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From: dsi@unccvax.UUCP (Dataspan Inc)
Newsgroups: net.music
Subject: Re: Jethro Tull retraction and flame
Message-ID: <194@unccvax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 2-May-85 11:37:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: unccvax.194
Posted: Thu May  2 11:37:39 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 5-May-85 03:18:45 EDT
References: <268@osiris.UUCP>
Organization: UNC-Charlotte
Lines: 57


     Bullcookies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
     
     Jethro Tull can be called a lot of things but relatively unoriginal?
How about your article: every Tull hater at one time, or another, has always
pinned the blame for their annoyance on Ian ripping off Roland Kirk. Steve
Simels, in Sterno Review, legitimizes his disdain for Tull quite frequently
in print using this approach, for example.

     I'll admit, "This Was" doesn't make the Accuphase and ADS's sound quite
as impressive as Kajagoogoo (or "Shar-de").  A Passion Play just isn't as
comprehensible as the intellectual depth of Murray Head.  And how can you
possibly get 22 minutes/hr of commercial avails when "This Was" is playing?

     On the other hand, Sade' is a ripoff of Boz Scaggs (no need toaaaaaask)
--it is indeed so wonderful to have ersatz glitzoid ultra-slick production
numbers backing up someone singing under the influence of a giant phlem-wad
stuck in their throat. Boz perfected this about 10 years ago!

     I suppose I should feel patently inadequate as a human being for turning
off all the lights and permitting the "My God" side of "Aqualung" to 
positively reinforce those behaviours which seem to occur on the side of 
my head that "understands" music nonverbally. Instead, for real intellectual
stimulation, one should sit and listen to those two boys who tattle on
each other's sexual idiosyncrasies, living at Home like Real Men at 21,
singing about the Real Problems of Social Intercourse, its locus being the
Dance-Floor.  After all, Tull fans have things completely wrong; objectivist
philosophy and negative utopias exist in those nondescript books in the
University stacks, and songs longer than 3:20 always come on Daddy's 
Beethoven RCA Red Seals.  None of this bears any resemblance to the real
world of how one's stance should be to show the world that you and your
beau are really "
beau are really "together." 

      Seriously, Jethro Tull does offer at worst "singing into a flute,"
sometimes, the lyrical themes are a bit trite; but the musical part of this
brain just "understands emotionally" what the band is trying to communicate,
it may be different than the "meaning" of the lyrics. Call it old-fart-
listening-to-10-year-old-records attenuated behaviour; but try as I might,
I just can't extract anything from Madonna or Sade' other than a vehicle
for pseudosexual stimulation.  Then again, Mona and I have never seriously
considered how our body posture whilst queueing for tickets at O'Hare
communicated our "togetherness" to the Smooth Operator or Wham set. After
all, some people don't have millions of dollars from singing about this
stuff, and certainly wouldn't live at home if they did.  WHILE THIS 
ARGUMENT CANNOT BE PHILOSOPHICALLY DEFENDED (as has been attempted numerous
times in this forum) Jethro Tull does seem to reinforce "critical listening
behaviour" far more than Frankie Goes to Hollywood...it all depends what
you're into...

   --- --- ---

David Anthony
Sr. Video Engineer
DataSpan, Inc.

.