On January 24th, 2021 at 8:01pm CST I finally understood the appeal of Jethro Tull. This seems like an odd statement to make so let me paint a picture for you. It was a dark Sunday night. Cold, but not too cold. I had just eaten some okay sushi. I was in my apartment flipping through albums trying to decide what to listen to. Not a typical practice for a Sunday night. Usually I read or watch football, but because of some impossible to unravel chain of causal events I decided to listen to music that day. Without a second thought I took out our “M.U. – The Best of Jethro Tull” record. When I say our, I mean that it’s my girlfriend’s parent’s record that they gave to us when we got a record player. I threw it on and laid down on the couch, listening to the familiar warm static sound a record makes before the first song. I had listened to this one before so I wasn’t expecting anything magical, nothing dramatic. Just some late 60s, early 70s classic rock that would act as the background soundtrack to fortyish minutes of scrolling through Twitter.
What I got instead was transported to the wild world of nutso prog rock that is Jethro Tull. From the opening guitar hit of “Teacher” to the final drum freak-out of “Nothing is Easy,” I went on a damn journey.
It’s not that I had never listened to Jethro Tull before. Through pretty much all of elementary school I exclusively listened to Lancaster, Pennsylvania’s Oldies radio station. That and the Veggie Tales CD we had. I know that’s a wild thing for a kid to listen to, but by the time I was eight I was singing along with Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here.” The “we’re just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl / year after year” lyric really spoke to second grade Dylan I guess. That and “Gimmie Two Steps” by Lynyrd Skynyrd – I know – were my favorite songs. So, I was certainly aware of Jethro Tull. Any oldie station worth its salt has “Aqualung” and one of the “Thick as a Brick” radio edits on repeat. Hell, Anchorman had a whole damn “Aqualung” bit. People know about Jethro Tull. Probably of even more importance that Tull’s prominence in the popular culture, I had the rhythms of classic radio rock down. The rise and fall, the riffs, the solos of 60s and 70s guitar rock have eroded deep fissures in whatever part of my brain deals with music. What I’m saying is that I was primed to have my world rocked by this Best Of Compilation.
While I was primed to enjoy Tull’s “Best Of,” it is a little weird I choose it out of our stable of records. I haven’t listened to that much classic rock recently. The last few years have seen me gravitate more and more toward groups like PUP, Jeff Rosenstock, and Run the Jewels. All groups with a heavy punk influence who are mad about stuff. Anathema to whatever the Sirius FM Golden Oldies is playing right now. Heck, I even skipped past a PUP album I could have thrown on. Maybe it was because it was a Sunday, but I chose a band led by a dude who generally acted like a capering court jester while on stage. And damn, if some British dude singing about how he doesn’t want to be “Fat Man” didn’t do it for me.
I truly wish I had the skill as a writer to convey to all my lovely readers what laying on a couch, eyes closed, listening to Jethro Tull rip through some flute jams felt like. I’ll try to come up with an apt metaphor. Try to imagine this. It’s 1970. You’re a freshman in college, let’s say UC-Berkeley, away from your parents for the first time. You’re a little frightened, but excited about the experience as well. It’s the first Friday of the semester. You’ve heard lots about what college parties are like, but you’ve yet to experience one for yourself. Some of the people you’ve met tell you about this kegger that’s happening, and you all decide to go. You get there, someone hands you a beer, and then another. Before you know it, you’re having the time of life. And right at the crest, right at the peak of your enjoyment of the party, your favorite song comes on, and the cutest person at the party asks you to dance. That specific moment is what listening to Jethro Tull on January 24th, 2021, at 8:01 PM felt like for me. All the things that come with moments like that, the time dilation, the clarity of certain events, and the neon muted-ness of others. The feeling as if nothing else matters. They were all present.
The problem with moments like that is their repeatability. A once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, never again to be appear. I was slightly worried about that possibility. I tried refraining from listening to that record again. But eventually I gave into the temptation. And damn, if the same thing didn’t happen. While it may not have been quite the mind-blowing experience as the first time, it never is, it was quite good. The inscrutable lyrics were still there, sliding over the crunchy guitars, thick bass lines, and propulsive flute lines. If this sounds like how someone becomes addicted to heroin, that’s on purpose. The right song at the right time in the right place is pretty close to drugs. There’s a reason music has been around for as long as it has.
Weirdly this isn’t the first time this has happened for me with an artist. Blink-182’s self-titled album, Gaelic Storm’s Tree, They Might Be Giant’s Flood, Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Jeff Rosenstock’s Worry, I’ve had similar experiences with all of them. Feeling as if nothing but the music matters, everything subsumed under the power of the song. I know that last sentence sounds like I’ve been brainwashed by a cult that worships various frequencies on the Hertz scale, but who is to say I haven’t been?
This piece isn’t really about convincing people that Jethro Tull is the best band in the world. For most people, especially people my age, they aren’t, They make weird parody concept albums, and real concept albums, and non-ironically sing about some guy named “Aqualung” – or at least I think it’s a guy named Aqualung, I’m not really sure. Hell, it’s a rock band where the lead singer plays flute. They’re going be a hard sell for a lot of people. Their most famous song is over six minutes long! And a lot of their other hits are radio edits of twenty-two minute long songs. Not exactly easy to get into. What this is about is convincing people that music shouldn’t just be a background thing. Something to throw on while you scroll Twitter. Pay attention to it. Give it a chance. Let it transport you. Hell, what else do you have to while it’s -2 degrees out?