I was thinking for almost a week about which of two Jethro Tull songs I was going to use for the next part of this blog. Both are rather text-intensive, and although there surely is more meaning in their text than I catch, the lyrics are a part of the reason why I like them. (In the meantime I discovered that there are places on the internet where the meanings of songs are discussed, the one I saw is songmeanings.com) And: both songs are to be found on the same LP and even on the same side of it.
Well, finally I decided for the song that comes first on side two of the LP "Warchild", from 1974, with the title "Skating Away on the Thin Ice of the New Day".
It has a really cool introduction, while you may as well say it isn't even a part of the song: what you hear is somebody with a cup of tea (of course tea, this is a british band and it carries the name of a british poet), making some noise with the teaspoon, sipping from the cup now and again and humming part of the melody of the song you are going to listen to. After this stops, the singing and acoustic guitar begin at exactly the same moment.
I am discovering that it is not as easy as you could think, to find out what it is that you like in a song. Maybe the fact that music equally adresses emotions and mind is responsible for this difficulty - you see, it is hard for me to get a grasp on what I feel; to know what I feel is somewhat contradictory.
The first phrases of this song are not really very melodic, but the vocals are closely accompanied by the guitar, and the refrain is briefly anounced with an upward scale played on, I would say, a xylophone. Then, while Ian Anderson repeats "skating away", the guitar accompaniment sounds quite oriental, and this impression is intensified by the percussion chosen for finishing each of the three repetitions before he completes the sentence.
I definitely like the way it sounds, although I have to admit that throughout my -average to small- music collection, there is nothing from the eastern hemisphere. I don't even own the Deep Purple live record "Made in Japan" ...
The song continues in the cheerful mood it acquired more clearly with the first refrain, and when, in the third verse, the lyrics read "you're a rabbit on the run", a compound of a few brushed drum beats and a bass guitar tune gets you to see the rabbit jump up and run along with the melody.
The song ends with the third refrain, where a second set of "skating away" repetitions terminates sounding like sung into the open, instead of flowing towards the rest of the sentence. Then, a disharmonic flute (?) sound fills the gap between this song and the next so that, when as an adolescent I wanted to have it among a music mix on cassette (another outdated thing for carrying around and listening to music, it could hold up to two hours of music, more than two complete LPs!), I had to do a fast fadeout in order not to hear "Bungle in the Jungle" begin.
Here, I want to point out that I do by far prefer to listen to a series of songs from different interpreters than to the entire disc of one group (although these cases also do occur) and when I recorded such cassettes, it was quite important that songs connected well among each other (according to my feelings about it).
Okay, let that be enough for today. I would like to know what songs you like - maybe we coincide with the music, but find out that we have very different feelings about it.
