Jethro Tull – 20 Years Of Jethro Tull

Sounds of the Seventies was a 38-volume series issued by Time-Life during the late 1980s and early-to-mid 1990s, spotlighting pop music of the 1970s. Much like Time-Life's other series chronicling popular music, volumes in the "Sounds of the Seventies" series covered a specific time period, including individual years in some volumes, and different parts of the decade (for instance, the early 1970s) in others; in addition, some volumes covered specific trends, such as music popular on album-oriented rock stations on the FM band. Each volume was issued on either compact disc, cassette or (with volumes issued prior to 1991) vinyl record.

Released just as punk was taking hold on the public's imagination in America and making groups like Jethro Tull seem like dinosaurs on their way to extinction, Bursting Out became a seemingly perpetual denizen of the cutout bins for years afterward. However, it happened to be a good album, a more-than-decent capturing of a live Tull concert from Europe. The sound is remarkably good, given the group's arena rock status at the time, and the repertoire is a solid representation of the group's history, going all the way back to "A New Day Yesterday" from their second album and up through 1978's Heavy Horses, with stops along the way for "Bouree," "Aqualung," "Locomotive Breath," "Cross-Eyed Mary," and a compact reprise of Thick as a Brick. Some of these tracks work better than others – the tendency here is to play loud and hard, and sometimes that just doesn't translate well on record; seeing "Locomotive Breath" probably worked better than hearing it.

Released just as punk was taking hold on the public's imagination in America and making groups like Jethro Tull seem like dinosaurs on their way to extinction, Bursting Out became a seemingly perpetual denizen of the cutout bins for years afterward. However, it happened to be a good album, a more-than-decent capturing of a live Tull concert from Europe. The sound is remarkably good, given the group's arena rock status at the time, and the repertoire is a solid representation of the group's history, going all the way back to "A New Day Yesterday" from their second album and up through 1978's Heavy Horses, with stops along the way for "Bouree," "Aqualung," "Locomotive Breath," "Cross-Eyed Mary," and a compact reprise of Thick as a Brick. Some of these tracks work better than others – the tendency here is to play loud and hard, and sometimes that just doesn't translate well on record; seeing "Locomotive Breath" probably worked better than hearing it.

Blood Ceremony is a Canadian psychedelic rock band formed in 2006 in Toronto, Ontario. Blood Ceremony's style has been described as "flute-tinged witch rock" and their lyrics are filled with black magic imagery and references to classic horror films. The band is fronted by singer/flutist/organist Alia O'Brien, whose flute solos are reminiscent of Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson.

One of the “strange decisions in rock” in recent years has been that of Ian Anderson to seemingly cast off his first lieutenant: Martin Lancelot Barre. It seems that his trusty cohort since 1969 hasn’t really had a proper explanation either but as time goes on it is evidently more permanent than we may have suspected. The first major post-Barre project is ‘Thick As A Brick’ the updated version is the subject of Anderson’s appearance on 30 June at the Royal Albert Hall and there is talk already of a new Tull album next year but without the long-serving guitarist. This makes this 4 DVD/Book set all the more poignant and the 2005 Swiss gig almost writes a line under the band’s more recent history.