Shit by Whit | Thick as a Brick Flashback

Posted in Off the Wall Shit on June 22nd, 1972

On the night of 6/22/1972 I was at a Jethro Tull concert in Albuquerque with several of my friends who will – as always – remain anonymous. It was one of my top 5 concerts ever maybe due to the fact that we all did a little acid before the show which may or may not have enhanced my perception of the concert. Okay, I'm sure it did, but according to the roar of the crowd, everyone there agreed. Or were they all tripping?

I stumbled onto a site that archives concert information including set lists. The set list was:

Thick As A Brick (the whole enchilada)
Cross-Eyed Mary
A New Day Yesterday
Aqualung
Wind-Up
Locomotive Breath (crowd went crazy on this one)
Hot Headed English General
Wind Up (reprise)

Experiencing the entire Thick As A Brick album by itself would've been a killer concert, but to follow it up with all those other great songs was icing on the cake. At one point in the show, a telephone (sitting on the piano on stage) rang and the music stopped. Ian Anderson answered the phone and "paged" someone before going right back where they left off. A minute later a guy dressed in a scuba suit and fins walks out on the stage and picks up the phone while the band continued to play. A big white rabbit and a gorilla (tell me this show wasn't made for tripping) were also on the stage at some point in the show which was too much for an anonymous friend of mine who freaked out and took off. He sat in a car in the parking lot until the show was over.

I thought I'd post this flashback (not an "actual" flashback) after listening to a 2012 version of the "Thick as a Brick" album remixed by Steven Wilson who is a member of Porcupine Tree. I don't like a lot of the remixed music I've listened to lately. Some actually suck if you ask me, but NOT this one. I've probably listened to this album hunderds of times and this remix is like listening to a whole new album. In fact ALL of the albums I've listened to that Steven has remixed – Aqualung, Stand Up, Benefit – are clean as can be! Like listening for the first time.

Steven, you have a good ear and know how to deliver good clean sound. Thank you.

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Comments

Kitty G
November 7, 2021 at 07:35pm

Yeah, right on! I saw Tull for his Aqualung tour and I wasn't tripping but sure felt like it!! Or maybe I'm just always tripping when I listen to good music... You know ... It takes you there. The shortest route from her to there is through music. Worlds await!

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Who were the Huguenots?

The Huguenots were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term has its origin in early-16th-century France. It was frequently used in reference to those of the Reformed Church of France from the time of the Protestant Reformation. By contrast, the Protestant populations of eastern France, in Alsace, Moselle, and Montbéliard, were mainly German Lutherans.

In his Encyclopedia of Protestantism, Hans Hillerbrand said that, on the eve of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572, the Huguenot community made up as much as 10% of the French population. By 1600 it had declined to 7–8%, and was reduced further after the return of severe persecution in 1685 under Louis XIV's Edict of Fontainebleau.

The Huguenots are believed to have been concentrated among the population in the southern and western parts of the Kingdom of France. As Huguenots gained influence and more openly displayed their faith, Catholic hostility grew. A series of religious conflicts followed, known as the French Wars of Religion, fought intermittently from 1562 to 1598. The Huguenots were led by Jeanne d'Albret; her son, the future Henry IV (who would later convert to Catholicism in order to become king); and the princes of Condé. The wars ended with the Edict of Nantes, which granted the Huguenots substantial religious, political and military autonomy.

Huguenot rebellions in the 1620s resulted in the abolition of their political and military privileges. They retained the religious provisions of the Edict of Nantes until the rule of Louis XIV, who gradually increased persecution of Protestantism until he issued the Edict of Fontainebleau (1685). This ended legal recognition of Protestantism in France and the Huguenots were forced to either convert to Catholicism (possibly as Nicodemites) or flee as refugees; they were subject to violent dragonnades. Louis XIV claimed that the French Huguenot population was reduced from about 900,000 or 800,000 adherents to just 1,000 or 1,500. He exaggerated the decline, but the dragonnades were devastating for the French Protestant community.

The remaining Huguenots faced continued persecution under Louis XV. By the time of his death in 1774, Calvinism had been nearly eliminated from France. Persecution of Protestants officially ended with the Edict of Versailles, signed by Louis XVI in 1787. Two years later, with the Revolutionary Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, Protestants gained equal rights as citizens.