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Jethro Tull - A Passion Play: An Extended Perfomance CD (album) cover

A PASSION PLAY: AN EXTENDED PERFOMANCE

Jethro Tull

Prog Folk


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5 stars A Masterpiece, that finally give justice to the Play.

I'am not going on further details of the new Steven Wilson remix, the two sax phrases that got removed or the two extra verses on the "The Foot Of Our Stairs" segment.

What is important here, as in all masterpieces, is the whole.

First of all, we have printed all the original material from APP - the cover, in a way better resolution, the fake theatre program, and the back (last page) also in better printing. You know can see the analogy of death and rebirth of the leave and flower in the ballerina' hand.

Second, the amazing Chateau D'Isaster Tapes. Put together in their completude, finally being associated with "Skating Away" and "Only Solitaire". The tapes are incredible and show the real power of Jethro Tull as a creative band. We expect to see more praise for Martin Barre, John Evan, Jeffrey Hammond and Barrie Barlow from now on.

Third, the material is impecable. The interviews, with the band, Chris Welsh, former sound engineer of Tull (did you know he composed the chaotic beginning of APP?) and, of course, the ballerina. The special interview with Jeffrey Hammond about "The Hare" is great. Oh, and Steven Wilson also give more light to how things with the tapes were going.

Another special is the videos: APP was intended to be a complete live experience. Not just music. It was, indeed, a PLAY. People often forget that. The dead ballerina arising to enter in the misterious world that Jethro Tull were going to present - then "The Hare" in the middle - and finnally the reborn, in the end. Its perfect.

Finally, we have a tale. By Reverend Godfrey Pilchard... what can we say about that? Well, we cant reveal anything without spoil. Its another chapter of the mistery of A Passion Play.

A masterpiece work, in all meanings.

Report this review (#1274357)
Posted Wednesday, September 10, 2014 | Review Permalink
GruvanDahlman
PROG REVIEWER
5 stars A passion play ? Extended

How do you follow up an album that has been universally hailed as one of extreme brilliance, a masterpiece? How do you accomplish that? Well, really you don't. It is no point in making an album inferior, if that was your answer. You have to excell. Be greater than that praised album. Well, better than ever before! You need to become greater than ever. THE greatest. But then again, how do you go about doing that? I have no great answer but I do know that Jethro Tull pulled it off. Not everyone seemed to think that back in the day and there is still some debate whether or not it holds up to scrutiny. Like most people I adore "Thick as a brick", thinking it being one of the finest examples of progressive rock ever made, but I also think that "A passion play" is just as exemplary, though not the same at any great length. On the original vinyl the only two seemingly concurring elements was the inclusion of two long tracks. The two albums are really two different entities, apart from the two part suite thingy.

To me this has always been one of those albums superior to almost everything. I got it way back on a sale and I couldn't have been more than 16 years old. Two songs and a cover so dark and bleak it took my breath away, evoking the eclipse of existance. And from the first thumping beats of the album's beginning, to the last shivering notes of track two, I loved it. I was infused with a greatness, as if in the presence of divine beings. I had reached the holiest of places, the Temple of Tull. I loved it all. "The hare who lost his spectacles" was and is to me the perfect mockumentary of a children's story. In that piece of the musical palette lies something truly genius. The story is so wonderfully crafted and conducted, lyrically and not least musically, that I continously return.

I will not go into detaails of the contents of the album, particularily not the original album. It is a tremendous piece of music and differs, as stated, in tone and musical direction. It is very much Jethro Tull but in my opinion the darkest and most complex music created by them. The very delicate balance between all what makes Jethro Tull the great band they are, is augmented by the presence of truly complex shifts and turns, ammzing chord progressions and even some slight avant-garde stuff. It is an album of daring and vision that got slandered in the day, leading them to, as I perceive, to tread a more traditional Jethro Tull path on the next album. One can however see elements of "A passion play" on "Warchild" but in a gentler shape and form.

Now, the bonus tracks. It is a real treat to hear the recordings they made in France, which were to lead up to the album we know today. The sessions in France got canned and Ian Anderson re- wrote and arranged the songs in a different fashion and recorded it once again. That was really a blessing, since the album in it's known state is far superior. It is, though, a pleasure hearing those tracks that later transformed and those tracks that lead nowhere, despite their grand quality.

"A passion play" is one of the finest progressive rock albums I know. The quality of songs, the arrangement and the superior musicianship, alongside a tremendous dose of quirky british sense of humour, makes this one of those to-die-for albums. The price of this box is ridiculous and anyone can afford it, really. It is beautiful to look at and the overall package (songs, video, booklet and what not) really makes it essential.

Report this review (#1361066)
Posted Tuesday, February 3, 2015 | Review Permalink
5 stars The whole thing is more demanding than Thick as a Brick mainly because of the concept matter and you can argue that this is not as relaxed or is more ambitious if you like, but the delivery of the band is smooth and top class, i have always love the free style drumming of Barrie Barlow and this is a perfect example of his skills at the time. It is the fifth time i buy this album (cassette, CD AAD, CD ADD, LP, CD Rmx.), and the work that Steven Wilson has done is terrific. A masterpiece in the true sense
Report this review (#1378429)
Posted Friday, March 6, 2015 | Review Permalink
Neu!mann
PROG REVIEWER
5 stars Depending on your mood at any given moment, Jethro Tull's lofty 1973 LP represents either a) the nadir of self-indulgent Prog Rock pretension, or b) an underappreciated masterpiece. It's of course entirely possible the album was both, simultaneously: a flawed epic of high-minded musical imagination that aimed too high and overshot its target. You may love it or hate it, but either way the year 2014 "Extended Performance" draws a welcome silver lining around a cloudy historical legacy, adding so much invaluable hindsight and clarity that it has to be rated as an essential five-star experience.

The original 1973 album shouldn't require any introduction here. Suffice to say it arrived at the moment when Progressive Rock had reached its apex of grandiose ambition, followed within months by "Tales from Topographic Oceans" and ELP's "Brain Salad Surgery" (and, only a year later, by the Genesis "Lamb Lies Down" saga). Some sort of shared contagion must have been in the air at the time: check out Martin Barre's unmistakably Steve Howe-inspired guitar licks in the "Magus Perdé" curtain call of the Play.

The album was a lot to swallow in a single sitting, not least because of the pompous concept behind it: a meditation of Life (and the Afterlife) as theater, complete with gatefold proscenium cover layout and mock-program insert. The earlier "Thick as a Brick", likewise presenting an unbroken 40-minute suite, was designed in part as a concept album parody; this one demanded to be heard seriously, despite the oddball comic intermission about a Hare Who Lost His Spectacles.

Another divisive issue may have been Ian Anderson's over-reliance on synths and saxophone, instead of the more traditional guitar and flute. The results were predictably vilified in the pages of an increasingly conservative music press, expressing a (stupid) sense of betrayal by a group that had strayed too far from its Blues Rock roots.

But the passage of time has been generous to the album, and this lavish package makes it easier now to recognize the classic in the clutter. Besides a sympathetic stereo remix of the original LP by (who else?) Steven Wilson, you'll find copious essays, photos, and production notes in an 80-page (!) digibook, plus the inevitable surround-sound DVD, plus video clips of "The Story of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles" (crude, but amusing), plus an indispensable second CD with the aborted 1972 Château d'Hérouville sessions, unabridged and undoctored but again remixed by Wilson.

You may already be familiar with some the so-called Château d'Isaster tapes, previously featured (with belated Ian Anderson overdubs) on the late '90s "Nightcap" compilation. But hearing the full set in tandem with its final "Passion Play" realization adds essential perspective to a difficult and misunderstood chapter in Tull history, which would extend to the 1974 "War Child" album: another beneficiary of the scrapped Château sessions.

Hindsight is 20-20, of course, even to hares without their spectacles. But the bottom line to this overlong appraisal is simple: "A Passion Play" has never sounded better, and with all the bonus material has never made as much sense.

Report this review (#1617506)
Posted Saturday, October 1, 2016 | Review Permalink
Tapfret
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR
Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin
5 stars Issue #100

A Passion Play on the P-Word
An Extended Performance?

Now Pretentiousser!

Ah, here we are. The prized prey of 1973's pompous and paradoxically pedantic pundits of pop critique, A Passion Play. The preeminent work in the prog paradigm of conceptual long-plays, it was poked, prodded and universally panned as prohibitively ponderous. These professional persecutors of pastoral pursuits, with egos as pumped up as Pink Floyd's inflated prop pigs, snuffled their protuberant probosces in paraphrase:
'Who is this pipe-playing pranceabout with a proclivity toward perplexity? A pox on he! HE IS PRETENTIOUS! PRETENTIOUS, I SAY! ....oh praise be my vocabulary, I should procure an augmented percentage payment for my perspicacity. *tsk tsk*'

Poppycock!

Even if belated, the positive prospects of the play's fans would not be put out. Here, and now, a palliative presentation on four pristine plastic platters of digitized programmes. Packaged with the fabled Chateau d'Herouville sessions, the precursor to A Passion Play, the re-mastered source is propagated with improvements. Shall we dispense with the preamble and proceed?

Who could possibly protest the pronouncement that A Passion Play, this prosaic conceptual picture of a poor young souls demise presented in thespian parlance, stands as a pinnacle of progressive rock? As prefaced, many would. But let us not ponder further the failed placation of the pop plutocracy. Let us instead plow forward to how perfection could be further polished. Enter the patriarch of Porcupine: prog's prodigal prince of post- production, one Steven Wilson. Mixing to the standard pentangle of sonic projection ...point one. The encompassing sounds paint the play in hues of polychromasia that create additional pyretic layers of character to the seemingly polydactyl pressing of keys and strings. This plussing is no more evident than in the bounding bookend parts to the play's intermission, Forest Dance #1 and #2. Additionally, it has come to light that we were pinched of 50 some-odd seconds of verse on Foot of Our Stairs, until now.

The package also contains a peak into the band's pragmatic fiscal pilgrimage as potential ex-patriots to the palace proximal to Paris, Chateau d'Herouville. Was this possibly a peaceful place to practice and record? Alas, our players would be plagued with problems. First their place of sleep was infested with parasitic pests. But most problematic was the pabulum induced peristaltic pathology that progressed to peritoneal rumbling to the party's participants. Nonetheless the band plugged away at their project, their perseverance punished by having it hidden away from posterity. The product has familiarity, no doubt. Many passages ported to the eventual final A Passion Play release, while Skating Away on the Thin Ice of a New Day would later be a pop-chart resident. Like the title discs, The Chateau d'Herouville Sessions are presented on both re-mastered CD and DVD featuring DTS 5.1 mix.

The parade continues with a booklet with pages of paragraphs on the history and pre-history of this profoundly wondrous work. The story of the previously summarized Chateau sessions is contained within along with discussion of the remix process by Steven Wilson, interviews past and present, and tour photos.

And if that was not enough, a live ballet performance of the greatest moment in progressive rock history, The Hare Who Lost His Spectacles!

The purveyors of enhanced media have properly palpated the pulse of this progger. This was no passive undertaking. 5 stars before. Now, 5 stars more.

Perfection.

Report this review (#1714383)
Posted Wednesday, April 26, 2017 | Review Permalink
5 stars Ian Anderson's one-upmanship in this follow up album to Thick As A Brick, A Passion Play, has much in common with Yes's Tales From Topographic Oceans from the same year. Both albums come after the bands' arguably finest artistic achievements, TAAB and CTTE. Both are concept albums featuring complete suites of music on each album side. Both are instrumentally highly adventurous and very, strong lyrically, but have their critics questioning the obtuseness of the lyrics. Neither have a clearly defined narrative (some argue there is a narrative flowing through APP) making live performance of the complete albums difficult for audiences to appreciate (Yes get round this by playing one side of the music in live performance. I'm unaware Jethro Tull ever performed APP again after the initial concert tours). The release of both albums caused dissention within the ranks of the bands. Rick Wakeman didn't like the music of TFTO. After Chris Welch of Melody Maker savaged the music of APP Ian Anderson himself expressed misgivings in his work. And with the Tull and Yes fans, these are either love it or hate it albums.

There, the comparisons end. A Passion Play is very dark, written in the minor keys. It shares an ironic reference to The Passion of Jesus Christ, but any connection is only a pastoral one. The story Ian Anderson attempts to recite is a journey into the afterlife, so closer to "Orpheus and Eurydice" than the trial and tribulations of Jesus Christ on earth. Debunking it all is a dead ballerina on the cover of the album and a centerpiece of the concept album is a spoken word text of a play within the music, called The Story of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles. So really all one can really say about A Passion Play is that it's very musical theater and very much a tease (or spoof) like TAAB and not to be taken seriously.

Musically this album departs from TAAB in the manner Ian Anderson uses sax and alto sax more than he does flute, giving the album a more, jazzy feel than the usual Jethro Tull album. There are musical motifs running through the journey of the album as one piece connects to another, creating a continuous flow. There is a wider array of instruments with John Evans using lots of mini-Moog to effect.

Part I begins quietly with drum, organ and sound effects as we get into the main theme with flute, mini-Moog, organ, whistle effects and acoustic guitar as Anderson sings the main verse. John Evans enters the fray with his piano as Anderson sings, "There was a rush along the Fulham Road; There was a hush in the Passion Play". More acoustic guitar. An interlude of Spanish guitar and Bach like organ runs and then the sax starts up and then another lyrical verse, "And who comes here to wish me well? A sweetly-scented angel fell". Acoustic guitar, organ and electric guitar and Spanish guitar with more organ, then acoustic guitar reciting the main theme, which has a quality reminding me of TAAB. Lots of stops and starts, a flute passage then drums and then a burst of chorus, "Take the prize for instant pleasure; captain of the cricket team". The music gets very menacing. Lots of organ, drums and electric guitar with John Evans pounding his piano with the chords of the main theme. A bridge of sax, piano, drums and electric guitar we finally get to the coda of Ian's last verse with a quiet piano passage, before the ethereal effects of the instrumental piece, "Forest Dance", with acoustic guitar and ascending keyboard notes, introducing us to the play TSOTHWLHS, narrated by Jeffrey Hammond. This is just a silly nonsense piece with orchestra conducted by David Palmer. At its conclusion we return to the instrumental piece "Forest Dance" and then onto APP, part II.

The second part of APP begins acoustically with Ian singing "Foot of Our Stairs" before it gets heavy instrumentally with sax, drums and electric guitar. More acoustic guitar, a bridge of mini-Moog and then it's back to Ian singing the main musical theme to acoustic guitar. More mini-Moog, voices, marimba and drums, Ian sings "Overseer Overture". Another bridge of fading mini-Moog and it's into "Flight from Lucifer" Ian sardonically singing, "I'd give my halo for a horn and the horn for the hat I once had; I'm only breathing". The sweet acoustic guitar music of a Spanish serenade is suddenly broken by some heavy electric guitar and crashing cymbals. An instrumental of sax, flute, electric guitar follows before Ian wraps it all up in the epilogue when he reprises the opening theme as the music fades out.

I honestly feel APP is Ian Anderson's finest moment with the band. Whether or not he wants to disassociate himself from the music he created, I feel he succeeded in this successor to TAAB, where he takes the fictional character of Gerald Bostock in a spoof of concept albums, to this one where he creates the fictional figure of Ronnie Pilgrim, whose journey into the afterlife is a ruse to spoof the musical theatre genre. As to whether APP succeeds with its audience as a concept piece of progressive rock music worthy as a successor to TAAB, one of the great progressive rock albums of the 1970's, maybe I'm alone in asserting that it does.

Report this review (#2437881)
Posted Saturday, August 15, 2020 | Review Permalink
5 stars Throughout the years this album has become my favourite of all the Jethro Tull catalogue. It is a bit hard to get into, i admit, but once you get it, it grows on you and never gets old. I simply find it absolutely perfect. Even the story of the hair seems strangely appropriate, providing a comic relief on a originally heavy record. Ian Anderson extends its musical expressions to the saxophone and I find this absolutely beautiful because it blends in with the other instruments (mainly the organ) in a way the flute doesn't. Martin Barre is a monster on this one along with Barriemore Barlow. Amazing lines and grooves. Ian is singing with the normal intention but here it seems the story has the perfect mixture of humour and sneering intelligence that somehow on other records feel a bit dislocated (mainly War Child and Too Old to Rock 'n Roll). A Passion Play never gets boring, the melodies are intricate but absolutely gorgeous and the band shifts from one part to the other seamlessly (one of the few problems of TAAB). After I found out about the Chateau recordings I could appreciate even more this recording. Because we feel it was honed to perfection by the band. If there's a Jethro Tull recording that deserves 5 stars. It is this one. A masterpiece.
Report this review (#2524804)
Posted Sunday, March 14, 2021 | Review Permalink

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