“The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Has Zero Validity until Jethro Tull is Inducted”

I CANNOT BELIEVE JETHRO TULL IS NOT IN THE ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME. They’ve got STEVE FU**ING MILLER nominated this year? Ugh, “Take the Money and Run” is like the worst song ever… first of all it’s about driving on roads, and it bemoans the existence of “taxes.” That’s up there with Indiana’s own Dan Quayle misspelling “potatoe.”

The hall of fame officially has no meaning to me until Jethro Tull enters. PERIOD. I got to thinking of Ian Anderson and company when I was reading earlier, and they were trying to pump up Deep Purple, calling them part of the “Holy Trinity of hard rock” along with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. I guess they’re waiting for their hall of fame performance to unveil whatever the hell songs they have other than “Smoke on the Water.”
Ahem. Let’s just examine Jethro Tull as if you’re a total dipsh** American, typical. You probably think, they’re wimpy, they’re British. [1] If I’m really, really lucky, you know that the song “Sitting on a Park Bench,” which is titled “Aqualung,” is by them. Well, how’s this? Jethro Tull wrote a REAL concept album, and it’s not even their best album, maybe not even their second best, called Aqualung, based on a gruesome old codger dealing with children’s terrors on the playground, and he’s mentioned in the excellent rocking tune “Cross-Eyed Mary” on that album.
I ranked Stand up in the top 30 albums of all time on my list, but the classic songs just go on and on: and practically all of them eschew time signature and have a ball doing it: “Living in the Past,” “Locomotive Breath,” “Bungle in the Jungle,” “The Whistler,” [2] and so on and so on. Stand up’s got your heavy metal right there: and in 1969, no less, the opener “A New Day Yesterday,” and “Back to the Family” only has one of the single best solos of all time, a sort of stabbing match between Ian Anderson’s archetypal flute and bass that sounds way too Bada** to be British. But then, that’s part of the attitude problem. I mean, really. Buy any early Jethro Tull album, or any greatest hits… the proof’s in the pudding. There’s even a “The Christmas Song” on one of the greatest hits-es: “The Christmas spirit is not what you drink.” And always the song is complex, the time signature hard to pin down… plain and simple, people who don’t like Jethro Tull are the kind of people who don’t like watching cats bat around at the tree ornaments and empty Christmas wrapping when they’re drunk on duck and wine they paid too many filthy dollars for.
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[1] I saw a great preview of a movie one time where this dude was defending his favorite action hero (I forget the name of the movie) but he’s like, “He’s not gay, he’s BRITISH!”
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[2] “The Whistler” is a favorite that’s very prominently placed on “The Very Best of.”