I have found it interesting how at the Rate Your Music chart, using progressive rock as a filter, Thick as a Brick is at number 14 and three Can albums are in the top 10. As someone posted in Prog Archive's forum, RYM tends to appeal to hipsters. At PA, not only do no Can albums appear in the top 250 "all categories" albums chart, but neither does any Krautrock (the PA chart seems rather too "vanilla" to me to be of much personal interest). 

2) I personally like how Robert Wyatt's Rock Bottom makes the top 20 at Rate Your Music (that could be my number one album), and Soft Machine's Third, Faust's IV and two Neu! albums make RYM's top 30. My tastes are not very conventional by Prog standards. 

3) I'm not big on much symphonic prog (I hardly ever listen to Genesis or Yes), my favourite Pink Floyd albums tend to be pre-Dark Side of the Moon, and regarding Rush, while I liked the band as a teenager, I haven't really been into it since (a Rush-head friend got me into it then put me off it). 

4) My favourite album in PA's top 20 is Pawn Hearts, and seeing Wobbler in the top 20 looks weird to me (a 2017 album up against all those classics sticks out like sore thumb to me, and I haven't heard it in full so I can't judge the music for myself).

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

5) My personal list would be very different from the top 250 albums at PA. I don't think people are wrong to enjoy Thick as Brick more than I do anymore than I think it's wrong for some people not to enjoy the RIO, Canterbury, Zeuhl, Acid Folk, Krautrock, Progressive Electronic and Indo-Prog/ Raga Rock "sub-genres" as much as I do. If I believed that my tastes represented some kind of greater objective reality, then I would think that Close to the Edge is highly overrated. That album has never personally struck me as "great". 

xxxxxxxx

6) Perhaps I'd give Thick as Brick maybe a 3 or 3.5 right now based on memory. It's not an album that I was ever wowed by, but it's been decades since I last listened to it in full (I used to find it a slog, though I loved parts of it) and so I wouldn't consider rating it for the site without listening to it in full again. 


7) My favourite Jethro Tull may be Stand Up, which would get 4 stars from me, but still wouldn't crack my personal top 250 albums (and I still like Jethro Tull, but just rarely gets listened to at all as I'm more into other music).


Logan, you're not alone.

I've highlighted some of the points in your talk, where you take a clear position on the records chart. I agree on all these points, except for these small variations:

1) I totally agree - anyway, three Can albums in the top 10 are too many.
2) Rock Bottom is surely in my top ten. i know too little Neu and Faust to express an evaluation, but possibly they are not inclused in my top 50. I prefer eclectic prog.
3) I like expecially The Piper and Saucerful and Wish You Were Here and Animals. But it's not easy to me to find a great masterpiece in these album... My ideas on PF are not clear.
4) I totally agree, even for me Pawn Herts is my fave in the top 20.
5) I totally agree: I dont consider CTTE a real masterpiece, It's close to a masterpiece only the first side. I prefer CTTE over TAAB, but CTTE is surely not in my top 10 or 20 or... I dont know his position. 
6) I totally agree, I've put three stars to TAAB in my review.
7) My fave JT album possibly is Aqualung, then Songs from the Wood, Minstrel, Stand Up etc.


PS PROG CHART ON RYM is very very bad!

in the top 10 there are 
4 Pink Floyd
3 Can
2 King Crimson
1 Yes.

How is possible? only three groups?? PF + Can 7 album /10? It's not serious. 


Edited by jamesbaldwin - July 12 2019 at 20:09
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jamesbaldwin View Drop Down
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Points: 5744 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote jamesbaldwin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 12 2019 at 19:11
When I joined PA, about three years ago, Thick As A Brick was at number 2.
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