Tull Brao

Also known as Jethro Tull: This Is the First 20 Years. It consists of interviews with fans, record company executives and frontman Ian Anderson giving a rough chronology of the band, interspersed with clips from music videos and live performances…

A unique phenomenon in popular music history, Jethro Tull have been and still are one of the most successful live performing acts on the world stage, rivaling Led Zeppelin, Elton John and even the Rolling Stones. After forty years at the bottom, at the top and various points in between, with now some 30-odd albums to their credit and sales totaling more than 50 million, Jethro Tull are still performing typically more than a hundred concerts each year. This concert recorded in 2008 is one of their best.

There are numerous "best of Jethro Tull" albums on the market, and too many of them feature virtually the same songs that have been endlessly played on the radio for the last thirty years. Jethro Tull are a group that are so much more multi-faceted and unique than many of those "hits" would suggest. Kudos then, to those who assembled this collection, which delves deeper into Tull's enormous catalogue of compositions and comes up with a greater, more accurate perspective of the band's history.

Following the end of the Stormwatch tour in early 1980, Jethro Tull would undergo its largest line-up shuffle to date, resulting in Barriemore Barlow, John Evan and Dee Palmer all leaving the band. Jethro Tull was left with Anderson (the only original member), Martin Barre and Dave Pegg.

Far and away the prettiest record Jethro Tull released at least since Thick as a Brick and a special treat for anyone with a fondness for the group's more folk-oriented material. Ian Anderson had moved to the countryside sometime earlier, and it showed in his choice of source material…

Essential: a masterpiece of progressive rock music.
SONGS FROM THE WOOD, from 1977, is one of my favourite Jethro Tull discs, and represents a brilliant return to form, after the previous year's disappointing TOO OLD TO ROCK AND ROLL.

5 Album Set (Digital Remaster): Aqualung/A Passion Play/Minstrel In The Gallery/Too Old To Rock 'n' Roll: Too Young To Die!/Songs From The Wood