The Dark Elf Reviews...

[morthoron]

I am more apt to write short record reviews of a paragraph or three over on my blog The Dark Elf File...

darkelffile.blogspot.com/

Or at RateYourMusic.com (I have over 300 short reviews there currently)...

rateyourmusic.com/collection/Dark_Elf/d.rp,aat,ts,al,o,g,v,r0.0-5.0,n100,oowun

But ever and anon I rattle off a several page album review. Most of these appear on BlogCritics.org...

blogcritics.org/writers/the-dark-elf/.

Reviews of interest for prog fans on BlogCritics.org are...

Melt (1980) by Peter Gabriel
blogcritics.org/music/article/music-review-peter-gabriel-melt-1980/

Liege and Lief (1970) by Fairport Convention
blogcritics.org/music/article/music-review-fairport-convention-liege-lief/

Days of Future Passed (1967) by The Moody Blues
blogcritics.org/music/article/music-review-the-moody-blues-mdash/

Friday Night in San Francisco (1980) by Al DiMeola, John McLaughlin, Paco DeLucia
blogcritics.org/music/article/music-review-al-dimeola-john-mclaughlin/

Aqualung (1972) by Jethro Tull
blogcritics.org/music/article/music-review-jethro-tull-aqualung1/

And then, of course, there is the scandalous review for Ian Anderson’s Thick as a Brick 2 (alternatively titled TAAB 2: Whatever Happened to Gerald Bostock? or simply TAAB2), which opened up a firestorm of debate over on the Jethro Tull Board...
www.thejethrotullboard.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=albums&action=display&thread=2846

Or the fancier version on the Dark Elf File...
darkelffile.blogspot.com/2012/04/thick-as-brick-2-taab-2-whatever.html

Enjoy.

[ZombyWoof]

Thanks Morthoron. Good TAAB2 review ... I read that one when you wrote it. You were the first to say what many of us were afraid to admit.

[morthoron]

Aug 12, 2012 12:42:51 GMT -5 ZombyWoof said:

Thanks Morthoron. Good TAAB2 review ... I read that one when you wrote it. You were the first to say what many of us were afraid to admit.

Well, if I were to rewrite that review I think I'd concentrate more on the actual story of Gerald Bostock. What a singularly wasted life as Ian wrote it. There is no great epiphany, there is no sense of Gerald getting from here to there with any triumphs. It simply is a tragically wasted life with no apparent good coming out of so promising a poet.

And after a few more listens, I think that is what rankles me the most. In his youth, Gerald writes a stunning epic poem and there is absolutely no follow-up to that. No more poems? I could take the tragedy of a wasted life if the poet went out in a blaze of glory, but what Ian ends up with is a bitter old fag.

In fact, I think I'd downgrade it from four stars to 3.5 because I'm so irritated. Sure, it is still better than 99% of the offal out there, but it could have been so much more.

[ZombyWoof]

I liked it at first, but what did it in for me is the fact that Barrie Barlow asked to be on the album and yet Ian turned him down. This could've been a wonderful album, but instead he hired a bunch of nobodies with absolutely no character. They are talented, yes, but what's Tull (or music) without the personalities of the people involved?