Ian Anderson at Akron Civic Theater

Akron, OH; 4 November 2012

Review by Pete Storey

In September of 1968 I was a freshman at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio (yea, I'm 62!) At the time, I was primarily listening to the Beatles, the Stones, and the Kinks, with some Bob Dylan and Peter, Paul and Mary thrown in on occasion. That October an album was released by a new UK group called Jethro Tull. The album was This Was and I completely missed it, along with their next two albums in '69 and '70, Stand Up and Benefit. It wasn't until late in 1971 that my cousin Mark made me listen to a Tull album titled Aqualung that completely caught me off guard and changed my musical listening path.  These guys had such a unique style, as good as anything I had heard to date, but it was their lead singer, Ian Anderson that really caught my attention with his haunting flute and perfect acoustic guitar playing. I was hooked!  I owned a Panasonic 7" reel to reel tape recorder/player and began accumulating my Tull library. I have followed the band ever since Aqualung and have most every release of note since then. Of course, I also backtracked and picked up the first three I had missed. I have skipped a few albums through the years, mainly because of duplication of songs they contained. Through all of these years, one album remained my favorite: Thick as a Brick, released in 1972. It was a "concept album", telling the imaginary story of a ten-year old boy named Gerald Bostock. The album has no real individual songs, it goes from beginning to end with no breaks and I have heard it was actually recorded that way, in its entirety.  The opening "title song" is really the only radio play time it received.

Model: DeAnna

Original photo by: Christopher South

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