Thick as a Brick
Occupation
- Ian Anderson - flute, vocals, acoustic guitar, violin, saxophone, trumpet
- Barrie Barlow - drums, tympani
- Martin Barre - electric guitar, lute
- John Evan - piano, Hammond organ, harpsichord
- Jeffrey Hammond - Hammond - bass, vocals
Thick as a Brick is a concept album, released in 1972 of the rock band Jethro Tull. It is the first album by Jethro Tull, the court reached 1 on the Billboard pop album charts. The album consists of a single piece, which extends over two LP sides. Composer and author is frontman and guiding spirit of the band Ian Anderson, as his pseudonym Gerald Bostock.
The title (literally: "thick as a brick " ) is a slang phrase meaning " dumb as a post " or simply " saublöd ".
Music
Thick as a Brick is the Progressive attributed to rock and is strongly influenced alongside melodic hard rock of folk-rock and jazz elements. Thus, it was in one of the former trends. The Dutch band Ekseption since the late 1960s, but especially the hard rock band Deep Purple with Jon Lord -influenced compositions brought at the beginning of the 1970s rock out with sometimes long passages adapted Baroque music.
Thick as a Brick is because of its length and the context, a so-called concept album and due to multiple exchange between tempos and styles very complex.
As the texts show, it comes to the world of a child whose world view distorted by educational requirements and so-called taboo subjects and is patchy, which is between precocious and clueless, has left the time carefree game safely behind him, but oppressed by prepubescent expectations. There is certainly still far from adulthood, thereby however, it was "adult" pattern urged by the pushy ambitious and missionary English environment of the lower middle class.
Text by Gerald Bostock
According Cover Text all the text of an eight- year-old school boy originally from Manchester, then, written in St. Cleveland and sent to the band that made an album of it. The poem " Thick as a Brick" itself is divided into individual verses or passages.
This is a deliberately rumored legend. Gerald Bostock is a fictional character, behind which hides Ian Anderson, may have contributed to the his former friends, bandmates and others. The intellectual influence of Monty Python is difficult to deny.
Son honest, faithful church bourgeois parents, the boy is said to have developed a poetic talent, which is why he nicknamed " Little Milton " - got - the little Milton, after the poet. However, he has already said eight years incomprehensible and allegedly inappropriate things and is placed in the press the same in the vicinity of the allegedly always rowdy and foul-mouthed rock musician of his time and even admitted to the mental hospital to give a price for child's poetry to a more adjusted little girl to be able to.
In the style of Monty Python's Flying Circus, the musicians and their environment in 1972 with the appearance of the panel talked publicly about it without airing the ( obvious ) Legend explicitly. Even today, occasionally surfaces the name Bostock and his interviews with Ian Anderson and it is asking for him or talked about him as if he was a real person.
Cover
The first edition of the album is packaged in a mock newspaper. It is ostensibly about a typical English small-town newspaper of its time. The title: St. Cleve Chronicle & Linwell Advertiser. The main headline runs just below the header bar across the first page and the album title. A red box in the page header indicates a Jethro Tull - feature article on page 7. Otherwise, there is no visible evidence of the record, and even the above fit in the appearance as a newspaper.
The " feature article" on Jethro Tull turns out to be a short article that could be easily overlooked between comics, horoscope and radio program. They are to also more likely to give the impression of an article written by public relations departments that have communicated almost nothing and wordy do this with useless details and attributions up to the coffee carrier. So it says about the album: " Jeffrey Hammond - Hammond played the bass guitar and spoke a few words " - like many other things in the " St. Cleve Chronicle " - ambiguous humor with close to satire.
Much more important is the actual main products of the double-page spread, which reproduces the entire text of the plate about half the blade height. Under the heading " Thick as a Brick. By Gerald " Little Milton " Bostock " it says in the introduction: " ... we print here for future reference for everyone ... Gerald Bostocks from controversial poem that has caused so much controversy ( The Editor) ".
The album is several times later reissued in different covers, is also available as a CD and digitally processed was 1997 again available in a new edition of the original newspaper covers of the LP edition.
The outer sides of the Chronicle were changed between different countries and at different conditions (see links below).
Album Review
The album was very well received by audiences and critics in general. Allmusic awarded 4.5 out of 5 stars, Rolling Stone 5 of 5 points.
The Billboard magazine wrote in 1972: " ... Ian Anderson and his friends have a tendency to the creation of albums, the joy, surprise and entertain through and through. Thick as a Brick is no exception ... "
Title list
Original edition
Side A:
Thick as a Brick, Part I ( 22:37)
Side B:
Thick as a Brick, Part II ( 21:04 )
25th Anniversary Edition
- Ian Anderson, Martin Barre and Jeffrey Hammond
Thick as a Brick 2
In April 2012, 40 years after the first album, Ian Anderson brought the concept album Thick as a Brick 2, which picks up the story of Gerald Bostocks back out. Musically, it draws on Thick as a Brick and other early albums by Jethro Tull.