Published on Jul 30, 2004
Here’s a rhetorical question: Does a band really need to put out
two boxed sets within five years of each other?
That’s the question one would have to ask of Ian Anderson, the
living, breathing force behind Jethro Tull. It was one thing for
Anderson to help compile
20 Years Of Jethro Tull, a set which did a good job of
chronicling the band’s history up to their comeback (if one could
really use that term, since the group never went away). But to
release a set like
25th Anniversary Box Set — a set which cost me $80 back in
the day, and which is now out-of-print — just five years later,
and feature precious little new material, was a questionable
move.
When I first listened to it shortly after buying it, I believed
I had gotten royally ripped off. Dusting it off for the first time
in a decade as part of this retrospective on Tull, I was able to
appreciate some of the nuances I hadn’t seen the first time around
— and, indeed, the performances are pleasant enough. Yet one has
to wonder whether there was something better that Anderson could
have provided the fans with — say, the boxed set of bootleg
recordings promised in the booklet which has never
materialized.
First things first: there is absolutely no reason that Anderson
needed to include a disc of Jethro Tull’s “classic” songs remixed,
for a few reasons. First, he absolutely butchered “Songs From The
Wood” — Ian, I love ya, but you don’t fix what ain’t broken, bub.
Second, no matter what, long-time fans were going to find something
missing from this collection. Third — and most importantly —
there are so many best-of collections out there (even back in 1993)
that it was sheer redundancy to re-package them again.
The two discs’ worth of live material — one from Carnegie Hall
in 1970, the other featuring performances from around the world —
prove to be the shining stars in this set. To hear the maturation
of the band — and especially to hear the rest of the show that was
first featured on
Living In The Past — is something worthwhile for fans of
all ages. Granted, the newer material (or the more recent
recordings) don’t seem to pack as great of a punch, but when you
hear Anderson take on “A Song For Jeffrey” (the third version on
this set) from 1993, you can’t help but hear Anderson time warp
back to 1968 in his vocal style.
This leaves one disc — “The Beacon’s Bottom Tapes” — which
features the band recording “live in the studio” remakes of old
classics. This isn’t as successful of an experiment as Anderson may
have hoped, but there is a kitsch factor to this disc which even
the long-time fans have to appreciate. After all, if one goes to
see Jethro Tull in concert today, this is what you can expect the
band to sound like.
Yet the question still remains: did the world really need
another multi-disc box set from Jethro Tull? Honestly, the answer
is “no.” Had this been pared down to a two-disc set, maybe just
focusing on live recordings of Tull through the years, it would
have been a more powerful collection. As it stands, there are
moments of grandeur on
25th Anniversary Box Set, but this is one that is truly for
the completists only.