There I was, stuck in the house, couch-potatoed with a cocktail in front of the tube and clicking around the Netflix "Watch Instantly" library of titles with my IR mouse when I stumbled across Nothing Is Easy, a so-so documentary cobbled together from totally jaw-dropping footage of a 1970 Jethro Tull performance (the final night of the almost-out-of-control Isle of Wight Festival). This was not the turgid, studio-fied Jethro Tull worn down to the nub on FM radio over the past 40 years ("Aqualung" must die!). This was raw, youthful exuberance, a blues-jazz-rock fusion by turns heavy, lyrical and absurd. Frontman Ian Anderson is 23, wearing yellow pajamas, a tattered bathrobe and a fuzzy codpiece that flops around as he spazzes and gyrates. The band has so much hair they’re like a pack of hippie lions. This is punk rock, not arena rock. And that corny flute? Hell, it works. Holy shit. And here’s another goodie: Jethro Tull a year earlier on French TV doing some kind of mutant redneck hobbit rock with swooning mod girls in the foreground. Too bad they would later devolve into an artier and more boring version of themselves, but what rock band hasn’t? (More long-haired, one-legged PJ-RFVotD here.)
Psychedelic Jazz-Rock Fusion Video Of The Day #10
2 min read
