Jethro Tull-A Passion Play (1973)
Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: A Passion Play
Year of Release: 1973
Country and Year of Edition: US 1973 Green Shell
Sell Price: $4.74
Sell Date: 3/29/26
Condition: VG/G+
Discogs Last Sold: 1/4/24 VG/not graded $4.00
Low: $3.00
Median: $4.00
Average: $4.03
High: $6.00
Current low price: $3.99 VG+/VG+
Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 7
Have/Want: 61/46
Where Sold: Fort Worth, TX
Time It Took To Sell: 2 years
Where and When Buught: Ebay lot
Gwiz-gau Grade: B
Sad To See It Go: No
A Passion Play I always found to be shockingly subpar compared to their other single track conceptual album Thick As A Brick. Going back to it hasn't made it all that familiar save for one particular part.
Since the proper format for this music was a single pause between sides, the 8-track chops those two haves into faded quadrants. The CD era further tracked it out into parts to made convenient to be interrupted by advertising in the digital streaming era. These titles were first in the public realm in 2014 as part of the Steven Wilson remastering campaign. Until then, Part 1 and Part 2 sufficed except of course for this 8-track editon.
On the 8-track story of The Hare That Lost His Spectacles begins at the end of track two and is interrupted by a click before the rest of the story. The song that I'm most familiar from it's appearance on the M. U. compilation as "Edit No 8" (released as a single backed with "Edit No. 9") actually charted the lower regions of the Billboard Hot 100 (#80 peak on a 5 week run) is now called "Overseer Overture" which begins about 40 seconds before the edit starts. The other single, Edit 10 b/w Edit 6 didn't chart.
What this tells me is trying to impose songs on an album that was meant to be considered one song without as much as a mention of "suites" or "parts" in the track listing is a bit of foolish revisionist history. Why force a retrofit to conform to the modern marketplace? No sense sugar coating it whether it comes in 2-22 minute doses or 4-11 minute ones give or take. Indexing and affixing track titles is just a distraction.
A Passion Play sounds better after you hear it a few times straight. There are aspects to it that sounds like classic Tull, but it is hard to follow the music start to finish. Hand holding by making it into "songs" degrades the experience and doesn't make it any better.
The 8-track makes quick work of that theory.
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