Tuesday, January 26, 2016

1000 SONGS - DAY 349 SONG #380

DAY 349: CHAMBER MUSIC

I listend to Jethro Tull a lot when I was a teenager. During the last years I have rediscovered them. Ian Anderson is a fine musician, without any doubt. "Thick as a Brick" is a masterpiece, in my opinion. But there are many more fine tunes composed by Anderson. I always loved the more reduced ones, the poetic ones, those in "odd" time signatures more than the rock songs in 4/4 (although there are some fine songs among them, too, and after not listening to it for decades, I can also appreciate "Locomotive Breath" again). Most famous of the "odd" time compositions is the 5/4 "Living in the Past", but methinks that Ian is a master of the 6/8 time and the way to put his lyrics in there with those breaks (he stops the sentence and leaves out something like two eights and puts the last syllable on the last 8 - or something like that). I recently discovered two chamber music versions of two of my favourite Anderson compositions, Wond'ring Aloud and Life is a Long Song.






As a bonus track, a version of "Wond'ring Aloud" other than featured on "Aqualung", called "Wond'ring Again" - first song of side b of second disc of "Living in the Past" (I think, but maybe another alternative version); so beautiful: