STAND UP

This album will always hold a special place in my life, being my very first exposure to rock music at the tender age of 5, my father having bought the album on the strength of Bourée, but the whole album was spinning often in the living room, with yours truly being truly fascinated by the superb artwork and its gatefold pop-up. Gone is Mick Abrahams to found Blodwyn Pig, and in comes the ever-present Martin Barre who is still today with the band.

There is not one weak track on this little baby. "Look into the sun", "Noting is easy", "We used to know", "Thousand mothers", etc... As M. Abrahams left for Blodwyn Pig (a band I hope to see soon on this site) Ian had more space to develop his style and did he take advantage of it. Best known for Bourée, and often probably over-looked because of it, this album is incredibly tight and every number on it is a gem. My only regret is that they did not make another one like it before moving on. Every track is a real gem on here and choosing the better will make me select every single track here.

A New Day is a real dapper introduction, but the second number dedicated to Jeffrey and Fatman are the premises of the folk direction present in all future albums. Bourée is actually a duo of flute. We Used To Know has the best guitar solo on a Tull album, Reasons For Waiting is the first example of Tull utilising an orchestra and is it ever well done!!

The remastered version of the album holds four bonus tracks, three of which were released on singles but not available in an album before the Living In The Past collection. The LITP single is easily one of the highlights of Tull's career and its 5/4 beat for a single was revolutionary at the time. Driving Song would actually have been more fitting on their Benefit album, but since it was released before Stand Up... As for Sweet Dreams, it came two months after the album's release and boasts some brass section, a string section and intricate arrangements. The fourth track, 17, is a weird rarely made-available track that sticks out a bit too much out of context of the album, unlike the first three tracks. This slight flaw does not manage to dent this album's importance and the fact that it is absolutely essential to understanding the advent of prog.

A new "Legacy" version appeared in 2010 (I know, we're not on the Columbia label, but anyway) with the same bonus tracks as the previous remaster plus a few unneeded ditties, but with a the other two discs consisting of that famous 1970 Carnegie Hall concert, whose partial release on the Living In The Past (side 3) dates from almost four decades. A very fun concert filled with Anderson's quite-funny in-between-song banter to allow himself to catch his breath. I'd have made this a two-disc Cd+DVD-A affair, since the DVD disc hold the same material (despite a few neat enhancement tricks and a video interview) as the second (redundant) CD does. I still think the Mini-Lp version pays a better tribute to the original album, despite a few excellent previously-unseen pictures in this updated booklet