Replies

As Ian put it his old playing style was really starting to wear on his body causing him major headaches and hand cramps so playing the flute had lost it's joy. Which is why he persued lessons when his daughter said his fingering was wrong. So a lot of RtB seems to come from it being fun to play the flute again, and (as you can tell on dot-com or even Living With the Past) doing it right allows him to do a lot of soft subtle stuff he was never able to before because he had to breath a lot harder to get a clean note. Listening to it right now, Rare and Precious Chain (which you said you've heard), he never could have done that light flute in the beginning before he didn't have the tonal control.

I was not aware of any of this. And i thought i knew everything about JT and Mr. Anderson. I guess i have to listen harder to Ian's new playing style. I just thought he was playing the flute similarly to the way he played on very early songs like 'Reason's for Waiting' or 'Witches Promise'. Come to think of it, didn't Martin Barre play some of the flute parts on 'Reasons'? Not the menacing flute riff that joins the chorus with the verses (That is definatly Ian) but the flute lines which open the song and cover the melody...

By the way, before I purchase the RTB, I've read some nice things about 'Stuck in The August Rain' and 'Another Harry's Bar'. You wouldn't mind wetting my appetite a bit by letting me know what i have to look forward to :)

I'd read it all in some interview Ian did about a year before RtB, didn't think much of it at the time (other than being glad it was fun again, he really sounded like he was contemplating retirement because of the pain) and it had pretty much fallen out of my head by the time RtB came out. Then I listened to it and was all "holy crap" and I remembered.

Martin played flute on Reason for Waiting AND Jeffrey Goes to Leicester Square (liner notes, my memory is only good enough to tell me he played flute on two songs on Standup).

RtB starts off with a lot of high tempo stuff (some low tempo interludes to give you a chance to breath) and climaxes with Dangerous Veils (yet another Ian Anderson song about the beautiful but probably insane women you meet when you travel for a living) which is really high tempos and extremely cool. After that the album mellows out into a more Catfish Rising/ Rock Islands cigar and a brandy in front of the fireplace mood (which is good because by the time you're through Dangerous Veils your exhausted). Stuck in the August Rain and Another Harry's Bar are the final songs on the album, very whistful and function very similarly to When Jesus Came to Play and Strange Avenues. Very soft beautific songs that are easily ignored but shouldn't be and the provide a very nice denoument to the album putting the bow on the package.

Can you guess that I wanted to be a music critic for a while? Found out you don't get to review good albums until you've been at it for a while (or the editor guesses wrong).