THICK AS A BRICK

Thick As A Brick, otherwise known as The Only Jethro Tull Album This Reviewer Ever Liked. The only other albums that even slightly tickled my earbulbs are Aqualung and Minstrel In The Gallery. Here we have the Weird Al Yankovic of prog: a whole album that is nothing but a parody of the concept albums and side-long epics of the time. Strange then that this ended up being a great example of everything GOOD about prog! This one-song album actually went to #1 on the Billboard charts. Because of that Anderson & co. decided they would do it again(hey, there's nothing better than free money). A Passion Play on the other hand is a great example of everything BAD about prog. TAAB sounds natural while APP sounds forced.

No sense in analyzing this album to death. There is almost nothing about it I would change. It still boggles my mind how these guys came up with an album full of such great music and playing, yet never did anything else that comes close. I can listen to this all the way through every day if I wanted to. Any other Tull album and there will some tracks I will want to skip. This is like a cross between what ELP and Genesis were doing at the time, but somehow better. I've always loved the line: "Your sperms in the gutter/Your love's in the sink". I have no idea what that means but it sounds great. It took a not very proggy band to make fun of prog to make one of the greatest prog albums *ever*. Funny how the universe works.

To me, a 'Best Of Jethro Tull' set would include this album, along with another disc of the best songs from their '69-'75 albums and singles. That would be all the Tull I would ever need. If you don't already have this, go get it. I'm the biggest Thick As A Brick fan-boy in the multiverse. But Jethro Tull would not even make my Top 50 Bands list. Go figure. 5 stars. If only every prog album could be this good.