Perspectives

It was a different experience for me. Never have I been to a concert where I felt so ignorant and bored. Two things here:

Ignorant. I knew a few songs of Jethro Tull and I went to see them primarily to start listening to them. And I dont think they have done that to me. Also, logically, these four or five are probably their most famous of songs. And they(which is mostly Ian Anderson) played about three from them. He didn’t play my favourite song Acres Wild either which was quite a disappointment. So, during most part of the show, I was trying to see if the base pattern was a complex off beat or if the beats dont round of at multiples of 2. I don’t think any such thing happened. I mean, I don’t think they play complex music, or their music is so complex that I don’t understand.

Bored. The entire concert seemed like one big song. Beyond a point, I was actually Yawning and talking to a colleague of mine about how he intends to do “Automatic data QA”. Guess that says it all.

Some interesting stuff did happen. “Locomotive breath” , “Aqualung” for two. Ian’s stage caricatures was another. Also, Ian wanted to celebrate Mozart’s 250th year along with us. He played a medley starting with some kinda symphony, the scale of which I could not make out. He went on to play ( the all famous) 9th symphony with his own stuff. He also played a Bach and somebody else of whom I didn’t know. Now this is stuff that people wont normally do.

His accent was quite heavy and I loved it. He got most of us laughing. I remember this one clearly though it does not sound that hilarious:
“When people ask me what they should do when they hit a lyrical block, I ask them to go to a 12 year old boy to write lyrics for them. Most of the time, he writes better and you dont have to pay the little bastard a penny”. He apparently also hates Rock n Roll.

Oh, something I am forgetting to mention is the Hindusthani Slide Guitarist who joined Thermal and a Quarter, who opened the show ( obviously). He was out of place and so was his music. I believe that each genre has it’s own mood or character and any fusion attempt predominantly ends up spoiling both the genres. I am not talking about Pop or Rock, which is a very broad and loose classification. Hindusthani in a rock song before jethro Tull. C’mon guys, I am sure you can innovate better. Anyways, despite the hype my friend gave bout TAAQ, they were not too impressive.

I did come back with an “Aqualung Live” by Tull and “Plan B” by TAAQ complementary CDs for sparing the time and spending 600 bucks with IIM Bangalore.

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