FrontDoorAngel
Journeyman
so take the stage, spin down the ages
Posts: 76
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Post by FrontDoorAngel on May 13, 2015 5:07:32 GMT
Hello. Just joined. Been a diehard Tuller since 1979, and will be hearing Ian in my head when they slide me into the oven...wait! Crikey! If that's the case then I wouldn't be dead, would I? Alright, let me just say that when I take my rattling last breath, it will be to the tunes Mr. Anderson has jammed my noggin full with (sorry to end on a preposition).
May I croak before him, and he live on one-legged till all the velvet greens and silver-stream-saturated daffodils have dwindled away to the size of a dot on a die that's a six or a two.
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Post by maddogfagin on May 13, 2015 8:39:17 GMT
Hello. Just joined. Been a diehard Tuller since 1979, and will be hearing Ian in my head when they slide me into the oven...wait! Crikey! If that's the case then I wouldn't be dead, would I? Alright, let me just say that when I take my rattling last breath, it will be to the tunes Mr. Anderson has jammed my noggin full with (sorry to end on a preposition).
May I croak before him, and he live on one-legged till all the velvet greens and silver-stream-saturated daffodils have dwindled away to the size of a dot on a die that's a six or a two.
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Post by steelmonkey on May 13, 2015 17:54:02 GMT
No No No...the goal is to outlive Mr. A ...to experience the sum of the 'Anderson Era' on the planet earth and in hopes that the vault doors really come tumbling down the way the Zappa and Hendrix descendants have let out the music that the artist himself was holding back from the public.
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Post by steelmonkey on May 13, 2015 17:57:20 GMT
But nevertheless,,,,very poetic and nicely expressed introductory post. I too expect loud Tull (APP) as the soundtrack down the Jasmine Corridor...I always imagined my death taking place on a bicycle, in downtown SF, corner of geary and market with three similtaneous thoughts;
Tull song...probably Passion Play That girl is pretty, I wonder if..... Yellow light...but I can make it, no problem...
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FrontDoorAngel
Journeyman
so take the stage, spin down the ages
Posts: 76
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Post by FrontDoorAngel on May 14, 2015 3:57:02 GMT
But nevertheless,,,,very poetic and nicely expressed introductory post. I too expect loud Tull (APP) as the soundtrack down the Jasmine Corridor...I always imagined my death taking place on a bicycle, in downtown SF, corner of geary and market with three similtaneous thoughts; Tull song...probably Passion Play That girl is pretty, I wonder if..... Yellow light...but I can make it, no problem... Thanks, steelmonkey! I'm something of a poet - have had a number of pieces published in reputable journals over the years here in the states and in the UK - but I appreciate the kind words.
One of the things I respect the most about Ian Anderson is his gift for poetry. And I've always thought it odd that he's said that he doesn't care for poetry at all. Hmm. I suspect he means poetry as in Lord Tennyson, or Robert Frost, or something academic like that; or perhaps he refers to the kind of 'poetry' that certain people - not Ian - think of when they hear that word: Hallmark card type ephemera, saccharine garbage about rainbows and unicorns, grandmas and moony junes? With Ian it's hard to know for sure. All I know is, his lyrics are extremely literate, very often metrical (if only for musical purposes), and jam-packed with every tool and device at a poet's disposal: rhyme & meter, alliteration, metaphor, multiple meanings, allusions to history, literature, music, philosophy, etc. When I first opened up the first Tull LP I ever heard, Songs From the Wood, at the tender age of 15 (1979), I was instantly enchanted by the words, before I even heard the music they accompanied:
I'll buy you six bay mares to put in your stable, six golden apples bought with my pay. I am the first piper who calls the sweet tune, but I must be gone by the seventh day.
or:
I believe in fires at midnight when the dogs have all been fed, a golden toddy on the mantle, a broken gun beneath the bed.
^ If those, and many, many verses like them, are not the work of a fine poet, then I know nothing about poetry.
Ian's natural, unschooled genius expresses itself in so many ways. The world is a finer place for such men (and women). All of the anti-Tull vitriol on the world - particularly on the part of professional music critics - is the result of jealousy, plain and simple, and a heaping helping of 'good' old-fashioned snobbery. Autodidacts often offend the powdery noses of the so-called "upper-class", who cannot conceive of a naturally gifted person succeeding in life without a university degree, or the time honored help of Old Money.
I'm an autodidact myself - barely made it out of high school. So was Frank Zappa. And Charles Dickens. There are many others. And with Youtube, the world is seeing the proliferation of self-taught geniuses in all fields of artistic and intellectual endeavor, and in places where your typical snob wouldn't think to look: Southeast Asia, Burma, South America, China, literally Everywhere.
Sorry for the long, discursive post! You'll be seeing quite a lot of these from me, no doubt, since I've decided to start reaching out to my fellow Tullians.
JT & Ian forever! <3
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Post by Equus on May 14, 2015 6:17:43 GMT
I remember Bob Dylan writing poetry, "just" for the sake of writing poetry, and then discovering that he could use it unabridged for a song... Lyrics and poetry is to me one and the same thing... and to me Ian is a great poet, or should I say lyricist? Anyway... the lyrics of Ian Anderson are mostly challenging, clever, and "poetically" written... One thing I really like about Ian's Lyrics is that he uses difficult language... Not for the sake being "difficult", but to enhance the lyrics, and to give the lyrics dept, and at the same time meaning. This makes it very interesting to investigate the lyrics of Ian Anderson, but also leaves me with an endless amount of work... To investigate a song by Ian Anderson is always a challenge, and mostly / always interesting and worth doing... It seldom falls apart, but just keeps getting stronger... If people are jealous? Well of course there's a lot of that... Jealous people are unfortunately everywhere... and it's always easier to put a spanner in the works, than to build your own ships of excellent endeavor... surely Ian must have had his "fair" share of that... but mostly I think that it's a question of liking the music/lyrics, or not liking it. As for being Autodidact... Well that's also a very interesting question. To me it really just means that we should constantly try to do better... I've personally tried that most of my life... There are so many ways to learn... Ian is a prime example of that... He is in a state of constant learning... Let's try to do the same, and become wise men, when lustful youth once have left us...
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Post by maddogfagin on May 14, 2015 7:51:50 GMT
One of the things I respect the most about Ian Anderson is his gift for poetry. And I've always thought it odd that he's said that he doesn't care for poetry at all. Hmm. I suspect he means poetry as in Lord Tennyson, or Robert Frost, or something academic like that; or perhaps he refers to the kind of 'poetry' that most non-literate people think of when they hear that word: Hallmark card type ephemera, saccharine garbage about rainbows and unicorns, grandmas and moony junes? With Ian it's hard to know for sure. All I know is, his lyrics are extremely literate, very often metrical (if only for musical purposes), and jam-packed with every tool and device at a poet's disposal: rhyme & meter, alliteration, metaphor, multiple meanings, allusions to history, literature, music, philosophy, etc. When I first opened up the first Tull LP I ever heard, Songs From the Wood, at the tender age of 15 (1979), I was instantly enchanted by the words, before I even heard the music they accompanied: IA's schooling would have included the classics - it is/was part of the curriculum and as such would have been part of the English Literature lessons. Being the same age as IA his school work would have been similar to mine, and Shakespeare, Tennyson, Milton et al would certainly have been part of his study courses along with 20th century writers such as George Orwell, J. B. Priestly, J. R. R. Tolkien and even Noël Coward at his acerbic best.
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FrontDoorAngel
Journeyman
so take the stage, spin down the ages
Posts: 76
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Post by FrontDoorAngel on May 14, 2015 9:07:59 GMT
One of the things I respect the most about Ian Anderson is his gift for poetry. And I've always thought it odd that he's said that he doesn't care for poetry at all. Hmm. I suspect he means poetry as in Lord Tennyson, or Robert Frost, or something academic like that; or perhaps he refers to the kind of 'poetry' that most non-literate people think of when they hear that word: Hallmark card type ephemera, saccharine garbage about rainbows and unicorns, grandmas and moony junes? With Ian it's hard to know for sure. All I know is, his lyrics are extremely literate, very often metrical (if only for musical purposes), and jam-packed with every tool and device at a poet's disposal: rhyme & meter, alliteration, metaphor, multiple meanings, allusions to history, literature, music, philosophy, etc. When I first opened up the first Tull LP I ever heard, Songs From the Wood, at the tender age of 15 (1979), I was instantly enchanted by the words, before I even heard the music they accompanied: IA's schooling would have included the classics - it is/was part of the curriculum and as such would have been part of the English Literature lessons. Being the same age as IA his school work would have been similar to mine, and Shakespeare, Tennyson, Milton et al would certainly have been part of his study courses along with 20th century writers such as George Orwell, J. B. Priestly, J. R. R. Tolkien and even Noël Coward at his acerbic best. Sorry, I should have thought more about what I was typing! What I meant was that Ian was self-taught as a musician, or at the very least on the flute, which I gather is true based on the reading I've done and various interviews. I didn't mean to suggest that he hadn't had the usual education a person of his generation would have had.
I ran off at the fingers without being very clear about what I wanted to say. This happens a lot with me. I try like heck to be clear, but wind up obtuse, or just plain wrong.
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Post by maddogfagin on May 14, 2015 9:48:10 GMT
IA's schooling would have included the classics - it is/was part of the curriculum and as such would have been part of the English Literature lessons. Being the same age as IA his school work would have been similar to mine, and Shakespeare, Tennyson, Milton et al would certainly have been part of his study courses along with 20th century writers such as George Orwell, J. B. Priestly, J. R. R. Tolkien and even Noël Coward at his acerbic best. Sorry, I should have thought more about what I was typing! What I meant was that Ian was self-taught as a musician, or at the very least on the flute, which I gather is true based on the reading I've done and various interviews. I didn't mean to suggest that he hadn't had the usual education a person of his generation would have had.
I ran off at the fingers without being very clear about what I wanted to say. This happens a lot with me. I try like heck to be clear, but wind up obtuse, or just plain wrong.
But it's such a fascinating subject. All musicians who were UK based and of a similar age to IA during their formative school years of say 12 to 16 would have studied the classics (poetry, literature, music) as part of normal school lessons. I firmly believe this is why there was an explosion of what is now called prog rock in the early seventies when musicians began to use the ideas and concepts that they had learnt at school to form a large part of their musical compositions. IA and his contemporaries would have certainly had the opportunity to hear the works of Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Delius, for example, as part of their exam course work alongside the works of earlier classical composers (Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Liszt etc) and this is not forgetting the work of Cecil Sharp and others of his ilk, who scoured the British Isles collecting and saving traditional folk songs and music for future generations.
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FrontDoorAngel
Journeyman
so take the stage, spin down the ages
Posts: 76
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Post by FrontDoorAngel on May 14, 2015 14:48:06 GMT
Sorry, I should have thought more about what I was typing! What I meant was that Ian was self-taught as a musician, or at the very least on the flute, which I gather is true based on the reading I've done and various interviews. I didn't mean to suggest that he hadn't had the usual education a person of his generation would have had.
I ran off at the fingers without being very clear about what I wanted to say. This happens a lot with me. I try like heck to be clear, but wind up obtuse, or just plain wrong.
But it's such a fascinating subject. All musicians who were UK based and of a similar age to IA during their formative school years of say 12 to 16 would have studied the classics (poetry, literature, music) as part of normal school lessons. I firmly believe this is why there was an explosion of what is now called prog rock in the early seventies when musicians began to use the ideas and concepts that they had learnt at school to form a large part of their musical compositions. IA and his contemporaries would have certainly had the opportunity to hear the works of Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Delius, for example, as part of their exam course work alongside the works of earlier classical composers (Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Liszt etc) and this is not forgetting the work of Cecil Sharp and others of his ilk, who scoured the British Isles collecting and saving traditional folk songs and music for future generations. That says volumes about the superiority of the public education system in the UK as opposed to the states! Is that the way it is nowadays, or was it that way just in your/IA's generation?
When I went to school (Kindergarten thru 12th grade, no higher) we were taught literature of course, but exposure to music was scant. I remember learning about fundamental musical theory, bits of info about various composers, etc; and I remember we saw some films and heard some music, but it was nothing in depth: very sketchy and basic. My love of music was engendered at home, where my father would play all kinds of music from the classics up to the Beatles, Stones, and plenty of rock, though he was not terribly into progressive rock or heavy metal. My fondest memories are of being sat on the couch and listening to Procol Harum, The Doors, Beatles, Stones, Elton John, Simon & Garfunkel, Cat Stevens, and later on groups like Boston, ELO, even Blondie. My pop was born in 1944.
My earliest interest in poetry and lyric-writing (I played in a band for 10 years and have recorded my own music) stems from those childhood moments with my father. He would engage my brother and I about the music, what we thought about it. He would tell us the words and ask us what we thought they meant. I distinctly recall him asking me my interpretation of "Fool on the Hill", and I remember thinking - I was all of seven or eight, I imagine, at the time - that "the eyes in his head" referred to eyes in the back of the character's head. I was a sprout and was thinking literally, of course. I even recollect an image of a Humpty-Dumpty type fellow sitting on a hill, with a pair of eyes in the back of his head.
I learned about "poetry", as in work written by famous poets, in the later years of school, say from 7th grade thru 12th, but I also remember hating it when I was in 8th grade. I remember reading William Carlos Williams' seminal poem, The Red Wheelbarrow:
www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/red-wheelbarrow
and thinking to myself: "What a load of crap! It doesn't rhyme and it looks like a kid could do it! Poetry sucks!"
Many, many years later, I developed a keen appreciation of that handful of words. There's still much debate as to its worth as poetry - but perhaps that's for another thread.
And I believe you're quite right about that group of people in the UK at that time. All those incredibly talented, unique bands popping up around the same time. My spiritual side likes to think it was God (or the Aristotelian Prime Mover) who was behind that, but your explanation is the more rational. If only the prog-haters in the world, who are Legion if Youtube and Facebook are any indication, which no doubt they are, would get rid of that knee-jerk desire to dismiss those artists as "pompous" and "pretentious" and sit down and give them a fair listen. << I shouldn't generalize. I know there are many people who have given prog works a chance and still can't stand them. One of them's a good friend of mine named Robbie MacKenzie, a Scot. Hey, Robbie! *waves hand*
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Post by maddogfagin on May 14, 2015 16:58:33 GMT
That says volumes about the superiority of the public education system in the UK as opposed to the states! Is that the way it is nowadays, or was it that way just in your/IA's generation? I think it was a certain type of teaching which is so different in modern society - you were either very clever and achieved loads of "O" and "A" level GCEs (General Certificate of Education - A levels being higher than O levels) or you were average like me and got 4 "O" levels and started work when you left school. If you weren't a swot or clever kid you got dumped, like me, into the B stream and you took your chances with the teaching. Perhaps we were lucky and we had a teacher who decided that it was all very well teaching advanced maths, for example, but if a pupil couldn't comprehend what the heck was going on with algebraic maths to the nth degree, then it was probably more worth while teaching kids how to deal with life in general. Thus we got instructed in English Literature and Art more than likely to a higher standard than the swots in the A stream. Anyway I didn't get on with school except for the football and the use of the heated swimming pool in the neighbouring girl's school.
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Post by steelmonkey on May 14, 2015 17:30:32 GMT
Ian's lyrics ( read: brilliant poetry) may be the best thing of all about Tull...( not to overlook the music/rhythm that somehow translates to how it feels to be me).
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Post by Equus on May 14, 2015 19:46:05 GMT
Ian's lyrics ( read: brilliant poetry) may be the best thing of all about Tull...( not to overlook the music/rhythm that somehow translates to how it feels to be me). Thank you for posting that! That's exactly how I feel about the lyrics and music of Jethro Tull...
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Post by steelmonkey on May 14, 2015 19:56:12 GMT
We're lucky, aren't we? Some people don't have a favorite musical group that feels so right and will endure from discovery to last breath.
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Post by rredmond on May 25, 2015 21:26:47 GMT
Hey bda! I know we've been interacting down below in the Shoutbox thingie, but I saw this thread and wanted to say hello! "Hello!" Welcome, can't believe (as the resident D&D geek) I missed a Gandalf picture too! Ah well, been a busy weekend Be well, --Ron--
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FrontDoorAngel
Journeyman
so take the stage, spin down the ages
Posts: 76
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Post by FrontDoorAngel on May 26, 2015 7:28:30 GMT
Thanks, Ron, nice to hear from you!
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