Jethro Tull - Living With The Past
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Jethro Tull - Living With The Past
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Jethro Tull are one of the most original and prolific bands in the history of rock and roll. Since 1968, they have released over 20 studio albums, and even more live and "best of" compilations, which have spanned the genres of blues, folk, classical, rock, and progressive-rock with equal splendor. Oh, and let's not forget METAL, the category of which they won the 1989 Grammy with their Crest Of A Knave album, infamously beating out Metallica in their prime. Don't get me started on that subject. Tull has also performed upwards of 3000 concerts in this 35 year period, which averages out to around one concert every 4 days. I did say prolific didn't I? Ian Anderson has been the mastermind behind Jethro Tull going on forty years now. He is the only member to be in every incarnation of the band, although guitarist Martin Barre comes a close second, having been in the band for all but its first year of existence. Anderson became famous for his distinctive stage personas, most notably the medieval, flute-wielding jester, standing on one leg, or dancing around the stage like a madman, while spewing forth ferocious rock licks from his electric flute. Not something you see every day. Anderson is also a brilliant songwriter, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist, most notably with the flute and acoustic guitar. Living With The Past captures the genius of Ian Anderson, and the magic of a Jethro Tull show, very affectively. The bulk of the video is taken from the band's performance at London's Hammersmith Apollo Theatre in November 2001, but you also get some wonderful, stripped down performances by the reunited 1968 Tull line-up, jamming to a few of their This Was classics in a tiny British pub, before a small crowd of friends and devoted fans. You are also invited into Ian Anderson's living room, where a string quartet accompanies the band through some acoustic performances of two of their best folk songs. These diverse performances are all intermingled together, along with loads of behind the scenes and interview footage. The documentary style presentation of this DVD initially turned me off at first, as I much prefer an uninterrupted concert performance with any documentary material neatly tucked away in the special features section. This particular documentary was done very well though, maintaining a nice flow, and providing footage that was actually very interesting. Each band member provided some terrific insight into the music, touring, and the history of the band. The setlist covers a broad range of Jethro Tull's career, going all the way back to their 1968 debut album, This Was, for the rockin' Hammersmith show opener "My Sunday Feeling", as well as contributing "Someday The Sun Won't Shine For You" and "A Song for Jeffrey" to the pub performance by the original lineup of Anderson, Mick Abrahams (guitar), Glenn Cornick (bass), and Clive Bunker (drums). Throughout this gig, Anderson shows that he is equally dangerous on the harmonica as he is on the flute. For those of you who didn't really join the Jethro Tull fold until the early 70's, when killer albums like Aqualung and Thick As A Brick propelled the band's popularity into the stratosphere, you may be surprised at how raw and bluesy the band's sound was on their first two albums from only a few years prior. After a 9-minute highlight version of "Thick As A Brick", you are taken to the first of the acoustic performances, which were apparently recorded in Anderson's living room. "Wond'ring Aloud" is an oft' forgotten gem from the Aqualung album, which finds Anderson strumming an acoustic guitar and providing some of his most nuanced vocals, as the string quartet marvelously elevates the song's beauty. They return to the living room later in the video for a stunning version of "Life Is A Long Song", which was one of the highlights of the entire video for me. The other real highlight of the show was the smoldering performance of their blues-rock anthem, "A New Day Yesterday", which takes you all the way back to their classic 1969 album Stand Up. It is no wonder that blues guitar phenom Joe Bonamassa named his first album after this Tull classic, and the song has remained one of the most intense covers in his arsenal. Most of the essential Tull numbers were included here, such as "Bourée", "Aqualung", and "Locomotive Breath", but many of my old favorites like "Teacher", "Bungle in the Jungle", "Minstrel in the Gallery", and "Skating Away", were notably absent, but, hell, that is to be expected when a band has hundreds of great songs to choose from. They did include a couple of terrific, lesser-know songs such as their gorgeous epic, "Budapest", from Crest Of A Knave, forgoing the hits "Farm On The Freeway" and "Steel Monkey", and Anderson's Middle-Eastern-inspired "The Water Carrier", from his 2000 solo album The Secret Language of Birds, was also a nice addition to the set. Of the more recent stuff, the performance of "Roots To Branches", from the 1995 album of the same name, confirmed that it is one of the band's best songs of the last two decades, and the ferocious "Hunt By Numbers", from 1999's J-Tull Dot Com, proves that the band should not be considered entirely out of place in the hard rock/metal category. Killer back-to-back performances of "Aqualung" and "Locomotive Breath" will also definitively back up that claim. The fact that this DVD only comes with a Dolby Digital 2.0 audio track was a major letdown. No concert DVD produced since 2000 should come without a 5.1 surround track, or at least a good PCM stereo mix. Thankfully, the Dolby track is one of the better ones I have heard, and sounds rather good when cranked up sufficiently. In the DVD booklet, Anderson even boasts about the recording equipment that was used - "Mackie Digital Hard Drive Recorder...at 24 bits, with a sample rate of 44.1 Khz..." blah, blah, blah. Just make it DTS next time Ian. Although only presented in full-frame instead of widescreen, the picture looked outstanding during the main Hammersmith footage, but the director interspersed a lot of alternate footage taken from various other venues during the tour, and he also occasionally broke out his bag of special effects tricks to make things look all sepia, black and white, or bathed in grain. It was done more tastefully than some other videos I have seen ruined by these techniques, but it was all quite unnecessary in my opinion. The extra features on this disk are very good. To start with, the 12-page color booklet is one of the better ones I have seen, thanks to the "1,870 Words With Ian Anderson" essay, where Ian discusses the music, the making of the DVD, and various technical aspects of the production. Also included are snippets from Anderson's recent performances with Uriah Heep and Fairport Convention, as well as a couple of bonus tracks; "My Sunday Feeling" from the original line-up gig, and "Beside Myself" from the Hammersmith show, where you get to choose between three viewpoints - the balcony, rear stalls, the front stalls, or from the wings. Lastly, a photo gallery, additional interviews, and various outtakes were also included. Living With the Past has it's shortcomings, but overall it is a wonderful document of one of the best bands in the history of rock. Jethro Tull fans should not miss this one. Reviewed by Paul M. Roy - March 2007 |
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Running Time: 108 Minutes |
DVD Release Date - May 2002 |