Search - Jethro Tull :: Live at the Isle of Wight 1970

PISSER! ABSOLUTELY PISSER!

wally gator | USA | 06/10/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

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Something I discovered around the time I was fifteen was that JETHRO TULL is one of the most eclectic bands of all time. The bands repetoire spans everything from rock to blues to jazz to world music to progressive to ("metal"?).

There are times when I can really dig on TULL, and there are times that I really can't stand them at all, and truthfully (take it easy on me now) the latter outweighs the former, BUT.. when JETHRO TULL is good, JETHRO TULL is goooooooooood, and this album here is TULL at their BEST! No bull on this peice, just ace kickin bluesy rock jams.

This is the band with the original line up still in place. The sound was a lot more raw then they would become in the following few years. Ian Anderson plays the flute like it's his own creation, dirty, no remorse for the proper music it was intended to play. The band smokes and crunches its way through a helping of their late sixties progressive blues material.

If you happen to own some of the early studio discs (THIS WAS, BENEFIT, there are a few others) and have not heard the early live stuff... GET ON IT.

The bands live recordings are completely fresh. They aren't muddled like the studio recordings of the day, and they aren't sappified like the live albums they would come to release in the eighties. ISLE OF WIGHT represents this band when it was still out for blood, and full of energy. It happens to be some of the greatest blues rock of all time. DONT MISS!"

Unbelievably Great Performance

Joseph C. Helton | 04/11/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Isle of Wight, 1970, chaos, grumpy hippies, Joni Mitchell in tears on stage, Jim Hendrix's last major gig, and out of this comes a recording of such stunning perfection as to almost leave the listener breathless. Ian Anderson has such a presence in this recording, the band is incredibly tight, the songs are excellent, and excellently played. All I can say is, you haven't heard live Tull until you've heard this, it's amazing. 5 very big stars, and a request to Amazon for a few more. Get this cd!"

Caveman's Blues

PHILIP S WOLF | SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, CA. USA | 12/09/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Back before the egg was invented, rock groups had to deal with sound systems on open air stages that could no way reproduce the music they could create in studios of the day. Jethro Tull, began as a blues band, but even before the first album was completed, other musical styles slipped into the mix. This live document from the Isle of Wright in August of 1970, has the the exact same dilemma to deal with.



Is it possible for 600,000 people to sit quietly for a band that plays Bach? {Bouree} Can you get a proper tape of the live set, when the guitar is bleeding over onto every track you are putting down? Is it possible to stay in tune for two songs in a row? Will anyone be listening to live music from 1970, thirty nine years later?



Jethro Tull, in 1970, was out there with Jimi Hendrix, The Who & Led Zeppelin. To compete with those guys, you had better produce a big noise, a wall of sound, or nobody is gonna look at that stage that sits three quarters of a mile away. The show had to be larger than life, something that nobody had seen before, different, louder and greater than the group that just left the stage before them.



No, this isn't: "Thick As A Brick", this is a band that had a frontman who looked like he escaped from: "Oliver Twist." This was a band that played like Herbie Mann on acid. This is a band who had three records in the bins, that in no way sounded like anyone else.



"With You There To Help Me", "Nothing Is Easy", "To Cry You A Song" "We Used To Know." Flutes and grand piano have to compete with the loudest electric guitar on the planet. The blues is turned sideways as classical and jazz are blended in, to mess with your head. This band could play every note from their records perfectly, but that isn't the point here. The monitors were junk, distortion ruled the day, it's all noise...ETC,ETC,ETC



This was exactly what live music in 1970 sounded like.

Jethro Tull, was way ahead of a few hundred other groups that would copy everything they played and performed on stages like this.

This is a sound document from a time that won't repeat itself.

3.5 Stars.











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