{"id":78,"date":"2009-12-25T20:39:31","date_gmt":"2009-12-26T03:39:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/?p=78"},"modified":"2009-12-25T20:39:31","modified_gmt":"2009-12-26T03:39:31","slug":"song-of-the-day-ring-out-solstice-bells-by-jethro-tull","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/?p=78","title":{"rendered":"Song of the Day – “Ring Out, Solstice Bells” by Jethro Tull"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, it’s December 25th again.\u00a0 I personally don’t’ give two shits about Christmas.\u00a0 Aside from the extra time off I get from work, this time of year pisses me off.\u00a0 Christmas is all about greed and hypocrisy.<\/p>\n

Bah fucking humbug.<\/p>\n

Today’s Song of the Day<\/a> is a “holiday” song… one about bells and the Winter Solstice.\u00a0 I guess the days are getting longer now… but I have access to artificial light, so it’s all good.\u00a0 Jethro Tull had quite the burst of creative genius going in the 70s, and this song came toward the end of that.<\/p>\n

If you’ve ever wanted to get into Jethro Tull’s music… get their 70s and late 60s records.\u00a0 Stop at 1979.\u00a0 Seriously.\u00a0 Eddie Jobson notwithstanding, nothing recorded after that can even hold a candle to what they did in the 70s.<\/p>\n

Speaking of candles, I had never seen that video before I fetched a YouTube link for you.\u00a0 What a… uh… different video.\u00a0 I suppose it tries to capture the Old European Peasant charm of a Pieter Bruegel painting<\/a>, but it looks rather poorly executed.<\/p>\n

Speaking about poorly executed… It was 20 years ago today that the Dictator of Romania and his wife were executed by firing squad.\u00a0 You think lots of stuff can go wrong when they fry someone in the chair?\u00a0 Yikes.<\/p>\n

And since I’m so firmly entrenched now in my routine of mentioning a song and then rambling on and on and on about some other topic, I’ll return to the subject of the song.\u00a0 This one didn’t come up on shuffle for me today, though it did a couple of weeks ago while I was waiting for the train.\u00a0 Actually, that was a re-recorded version for 2003’s “The Jethro Tull Christmas Album”.\u00a0 That evening as I made my way home, 3 Jethro Tull songs with winter themes popped up on shuffle play.\u00a0 Coincidence?<\/p>\n

Of course it’s a coincidence.\u00a0 iPod shuffle play is not SkyNet.\u00a0 Not yet, anyway.\u00a0 When the machines take over, I do hope they keep us as pets.<\/p>\n

From 1977’s “Song’s From the Wood” album, this is probably the bestest of Tull’s late 70s material.\u00a0 They had a kind of folkie\/winter vibe going on for the last three studio albums of the decade.\u00a0 They are considered a trilogy by some, so I’ll go along with that.\u00a0 You can also hear the transition by which Ian Anderson’s voice went from a strong lead full of wit and character to a whiny nasal drone.<\/p>\n

Remember… stay away from 80s Tull!!!<\/p>\n

Tull rhymes with skull.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, it’s December 25th again.\u00a0 I personally don’t’ give two shits about Christmas.\u00a0 Aside from the extra time off I get from work, this time of year pisses me off.\u00a0 Christmas is all about greed and hypocrisy. Bah fucking humbug. Today’s Song of the Day is a “holiday” song… one about bells and the Winter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[53,55,54],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-song-of-the-day","tag-jethro-tull","tag-pieter-bruegel","tag-solstice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/79"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}