Why is Tull's "A Passion Play" rated so low?

Inaccessible music and repulsive at first listen. I love it today but it was hard work, took me many spins before I start enjoying it.

I love APP. It is a wild ride of styles and images. It also has a rather strange sound to it thanks to the saxophones and synthesizers used, and yes, it is dense to the point of obscurity. Not an easy album for most to get into, which is why it tends to be rated so low. Repeated listens yields rewards though. After decades, it is still revealing nuances and subtleties to me. Still, if it does not grab the listener on a first or second listen, most will abandon it.

Progosopher wrote: I love APP. It is a wild ride of styles and images. It also has a rather strange sound to it thanks to the saxophones and synthesizers used, and yes, it is dense to the point of obscurity. Not an easy album for most to get into, which is why it tends to be rated so low. Repeated listens yields rewards though. After decades, it is still revealing nuances and subtleties to me. Still, if it does not grab the listener on a first or second listen, most will abandon it.

Heck I gave it five

Since music is subjective, as is art in general, it depends on perception and not mainly on quality. And if you add the bad publicity it got when released, is understandable why is rated so low. I personally love it, from the first time I heard it, and have learned to appreciate it more and more over the years.

Manuel wrote: Since music is subjective, as is art in general, it depends on perception and not mainly on quality. And if you add the bad publicity it got when released, is understandable why is rated so low. I personally love it, from the first time I heard it, and have learned to appreciate it more and more over the years.

Edited by moshkito - October 03 2019 at 07:01

^ Regarding art as intrinsic: Is it just a thing, is it intention, is it perception, or all of the above? I might say that the fan and the opinion factor into the art, as what is art isn't just an object, it's a perception, and it's an interaction, and it's an intention. I think that the interaction between the observer/listener and the object creates the art in a sense (it must be not only seen or heard, but processed by our brains to be perceived as art) and of course what is art can be in the eyes and ears of the beholder (and of course the brain).

Different brains process information differently, one is not just hearing music, one processes it, and each person will process it a little differently (as well as variance in hearing), so in a sense, even if we are listening to the same recording, we are not "hearing" the same music. So I would say that art in a sense is the interactive process, or art is, or art happens at the intersection/ interstice, the relationship between the art and the admirer.

EDIT: Or to put it another way, art is experiential and what is art depends, at least in part, on the observer. Artists matter, audiences matter, perception matters.

To be ridiculous, if "a Picasso" coalesces in the forest, and no one is around to observe it, is it really art?

As for that JT, only heard it once all the way through, and I don't know it well enough to have much of an opinion.

Edited by Logan - October 03 2019 at 09:35

I think some of it was that TAAB already took the fully available long format and this one did also, it was also more "serious," in the sense of not quite poking as much fun at itself as TAAB.  

Snicolette wrote: got to hear the whole thing on the way, as it was a bit of a drive.....June 15, 1973

^

I too perfectly remember my first APP hearing: in an hotel room on a Sunday afternoon, May 22 1994. (lol)

(I'll be back on that soon)

Naaah this is a very serious anecdote. Now please stop bothering me, I'm trying to concentrate writing it.



(kidding)