Can you believe it? Ian Anderson, also known as Jethro Tull is still rockin after all these years. The last time I saw him perform in concert was in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1972 or there abouts with Jeff Sands, Paul Abbot, Bob Brown, and other fiends and demons from Western New England College. It was an incredible show back then and Ian had a tendency towards making obscene gestures to the audience while wearing his codpiece and tights. It was downright Medieval. What a show for wild men and women! I can still smell the smoke.

Now 34 (thirty-four) years later I had the opportunity to see him once again in a more intimate setting at the Palace Theatre in Stamford, Connecticut. The performance was booked as "Orchestral Jethro Tull" and the headline in the advertisement said you would have to be thick as a brick to miss this one or something like that. I'm glad I attended.

The orchestra appearing with Ian was composed of about a dozen or so young ladies from a renowned music conservatory in Massachusetts. There was one male in the orchestra who played a bass saxophone. I bet he was having fun. Also appearing with Ian was a violinist and physics teacher named Ann Marie Calhoun from West Virginia who knew how to play a blue grass fiddle like the best of them. She can play classical violin with the same expertise too I might add. During the final part of the concert her bow string started to disintegrate from the friction and the resulting heat generated from rapid motion. Like starting a fire from sticks. Ian gave her an apple at the beginning of the concert in an attempt to become the teacher's pet.

In addition to the orchestra there was an electric and accoustic guitar player, a bass guitar player who might have been with the original band I saw in 1972, a drummer, and a keyboardist who played the accordian and did extra duty conducting the orchestra as well. The musicians in the band appeared to be having as wonderful a time as the audience.

Needless to say this concert was not a redux of 1972. During the performance Ian's eyes opened wide and shut tight while the fluttering notes from his silver flute cut through the air like a fast moving bird. Just like back in the day. Ian's trademark sound of "coming into the flute" where the voice box is incorporated into the sound of the flute is Ian's trademark. As far as I know, Ian invented it.

We're all a little slower moving now because of the ravages of time and that cruel joke entropy, but observing Ian this time around was like taking a trip back and when the band played Locomotive Breath, Thick As A Brick, Aqualung and a few other classics, well, you get the picture.