Tag: Rock Music

Music

Musical Reflections: Jethro Tull’s A (1980)

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

One of the old albums I’ve had an opportunity to revisit in my recent push to finish digitizing my old music collection is the 1980 album from Jethro Tull that goes by the simple name A. The album came out in September, about half a year after I’d gotten married. It featured Eddie Jobson on keyboards and electric violin, and I recall being anxious to get my hands on it, as I’d quickly become an Eddie Jobson fan after my exposure to him on the two albums his band UK released (1978 & 1979). However, I was also dirt poor at that point in my life, and wo...

Music

Musical Reflections: Re-Discovering Pat Benatar

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

I had just managed to leave high school behind me when Pat Benatar’s first album was released in 1979. I can’t say I remember it, although I was listening to the radio in those days, and almost certainly heard the singles from it. Her second album, Crimes of Passion, was a different story. Released in the summer of 1980, it was loaded with radio-friendly songs, and I purchased a copy of the LP. It was mostly straight-ahead rock, played cleanly (i.e. more like pop than punk), though with more skill than creativity, and more attitude than musicality. One t...

Music

Iona Calls it Quits

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Around the time I turned 40, I was despairing of being able to find truly satisfying contemporary music to listen to. I had been listening to (mostly) rock for three decades, and was finding both new and old rock music increasingly unbearable, both musically and, especially, lyrically. Sometime during the autumn of 2000, I stumbled across an interview with Rick Wakeman where he was asked what his favorite Christian band was. He answered that his favorite band at that point, without qualification, was Iona. I thought that was a pretty good recommendation,...

Ruminations

The Great Gig in the Sky

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Pink Floyd keyboardist and co-founder Richard Wright died Monday at his home. He was 65. Rock stars die all the time, and I never really knew anything about this quiet guy, but news of Wright’s death set me to reflecting quite a bit yesterday on my youth, on the role of pop music in the lives of youth, and on the fate of those whose lives turn them into rock stars. I hope the title of this post isn’t overly corny – and I’m sure I’m not the only one to whom it will occur to use it. It refers, of course, to the title of what is my f...