Description

Jethro Tull's eighth studio and ninth overall album Minstrel in the Gallery was released in September of 1975.
At the time of the release of Minstrel, Jethro Tull was one of the biggest bands in the world having released six consecutive US Gold selling albums (five of them which hit the US Top 10).
Lead singer/songwriter/flute player Ian Anderson, guitarist Martin Barre, drummer Barriemore Barlow, keyboard player John Evan and bass player Jeffrey Hammond (whom would leave the band after the tour for Minstrel to take up painting and art) started work on the follow-up to 1974's successful War Childmore… on the Maison Rouge mobile and created an album which is one of the classic Tull albums.
I always get a kick out of people trying to fit Jethro Tull into any particular type of music, because they are just plain not anything. While they have elements of hard rock/metal, elements of pop, elements of progressive, elements of folk, elements of renaissance, and even a bit of classical here and there, they are all of the above and none of the above. They just are.
The opening eight minute plus title cut begins with album in a grand way. The first part of the track is a great minstrel-folk beginning which then gives way into a classic hard rocker with some tasty guitar playing from Barre. Next is Cold Wind to Valhalla which starts out like a renaissance era folk tune but then turns into a great hard but bluesy rocker (which has Barre doing both leade guitar and some great slide guitar). Excellent use of violins in this song to help the orchestration. Who said strings and rock don't mix. Next is another classic, the epic called Black Satin Dancer which features some hard rock riffs and the trademark Anderson folk influences. Its lyrics tell of sexual foreplay and intense longing, perhaps even lust. Unlike fellow prog bands like ELP, Genesis, Pink Floyd and Yes, Tull added some hard rock/heavy metal elements to their works. A most excellent song. The first side ends with an acoustic ballad called Requiem which sounds like it could have appeared on either a Simon and Garfunkel album or even The Beatles' Rubber Soul but is still classic Tull.
The album's second side kicks off with another acoustic number called One White Duck/0^10 = Nothing at All which is a great song. Next is the band's first 10 minute plus track since the 1973 album length epic A Passion Play called Baker St. Muse. The song tells the story about a muse, a very down-to-earth fellow crying out that Jethro Tull wasn't the commercial group that War Child almost made them out to be. The lyrics state that we're still in the gutter singing about things that haven't changed. The other parts of the epic are stories of the street, likely stories of the Baker St. Muse (aka Jethro Tull). These vignettes are very sexual. Had they been released between 1986 and now, they'd probably have a Parental Advisory label. This lengthy piece is their best epic since the Thick as a Brick suite though A Passion Play had its moments. We end the album with the short tune Grace which is a short but affective way to close the album.
Minstrel in the Gallery reached #7 on the Billboard album chart in late 1975 and went Gold immediately. Unfortunately, this was their last studio album with bass player Jeffrey Hammond who would retire from music to take up art and painting.
In 2002, Chrysalis Records (in association with Capitol Records in the US and EMI elsewhere), re-released the album as a digitally remastered CD. The re-issue features five bonus tracks which were the album outtakes Summerdays Sands, March the Mad Scientist and Pan Dance plus live versions of Minstrel in the Gallery and Cold Wind to Valhalla.
This Tull album is RECOMMENDED IMMENSELY!

Tracks

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Info:

Category:

Music > Albums

Case Type:

CD

Release Type:

Retail

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Cover Info:

Title:

Jethro Tull - Minstrel in the Gallery (2002) Retail CD

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Back

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1026 x 807 px

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128 KB

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03/04/08 by burntoast

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