Minstrel in the Gallery: Remastered

Product Details

Artist : Jethro Tull
Binding : Audio CD
EAN : 0724354157226
Label : Chrysalis
Number of Discs : 1
Product Group : Music
Release Date : 2002-10-14
UPC : 724354157226

ASIN : B00006JKOL

Track Listings for

Disc-1
1. Minstrel In The Gallery
2. Cold Wind To Valhalla
3. Black Satin Dancer
4. Requiem
5. One White Duck
6. 0 To 10 Equals Nothing At All
7. Baker Street Muse
8. Pig Me And The Whore
9. Nice Little Tune
10. Crash Barrier Waltzer
11. Mother England Reverie
12. Grace
13. Summerday Sands
14. March The Mad Scientist
15. Pan Dance
16. Minstrel In The Gallery
17. Cold Wind To Valhalla

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Customer Reviews

Bored in the Gallery (2007-10-31)

I don't get the point of this album at all, but that's probably me as there are so many superlative reviews already posted. Jethro Tull lost their way sometime in between Aqualung and Thick As A Brick when they became less Jethro Tull and more Ian Anderson. It's easy to understand now why Mick Abrahams, Clive Bunker and Glen Cornick all bailed out when they did.This is just too "prog", too self-indulgent, too lacking in melody for my liking. The album is mainly made up of lenghthy, meandering pieces with intricate time structures, plenty of indecipherable lyrics, sorry - evocative lyrics (my thanks to M. Webb)accompanied by Ian's distinctive pick & strum acoustic guitar style that he perfected on Thick Bricks. Occasionally the rest of the boys join in, stabs of electric guitar, a bit of bass, some drumming, lots of violins, and, of course, the flute, trilling away in the foreground, all wheeze & grunt. But it's not enough, the statement he is trying to make is to the detriment of the music and it all becomes tedious and uninspired. And very dated.If your new to Tull & thinking of checking them out, get Stand Up. Now that is a 5 star album!

Intense acoustic rock (2007-02-21)

Recorded in Monte Carlo during 1975, Minstrel is arguably Tull's heaviest album, featuring some of the band's tightest arrangements (check out the instrumental sections of the title track, Black Satin Dancer and many sections of Baker St. Muse). Ironically, this album also featured Ian Anderson's finest collection of acoustic songs. These tracks are lyrically very beautiful, yet avoid the syrupy sentimentality that is prevailent in numerous other songs of this nature. Elsewhere, the lyrics appear very biting, personal and slightly sarcastic, particularly on Baker St. Muse. Is Anderson writing about himself or his experiences? There are references to aspects of his life at the time of Minstrel in Baker St. Muse. 'I have no house in the country, I have no motor car' (Anderson, at the time, was living on Baker St. Mews(get it!)in London and he did not have a car because he has never possessed a driving licence). Martin Barre's electric guitar work is powerful and very much at the forefront of the band's sound and Barrie Barlow's drumming is almost like an intricate arrangement in itself. It was reported that John Evans was playing a lot of Beethoven's piano music during the recording of this album and this finds its way into his playing on the record. There is a very classical, mournful approach to some bits and pieces, notably Black Satin Dancer. More direct and hard hitting than Warchild and more accessible and succinct than A Passion Play, Minstrel is a strangely dark album that showed Tull could rock and blend it successfully with the acoustic elements for which they have become recognised. Some may need time to become comfortable with the intense lyrics, but this remains an essential component of the Jethro Tull back catalogue.

one of the best (2005-08-31)

one of the best Jethro Tull albums. This one has quiet accoustic tracks androck tracks, quiet tracks and loud tracks. The lyrics are meaningful and sung with authority and passion.

play minstrel play (2002-12-02)

This is the first Jethro i 've heard when i was 10 years old in1977. This is now the best version never made and after 27 years this album sound always fresh ' cause the guitar and flute never died (see Roots to Branches of the same vain). It's sometimes quiet or hard and the Ian Anderson voice was at his best like the excellent WarChild album !

The cat's whiskers (2002-10-14)

Have to admit, this was never one of my favourite Tull albums, and, never having upgraded to a CD version, this remaster was the first time I'd heard it in its entirety for almost 15 years.

And what a great album it is! Never mind the codpiece, here's the dog's bollocks: the interplay of acoustic guitar, flute and string quartet is delicate and dramatic by turns, melodies twist and turn and return in the most alluring fashion, and Ian Anderson never wrote a better set of love-twisted, postmodern, inventively fractured lyrics. Perhaps only when they 'rock out' do the band sound slightly rigid, with Martin Barre still in his 70s-style guitar mode of triplets-a-go-go topped with a grimacing squeal on the high fret. But when 'Summerday Sands' swings in after the original album's 'end', you know why this was such a unique band, and why, in the spectrum of what passes for 'rock' music, this is an astoundingly brave record for its time. Anderson has said it sounds like 'Roy Harper in love.' What more could you want?!

Grumbles: the two final 'live' tracks are the pointlessly edited versions which appeared on the 20 Years box set, and not the full versions. What a wasted opportunity. And whoever put the lyric booklet together (strangely) never bothered to proof-read the results: they're sourced from a Word document which doesn't recognize the apostrophe! i.e. "the old men[]s cackle" . . . "there[]s nobody left for tennis" . . . Shoddy work.

Buy it for the sounds.

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