what you meant to do, part I

welcome friends to a new section of my blog i'm calling:

"what you meant to do." 

here will i climb atop my soapbox and in all rightness declare a better decision on could have made in a given circumstance. and by better i mean better. so for instance: you had a star wars trilogy marathon at your house last saturday. what you meant to do was have a star trek, evens-only, marathon (2, 4 & 6). see how it works? let's begin. 

so, you bought a jethro tull album: 

what you meant to do was buy a gentle giant album: 

you dig yes. hell, you even like alan parson's project. but on this sunny saturday with nothing to do, you wanted some prog-rock with a medieval chant / church organ / acid jazz rhythm section kinda thing. like a foolish fool, you went with 'tull. now everyone thinks your not-altogether-awesome. but why did you mean to buy gentle giant? 

let's start with the obvious. just glancing at the picture provided above, one can quickly discern that gentle giant is slightly more ugly than jethro tull. and if rock and roll has taught me anything (besides TCB) it's that the uglier you are, the more you are likely to rock. rod stewart's been a sex icon for three decades and married a supermodel. janis joplin won the superlative for "ugliest boy" in high school. i rest my case. 

and don't think i'm pulling one of these it's-cool-cause-no-one-has-heard-of-it things.  take the aforementioned rthym section of Ray Shulman and John Weathers. the bass pops in perfect synch with each hit of the snare creating these funky breakdowns over Derek Shulman's meandering vocals - and all the while Kerry Minear on the organ is just comping away (and occasionally throwing in these slick little runs).  it's been done, for sure. but they are able to do it so well. as far as a comparison to Yes goes, it's definitely more Close to the Edge than Fragile (i'm thinking siberian khantaru and total mass retained in particular). meanwhile, tull is plugging away at pretty standard jazz licks with flute stabs here. 'tull always seems to loose it's edge to me. This Was is basically a blues album, Passion Play is an almost painfully repetitive and Minstrel in the Gallery had a great A-side but that damn 20 minute song about humpty dumpty and the birds and ... well, whatever the hell that was. 

in 'tull's favor Ian Anderson does have an amazing voice and range.  if this were a songwriter's competition, i'd have to give it to Anderson over Shulman. but in musicianship, experimentation within the genre - not to mention arrangements - the trophy goes, without a doubt, to gentle giant.