Homo Erratic

IAN ANDERSON'S NEW 2014 ALBUM/CD IS CALLED "HOMO ERRATIC" AND IT IS AVAILABLE THRU AMAZON EXCLUSIVELY AS A FOUR-CD SET !! In 2012 Ian Anderson released Thick As A Brick 2, the follow-up to Jethro Tull's legendary concept album. The album was a critical and commercial success, charting around the world. In April he returns with Homo Erraticus, his new studio album. The original Thick As A Brick album, released in 1972, was based around the poem of disgraced child prodigy Gerald Bostock. For Homo Erraticus Anderson is reunited with Bostock, using lyrics written by Gerald based on an old historical manuscript. The manuscript examines key events from throughout British history before going on to offer a number of prophecies for the future. Suitably dramatised and exaggerated by Bostock as metaphors for modern life, he presented Anderson with ideas for 14 songs, which have now been set to music. The result is Homo Erraticus. The album will be released on Anderson's own Calliandra Records label in conjunction with Kscope on April 14th. Following the release of this Jethro Tull album in all but name, Ian and his band will be embarking on an extensive UK tour, where they will play the album in its entirety followed by a selection of Tull classics. These shows will be followed by further tours in Europe, America and more later in the year. Limited edition deluxe 4 disc set presented in a 60 page hardback book. Includes bonus DVD with interviews & making of documentary, a bonus CD with audio commentary & demos, plus DTS 5.1 surround and hi-resolution stereo (24/48 LPCM) mixes of the album on DVD-V. ----- I got my first stereo with s turntable in the summer of 1984, when I was 12. Some of the first LPs my mother bought me were from department stores like Bradlee's and music stores like Crazy Eddie. It was at Bradlee's where I bought the Jethro Tull album, "Thick as a Brick" -- Crazy Eddie's was where I got other progressive rock offerings, like "Leftoverture" by Kansas and "90125" by Yes. I was really into Jethro Tull but, as you had most of their 1970s albums (from your older brother's collections) and I didn't want to purchase them because I sort of considered them 'out of my league', I decided to get into their newer albums, which you didn't have. So I bought and played and listened to "Stormwatch", "A" and "The Broadsword and the Beast" but, the truth be told, I like "Thick as a Brick" the most. Many time I played it before after I got home from James A. Farley Middle School, before my mother got home from working at Nyack Hospital to cook dinner. So "Thick as a Brick" has always retained a special place in my heart, as I associated it with my one of the "first steps" in my musical education and, simultaneously, I regarded to prospect of listening to it again with distaste. But as I mentioned to you on the phone, I recently discovered that Ian Anderson released "Thick as a Brick 2" in 2012 and I decided to purchase it because I love Ian Anderson's solo work and this appears to be an album of original material. I had shunned this CD when I saw it in Newbury Comics, a CD retailer at the Independence Mall in Kingston, Massachusetts. I can only explain my reasoning for shunning it so completely by way of saying that it doesn't look like an album of new material. The cover is a replication of the newspaper-facsimile of the original "Thick as a Brick" album cover, with a tiny picture of Gerald Bostock, who was supposed to have written the poem that Jethro Tull set to music for the album-length song. When regarded further, I have to admit that the album looks quite shoddy. At the top of the jewel case is written "www.StCleve.com" and the only indication of an album title is an orange box wherein it is written, "Jethro Tull/Ian Anderson/TAAB2." All very confusing to me; I assume it was a compilation or a live recording of the original album, which I didn't need, as I was very satisfied with the live rendition of "Brick" on the Jethro Tull album "Bursting Out", which I purchased when I was living in New Jersey, waiting for my Social Security hearing to take place. And now Ian Anderson has released the brand-new album "Homo Erratic" -- I am simply stunned to have two albums of new material to listen to. If I can, I am going to purchase "Homo Erratic" in May, although I may not listen to it until 2015. I listen to five new CDs per week, and I have enough new ones to take me to November of this year, at which time I will begin listening to old CDs. Specifically, in November and December I listen to Chet Baker and in January I listen to compact discs that are either in cases under my bed or in racks behind my bureau's sliding door. I love Jethro Tull's music so much that I have even made up special prayers to God that I recite whenever Jethro Tull's or Ian ANderson's music comes up on my iPod. I believe God communicated to me thru Tull's music. I will stop writing now, and send off this email. ----- I got my first stereo with s turntable in the summer of 1984, when I was 12. Some of the first LPs my mother bought me were from department stores like Bradlee's and music stores like Crazy Eddie. It was at Bradlee's where I bought the Jethro Tull album, "Thick as a Brick" -- Crazy Eddie's was where I got other progressive rock offerings, like "Leftoverture" by Kansas and "90125" by Yes. I was really into Jethro Tull but, as you had most of their 1970s albums (from your older brother's collections) and I didn't want to purchase them because I sort of considered them 'out of my league', I decided to get into their newer albums, which you didn't have. So I bought and played and listened to "Stormwatch", "A" and "The Broadsword those and the Beast" but, the truth be told, I like "Thick as a Brick" the most. Many time I played it before after I got home from James A. Farley Middle School, before my mother got home from working at Nyack Hospital to cook dinner. So "Thick as a Brick" has always retained a special place in my heart, as I associated it with my one of the "first steps" in my musical education and, simultaneously, I regarded to prospect of listening to it again with distaste. ----- Jethro Tull is a personal favorite and they should have appeared on the list as an honorable mention. (The Beatles and their various solo careers will probably get up to notch #3 after they re-release more of Paul McCartney's solo efforts, which I have only a few of.) Although I have such a deep fondness for the discography of Jethro Tull/Ian Anderson somehow I don't feel that they are 'artists' on the level of a Miles Davis or Van Morrison, or even on the level of The Grateful Dead or The Rolling Stones. Maybe this will change after I listen carefully to "Thick as a Brick 2" and "Homo Erratic" for, as you know, I reserve my most deepest respects for performers that have longevity of artistic production. I love Jethro Tull's music like I love Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin's music but, then again, I don't deify the music of the latter bands as I do Tull's, which I find to be of a solidly and morally virtuous nature. Perhaps it's all a question of titles, for I first became deeply convinced of the religious nature of Tull's music when I ordered the Ian Anderson solo album titled "Divinities." As I stated in an email two days previously, I had owned several Jethro Tull albums during my middle-school and high-school years, but I sort of gave up listening to them when I began listening to CDs. I did not listen to Tull at all either at Bard College, where I preferred the music of Bob Dylan and contemporary artists, or at Wake Forest University, where I was pre-occupied with the music of Miles Davis. I only started collecting Tull's music and re-discovering how great it was when my mental illness became acute and I was moved from Rutherford NJ -- where I listened to Van Morrison and Chet Baker exclusively -- to New Milford NJ, where I now had nearly one hundred dollars a month to spend on luxury items. I can't retrace all the steps A thru Z as you might wish me to do, but I can only say there was a series of steps along the way which led me to the gradual belief that God was speaking to me through Jethro Tull's music. One unusual phenomenon which occurred with great regularity during the time when I lived in New Milford NJ: I would listen to music played at random either on my computer (I had a desktop model in 2006-2010) or with my iPod (I had an iPod mini speaker-system), and I would pre-appoint an hour at which I would retire. I noticed immediately that Jethro Tull's music would come on at that prescribed moment with astonishingly regularity, and Jethro Tull/Ian Anderson's music only accounted for about 600 out of the over 10,000 tracks on my computer. This phenomenon continues up until today. I believe that God speaks to us through music; perhaps it is his angels who seek to give us a signal as to their being present. I will quote you an incident that happened to me. As you know, my 160 GB iPod holds almost 14,000 songs and when I first got it, I could not figure out how to implement it so that it played through my new stereo, which has an iPod dock. I decided with great reluctance that it must have been designed for another iPod model, and I continued to listen to it with the ear-buds in my ears and the television sound off. (I was very afraid of making noise where I am now, at the Castle Hill apartments, as they are Senior residences.) Suddenly one day I Had a flash of inspiration, a eureka moment!, and I knew I could situate the new iPod into the groove of the iPod dock so that it would play. I wasn't having the greatest time living here at the time. I had my old Technics stereo which I would only allow myself to listen to from 2 PM to 4 PM because it was old and would get hot, at which time I would turn on the television and watch Fox News until a sporting event would come on at 7 PM, and then I would continue to watch television until 2 AM or later. I would even stay up later than that and listen to WATD (stands for "We're at the dump", a colloquial reference) and they would play 1970s and 1980s music at late hours then and, while I found that somewhat entertaining, it was a depressing routine. (Now I have two new stereos, including the new iPod I mentioned above, and I only watch TV from 7 PM to 11:30 PM.) Getting back to the point I was making: I started playing my iPod/stereo in August 2012 and I continued to listen to it until it finished it cycle, playing every song available. And do you know when it stopped ? On May 1st at 2 AM, which my mother has told me is the moment of my birth. And do you know what song played ? A song from the new World Party collection called "Arkology", a song Karl Wallinger introduces by announcing to someone or other, chatter from a live performance, "It's his birthday today, let's wish him a happy birthday!" and then the song "Call on Me" began and the iPod ended its cycle. This had such a profound effect on me that I mentioned it to my mother and after a moment's reflection, she said that it was Chucky, my brother who died in infancy, speaking to me and wishing me a happy birthday. JETHRO TULL TOP 20 ALBUMS 1. LIVING IN THE PAST 2. STAND UP 3. BENEFIT 4. AQUALUNG 5. ROOTS TO BRANCHES 6. CATFISH RISING 7. THE BROADSWORD AND THE BEAST 8. CREST OF A KNAVE 9. HEAVY HORSES 10. TOO OLD TO ROCK AND ROLL, TOO YOUNG TO DIE 11. SONGS FROM THE WOOD 12. BURSTING OUT 13. MINSTREL IN THE GALLERY 14. WARCHILD 15. HOMO ERRATICUS 16. THICK AS A BRICK 2 17. ROCK ISLAND 18. THIS WAS 19. NOTHING IS EASY: LIVE AT THE ISLE OF WIGHT 20. DIVINITIES ----- David Bowie was my first musical interest. My sister Christine owned "Changesonebowie", a greatest hits collection that was available in the late 1970s/earlly 80s; she had it on an eight-track tape cartridge. In 1982 the album "Let's Dance" came out and suddenly David Bowie was everywhere, including this new channel I had called MTV. (Cable television was a new development in 1982.) About that same time I got my first cassette player and my mother bought me some Bowie tapes: ones I had included "Pin-Ups," "Golden Years," "Rare Bowie," "Young Americans" and "Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture" -- that last one was my favorite. I didn't want to buy, and have still yet to purchase, Bowie's most famous album, "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars," because I reckoned I had the live version and I thought the studio versions could not be better. I plan to purchase this album in time, but probably not this year or even the next year after that. Another album I was very hesitant to purchase was his 1973 album, "Aladdin Sane," as I did not think it wise to associate myself with something like that. 'An insane lad' was not something I wanted to be. I find it ironic that I should grow up to develop schizophrenia, including a psychotic disorder and a cognitive disorder. I guess I am "Aladdin Sane." ----- I got Ian Anderson's _Homo Erraticus_ today ! My mother wanted to go to the Independence Mall today in Kingston, Massachusetts and found the new disc at Newbury Comics on sale for $14 ! Now that I've told you all about my special connection with Ian Anderson's music, can you understand how wonderful it is for me to have these new albums ? Also, I wrote to Jacob Goldfarb the following email snippet from Jan 17, 2014. Thanks for the link. Like the writer of the article, I used to like ELP, but for me it was the discovery of the Clash's first album, rather than the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks, that prompted me to gradually move away from progressive rock, which was my first interest. I remember way back, I had Asia's first album on cassette in 1982, and then I got Yes' 90125 on tape in 1983, on Easter Sunday I think. When I got a turntable in 1986, when I was fourteen years old, the first album I ever purchased was Leftoverture by Kansas, and soon after that (my mother bought me) Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick. I used to listen to Brain Salad Surgery with Ivar Neset -- he had it on 8-track -- and I really thought it was great. When Michael McGovern and I used to used to draw and play records together we used to listen to ELP's Greatest Hits album. He and I were into them, we even went to see them when they came to Brendan Byrne arena in East Rutherford NJ in 1987 (my sister took us). Keith Emerson set his piano on fire during the show, as I recall. Michael had their LP called Tarkus, which he never played for me, probably because it was terrible. One great ELP song the writer fails to note is the holiday song, "(I Believe in) Father Christmas".