THICK AS A BRICK

When I was in university many years ago, a friend lent me the cassette of a strange group that combined rock with something similar to folklore, a single song split in two by the physical limitations of the LP that today do not exist, made me have many doubts about what you might find with result. Finally listening to Thick As A Brick, I discovered that I was before one of the best conceptual works of progressive music. The combination of Ian Anderson's acoustic guitars and flute, the keyboards at times reminiscent of something similar to ritual music by John Evans, and Martín Barre's guitar, make up a powerful combination that blends perfectly, in a spectacular sample of the progressive at its summit for more than 43 minutes.

Beyond that Anderson originally intended to create a conceptual work as a parody, given that much criticism of the time placed the acclaimed Aqualung as a conceptual work, a fact that Anderson repeatedly denied, this time he decided to give Thick As A Brick that treatment. This is how he tells the story of a child prodigy (Gerald Bostock) winning a poetry prize at the age of 8, and after being stripped of it when the horrified society who pregnant a 14- year-old girl found out. The frontaman of the group always clarified that it was a fictional story, and from which he could only rescue similarities with not settling for a traditional life and for rebelling and trying to have a less boring life doing different things.

A masterpiece, in my opinion, the maximum musical expression of Jethro Tull.