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A Little Light Music

Jethro Tull - A Little Light Music Audio CD

A fair review of the Jethro Tull "A Little Light Music" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Jethro Tull reviews here, or go back to the Jethro Tull tabs.

Band: Jethro Tull
Title: A Little Light Music
Rating:

Release Date: 2006-10-31
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Someday the Sun Won't Shine for You 2: Living in the Past 3: Life Is a Long Song 4: Rocks on the Road 5: Under Wraps 6: Nursie 7: Too Old to Rock 'N' Roll 8: One White Duck 9: New Day Yesterday 10: John Barleycorn 11: Look into the Sun 12: Christmas Song 13: From a Dead Beat to an Old Greaser 14: This Is Not Love 15: Bour� 16: Pussy Willow 17: Locomotive Breath

A Little Live Tull Music
Ian Anderson and company are in fine form, and their performances truly sparkle. "A Little Light Music" is Jethro Tull's 1992 live album of semi-acoustic concert performances, recorded in such far-away places as Greece, Israel, Turkey, Czechoslavakia and Austria. Many Tull favorites are on this, including "Living In The Past," "Too Old To Rock 'N' Roll," "A New Day Yesterday" and "Locomotive Breath," as well as some lesser known tunes like "Under Wraps," "Rocks on The Road" and "This Is Not Love. " The band even toss in an excellent version of "John Barleycorn," the old traditional song made famous by Traffic. There's also some very amusing inbetween-song banter from Anderson. My only criticism of "A Little Light Music" is that it feels a bit disjointed. The fade-outs inbetween the live tracks make it oh-so-obvious that these are *pieces* of various live concerts, so there's never a sense that you're listening to a complete show. I don't mind live albums that are recorded in various places---I just think that live material should be seamlessly edited together. It just sounds better to me, y'know? But other than that, this is an excellent Tull live album. Casual fans need not apply, but diehard fans of Jethro Tull should be quite pleased with "A Little Light Music. " .

Not my favorite live Tull
The first track(off the first Tull album) starts it off well,but it just seems to sound weedier and increasingly unimpressive from there on. In my opinion, this is easily the weakest of all the live Tull releases. I'm not much of a fan of acoustic versions of electric material to begin with,and the complete absence of "Aqualung" material except for "Locomotive Breath" didn't help either. For diehard Tull fans only.

So So
Be sure you have all the early catalogue before judging the band by the strength of this one. Mediocre later Tull release.

Jethro Tull Unplugged -- Almost
IT WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER IF THEY LEFT OFF SOME BAD TRACKS. ALMOST GREAT.

This CD was originally released in 1992, but has been reissued as a "remaster". The original sound quality was very good, so I don't know if a remaster offers that much improvement. There is also very little audience noise, only a little cheering at the beginning and end of most songs. It is 77 minutes long.

This comes during Jethro Tull's "heavy metal" stage (around the time they actually won a Grammy for the best heavy metal band). The band at the time was Anderson, Barre, Pegg and Dave Mattocks on drums.

Most of the songs are played in a lighter style, with heavy use of acoustic instruments. But, there are electric guitars and some hard rocking sounds in places. The songs come from various concerts during the European tour to support the CD, Catfish Rising. So, this isn't one of those sit down, unplugged concert performances.

This CD is at its best when it sticks to the "unplugged" format. Many of the songs are much better here than the original studio releases. Under Wraps, and especially Rocks on the Road are so much better here and remeniscent of Jethro Tull's first three albums.

Also, the unplugged style allows for new and interesting versions of songs that have been overplayed and are already on every other Jethro Tull live album released. I almost did not buy this, because I did not need another live version of Living in the Past, Bouree or Locomotive Breath. But, here the songs are played in new and refreshing ways.

But, the best things on the CD are the really old songs like Life's a Long Song and especially A New Day Yesterday. A New Day Yesterday used to be the highlight of the early Jethro Tull concerts (before Aqualung was released). It is also the highlight of this album (although maybe not quite as good as how they played it in the early seventies).

But, this album does have a number of duds that should have been left off the album. These are the songs that they play in the hard rock style they were using in the late eighties. They have the screechy hard rock guitar and flute riffs that was the signature of the Tull sound of that time. They include the Eddie Van Halen guitar cliches. The worst is This Is Not Love.

Another positive on this CD is that the audience noise is kept to a minimum. There is almost no audience noise in the middle of the songs. But, the downside is Ian Anderson's talking between songs. It has a strange sonic quality to it, like it was done as a radio show.

There are some very beautiful tracks on this album. It could have been a perfect, Little Light Music CD to pop in your CD player and let play as background music for a gathering or dinner party. All they had to do was remove some of the bad, harder tracks and remove the talking between songs.

This is not quite a classic because of the bad tracks and the talking between tracks. But, there are still so many good songs that I had to give it 5 stars. You could edit this CD on a computer and still come up with 50 minutes of wonderful music.

UNKNOWN GEMS AND UNEXPECTED FINDS
WHEN I INITIALLY SAW THIS ALBUM IN THE STORES, I THOUGHT THAT IT WAS JUST ANOTHER BEST OF TYPE ALBUM. BEING A HUGE JETHRO FAN, I HAVE IN THE PAST PURCHASED MOST OF THE AVAILABLE BEST OFS AND GREATEST HITS TO BE FOUND. I WAS LATER TOLD BY A FRIEND THAT IT CONTAINED SOME GREAT VERSIONS OF SOME CLASSIC TULL SONGS, PLUS AN AWESOME VERSION OF JOHN BARLEYCORN, A SONG MADE FAMOUS BY TRAFFIC! HE WAS ABSOLUTELY RIGHT ON THE MONEY! TULLS VERSION OF BARLEYCORN STANDS BY ITSELF AS A CLASSIC! I RECOMMEND THIS ALBUM TO ANY AND ALL TULL FANS, ALONG WITH ANYONE WHO JUST LOVES A GREAT ROCKIN' ALBUM! DAVE OF MONTCLAIR.

You can see a complete list of all Jethro Tull discography, or go back to the Jethro Tull tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.