20 YEARS OF JETHRO TULL (USA RELEASE)

As the title say this was released after 20 years of a succesful career, after almost 20 studio albums, after ups and downs, great moments and poor moments, so i think as a commemorative this was a good choice, and musically?

In the other hand, let me tell you that sure this is a compilation, 21 songs gathered in one album, but actually this is not a "The Best", so maybe if you are tired of the same songs and you are looking for something relatively new, you could try this album for sure because it is completely different, the tracklist is strange with not much knonw song names.

21 songs divided in 4 "batches":

- "The Radio Archives and Rare Tracks", the first wow!, i can make sure that i didn`t know all these songs before listening to this compilation, and maybe it could be the case of some of you people, look the tracklist: "Stormy Monday Blues", "Love Story", "A New Day Yesterday", "Summerday Sands" and "March the Mad Scientist", i take the first two songs as my favorite ones of this part.

- Flawed Gems (Dusted Down), but that was not the end of a new discovery, this part is great, beautiful, songs that maybe you already know but you haven`t appreciated them yet such as "Lick Your Fingers Clean", "Overhang" (high moment of this album, my personal favorite song here), "Crossword" and "Jack A Lynn" (the last one a classic special Tull song).

- The Other Sides of Tull (a.k.a. B-Sides), or lesser known songs but not for that less great, "Part of the Machine", "Mayhem, Maybe", "Kelpie" (another favorite track, beautiful song IMO), "Wond`ring Aloud", "Dun Ringill", "Life`s a Long Song" (another classic song which we can find in several Tull compilations), "Nursie" and "Grace", until now i can say that this kind of compilations are always welcome because it show us all the "faces" of the band, which is always healthy to music lovers.

- Essential Tull, finally we will find 4 well known songs, 4 classic songs which were well chosen and placed in a commemorative 20 years album, after all we will finish listening to "Witche`s Promise", "Living in the Past", "Aqualung" and "Locomotive Breath", but wait another surprise is waiting for us, this songs are live songs, so after all here we`ll find a mix of studio, rare recordings, and live songs, for me this time is great, and that 4 batches make the album even better.

After all and because i consider this is a great compilation, i will recommend it to any prog lover, despite not being a masterpiece as a whole, but a worth addition to your CD Colletcion for sure.

Flawed gems and essential Tull.

Nice little compilation. Certainly not the best offering in Tull's discography, no, but a very pleasant listen nonetheless. And very informative, too. I like how the entire compilation is divided in four sections - that's plentiful of valuable infos for a Tull-newbie, but Tull-veterans could be surprised, as well.

The thing is, not all the sections are equally good; The Essential Tull is, well, essential and overplayed, even the live versions provided won't change the spasm because you've heard these again and again and again. That's a certainly good choice for a newcomer - but one is wondering at which part of the market were compilation editors aiming.

Since I started with essentials, let me continue with the all the sections without any particular order: The Other Sides Of Tull contains some well-known, but again not so overplayed Tull tracks along with incredible "Mayhem, Maybe" and live version of "Dun Ringill". I am also very glad because two beautiful miniatures are here: "Nursie" and "Grace" - but the mistake is here again: "Grace" is gorgeous and it's last track on the CD. It was last on Minstrel too, and personally I think it's a huge mistake...such a short song with such a caliber should have been placed first in both cases.

Flawed Gems (Dusted Down) is sort of a hit and miss, but gems are gems indeed: glorious "Jack-A-Lynn", spacey folk tune comparable with PINK FLOYD's finest moments and nice little "Lick Your Fingers Clean". "Crossword" and "Overhang" are a bit sub-par songs, in my opinion, slightly boring and breaking the continuity of the CD.

The CD opens with Radio Archives And Rare Tracks" which are not rare at all, but there's a nice version of "Stormy Monday Blues" with radio announcement. A good thing to open a record.

So, in general, this is a nice compilation but a selection is a bit clumsy. One more remark could be addressed - a significant number of tracks are original represented on "Living In A Past" compilation, which is still unbeatable. One more point, this "20 years Of Jethro Tull" compilation is just one of the handful of version of the same thing; this one probably pales in comparison with other version - especially those much more detailed and diverse. I guess this is a scaled down version of an ultimate "20 years" box-set, and it's labelled as "USA release" - but that's only release that I ever saw in Croatia back when it was fresh.

In a conclusion, this one is worth your money if you are not familiar with entire band's discography, and if you are keen on alternate takes and live versions.