“Ian Anderson adopting such diverse roles as Aqualung … and Dracula”.
This afternoon I found this in the Sue Ryder charity shop in the village.
Jethro Tull. Slipstream. VHS
It cost me 50p.
I’m delighted.
But before I write anymore about that….
I recently bought a VHS player on Ebay which is attached to my Mac with a thing called Elgato Video Capture. This converts old VHS in a fairly effortless way. The quality is little better than OK but I’ve been watching the converted films and TV shows and clips and on an iPad and they are perfectly watchable.
I set the VCR/video capture thing up up so that I can go though the piles of VHS tapes in my attic and keep anything I want before throwing them all away.
(The whole time I’ve been doing this there is a voice in my head saying throw those old tapes away – just throw them away- don’t look at them – don’t waste precious time. Just throw them away).
Meanwhile – Elsewhere:
I love trawling through charity shops but, because of Ebay I suppose, it’s become a lot harder to find some piece of glorious retro tat which thrills.
However because of the Elgato Video Capture set up I’m suddenly finding all sorts of fairly wonderful stuff on the VHS shelves in my local charity shops which I know I can now digitize.
(The voice in my head is screaming – you’re supposed to be getting rid of this stuff you idiot. How long are you expecting to live?. You’re going to end up with so much stuff that you cannot read it/ watch it./listen to it all. Fool.).
Anyway – back to Tull and to Hell with the voices in my head.
The blurb (quoted beneath “in full” and “unedited”) on the back of the Slipsteam VHS easily took care of my voices:
Blurb
“JETHRO TULL LOOK EVEN BETTER ON SCREEN THAN THEY DO ON STAGE”
How do you take one of the World’s leading rock bands like Jethro Tull and improve on their live performance?
After all their stage act is as famous for the way it looks as for the way it sounds.
SLIPSTREAM, conceived and executed specially for the screen is the answer.
And even though concert material is naturally included SLIPSTREAM is far more adventurous than previous music programs.
The format is conceptual from start to finish with a coherent storyline.
It includes film shot on locations as well as in the studio, together with animation, special effects and library footage.
The band members themselves appear in a number of different guises in the conceptual sequences, with Ian Anderson adopting such diverse roles as Aqualung, the music hero of a previous album, and Dracula.
All in all, it’s a unique show and probably one of the most adventurous music specials ever made”.
In other words it’s bonkers, pompous and ridiculous and I love it.
I guess one day this clip from the film that someone else has put on YouTube will be taken down but until then this clip of Songs From The Wood gives a sense of what this quite brilliantly stupid film, which was made in 1981, is like:
I don’t understand why they’re all wearing white boiler-suits and look like neo-Nazi plumbers. The special effects are like something out of Blake’s 7. The coherent storyline is not coherent. Nor is it a storyline.
But I’ve liked Jethro Tull since I was 11 or 12 (thanks in part to Dave – who was my Dad’s art school hippy mate and to a baby sitter named Wendy) and as such I sort of judge them differently to any other band. If “Yes”, for example, had made a film like this I would be scathing in my hatred (probably) but however idiotic Tull got they would not only get a pass from me but I have always delighted in their stupidity and will always be laughing with them (even when they weren’t themselves laughing) and never laughing at them.
This wasn’t the only Tull VHS that was in the charity shop. I also picked up the “20 years of Jethro Tull” documentary/compilation so it’s going to be a Jethro Tull evening and that’s what I love about charity shop finds – that the circumstances of my evening have been generated by happenstance.
I’m growing increasingly Pooterish.
I need to watch that I think.
(He typed Pooterishly)
Tags: Music
