Jethro Tull didn't quite translate through the generations

There's so much good music in 1980 NWOBHM Neo Prog need I say more.

 

Played Thick as a Brick for my 20-year-old son (I was just listening to it in the car while giving him a ride) and he immediately went home and downloaded it. So there.

 

Yeah 'Under Wraps' is a head scratcher. It deserves all of the contempt that it gets.

 

Yeah...TAAB and Passion Play both went to number 1 on the Billboard charts.

 

Absolutely, I have the first two Led Zeppelin albums. Loved them when they were released but I never bought another LZ album after those. My little brother bought Led Zeppelin III, and as we shared a room I had access to it. They just didn't interest me. If I had to give a reason I'd say I outgrew them at around 18 years old.

 

You are talking about your Grandson and Aqualung. You better look in the mirror you outgrew Led Zeppelin III at 18. Wow what a mixed up mess this story turned out to be.

 

Alas I don't trust you, because my observation was based on, well, observations. Younger relatives, people at shows, reading the media, familiarity with non-mainstream music being made today, and hearing what the kids say in record stores - such as the kids I observed checking out the new Floyd album on vinyl earlier today. Perhaps you're just going by the sort of pop kids who wouldn't have had any idea who the Clash were in 1982. Sure, there may be kids out there who've never heard of Black Sabbath, just as surely as there are some who've never heard of Jason Aldean. But there's a lot of older music that continues to have resonance. Like, it wouldn't take too long to find a load of contemporary bands with audiences who draw heavily on Sabbath. Or Floyd, or kids who like the Doors. That's my point.

 

I would think that JT would be an easier band for a young person to pick up on than, say, Pink Floyd from the same era.

But, the vocalist in JT sounds like an evil Cat Stevens to me.

 

I belong to a few record collecting groups on Facebook.One is for just 78s,one is just for classical LPs.You would be surprised how many people under 35 are listening to either pre 1940 jazz and pop,both well known and obscure artists,and to early mono LPs by classical artists most would consider obscure

Most indie music I have heard is regugitated second rate versions of 80s or early 90s music.Very sad state of affairs.

So what do millennials think of other "big 5" prog bands,like ELP or Yes,who I was never able to warm up to,and I was in junior high school when they were at their peak.

 

I agree with a lot of your points.I also think they put out a lot of dreck.I think that for the most part that the majority of todays youth just don't give a **** about 70s rock music.

 

I'm repulsed by even the thought of that album. That doesn't usually happen with me.

 

For those of us who were fans of Tull back in the day, I think we forget that it was probably an acquired taste even then. Yeah, a few of the tracks from Aqualung got radio play back in the day, but I don't think any of us were as open-minded then as we probably are now, with age (leaving aside for the moment whether rejecting current stuff is itself a form of narrow-mindedness, something I'm probably as guilty of as the next guy). As I remember it, as teens, we identified with certain bands. The early James Gang stuff cooked- I just listened to an old compilation of it tonight, but if you asked me in the early 70's what I thought of the band, I would have relegated it to 'motorhead' music. (Not that I didn't like it, but it fit into a cliched 'type' even then). Some of these bands my wife thinks of as 'guy' bands- heavy guitars, she's a little younger than me, but largely of the same generation, and even today, she relegates some of this stuff to 'guy' rock.
As to younger generations, i do think it is a question of exposure. If they like it, great; if they don't, why are they held to any higher standard then we were, when this music was new? I know I've turned younger people on to Spirit- 12 Dreams, one of my favorite 'forgotten' records, and despite it's odd, dated, psych aspects, it has found love with people who never heard of Randy California or the band. Just for the hell of it, take the year 1972- and go back 40 years- how many of us were digging into big band, swing and 1930's-40's stuff when we were teens? It was pretty much irrelevant, wasn't it? But now, with a little maturity, and a broader lense, I can listen to Gene Krupa doing the drum beats on the opening of Sing, Sing, Sing and enjoy the hell out of it.

 

im a classic rock fanatic and i didnt like JT the first few times i heard them...
it was fter like the 5th time i heard them where it clicked.
love them now.

 

Like so many bands who were big in the late '60s and onwards, and who so many of use listened to then, to me they had a limited power period of creativity. Bands like JT, Led Zepplin, Doors, CCR, Pink Floyd, Van der Graff Generator, King Crimson etc had this massive music impression on me for around three or four years then I moved on, but always dip back into a particular period of around '68-'73 for a reminder of back then and where my head was in that period.
In the case of JT it was the albums Stand Up/ Benefit/ Aqualung/ Thick as a brick- and beyond that in my opinion, Ian Anderson began mixing too many styles and sounds together, tried to be a bit too clever musically and the original interesting mix of blues-rock and jazzy flute with a vague tinge of folk got all out of whack gradually, losing the simple blues-rock base and started to plod along clumsily...and I lost interest.
All this was 40 years or so ago, so good luck if kids want to even listen to ancient stuff from our younger days..though I recently heard a CCR cover band made up of young guys, and they were pretty good.

 

Tull was very much a band with a cult following for quite a while before they became popular outside of campuses and f.m. underground radio. Hymn 43 being released as a single got them a little more attention.
Their image of looking like a band that played for the village people while Quasimodo climbed the bell tower made them a bit too bizarre for many. Aside from the strangeness of Celtic music being played like rock n roll.
Aqualung was the album that boosted them out of underground radio and into mainstream music.
They also stayed a pretty big concert attraction into the 80s, and a popular enough album selling band to have an early 80s release very quickly redone as a half speed master.
Yuppie aged fans? Not sure what that is. But Tull, since Aqualung, has had a pretty steady run and maintained quite a level of popularity.

 

In your words "In the case of JT it was the albums Stand Up/ Benefit/ Aqualung/ Thick as a brick- and beyond that in my opinion, Ian Anderson began mixing too many styles and sounds together, tried to be a bit too clever musically and the original interesting mix of blues-rock and jazzy flute with a vague tinge of folk got all out of whack gradually, losing the simple blues-rock base and started to plod along clumsily...and I lost interest." I think you are a little mixed up. The Blues rock ended after there first album This Was that's why Mick Abrahams left! There second album Stand Up was still Blues rock but with a eclectic album with various styles appearing in its songs. By Benefit Jethro Tull were a Progressive band with there next 5 releases Aqualung, Thick as a Brick, A Passion Play.
War Child and Minstrel in the Gallery. Too Old To Rock'n' Roll Too Young To Die is the weakest album of the 70s, but still has Progressive leanings. The next
three Songs from the Wood, Heavy Horses and Stormwatch were Progressive Folk. So it's plain
to me from 1970-79 they stayed very consistent in there catalog to me.

 

Songs from the Wood got played on KMET.

 

It doesn't surprise me that a lot of them don't like rock music. For them to like music from a 4 decades ago would be like as if I had been listening to big band music and crooners in high school. Rock music is old people music, youth of the past typically weren't into old people stuff.
What does amazes me is that many of them actually DO like rock music. There is just something wrong with this picture.............

 

You know, I really don't think you can put your thumb on what todays youth really like. Yeah, of course there is the mainstream stuff that is aimed at those who are more into the fad of likeing music than they are actually attracted to music.
But I think among todays youth there is no general consensus of what they like. There is just far far far too much music out there and no nucleus to it. There is no center of gravity. What they do and don't like seems to be all over the map.
Which maybe ain't such a bad thing. Because if I am right about that, that would mean nobody has a ring in their nose......

I am betting that if you had a room full of 20 year old kids and asked them the same question about the "big 5" prog bands that they would end up in an argument with each other about it.

 

I disagree. I think today's youth are the ones buying up most of the used Zeppelin, and Floyd, and Sabbath and Grareful Dead...and they're buying them on vinyl. But I guess it depends on how you define "youth".

 

I'm 34. The only way I can put it is like this: I like to listen to Jethro Tull when I'm in the mood for a certain type of rock music, much as I can only watch Monty Python (namely the Holy Grail) when I'm in the mood for a certain kind of movie.

Which is to say, not terribly often. But I appreciate both JT and Python as sort of antiquated, but still enjoyable and occassionaly profound in their own ways.

At this point in time, you're a certain kind of nerd if you're digging out Jethro Tull or Monty Python. And that's ok. Everything is so fragmented nowadays, you can be a "nerd" about literally whatever you want.

 

The thing that grabbed me about that flute was the sounds of the breaths Anderson took to play it. Bought my friend's LP copy of Songs From The Wood for three bucks. I was 15 then. Maybe if your grandson had heard "Hunting Girl".

 

To the extent these generic 'younger people' constantly referred to are 'unaware' of Jethro Tull -- they are equally unaware of practically every classic jazz musician, composer, songwriter, and of course, pop and rock greats. So what. Jethro Tull's in good company.

 

I mean from a band that started after 1980

 

This thread refers to music that's 40+ years old, and people *of a certain age* age (teens and 20s when JT were cranking out Aqualung through Songs from the Wood in the '70s) are surprised that the kiddies don't know it. Think about this. Music that old to 17 year-olds now would be equivalent to us being into Bix Biederbecke. Plus my parents lacked seat belts and cassette decks in their car when I was a little kid so I was not a captive audience to their music...