‘Morning, Lizards,

Apropos of nothing - Radio Paradise just played side one of Jethro Tull’s 1972 album ‘Thick As A Brick,’ Ian Anderson’s epic send-up of progressive rock albums of the time. The album was one song, spanning both sides of a single album. It went on to become one of Tull’s biggest albums in the States, and remains my favorite Tull album.

I remember two things upon first hearing it. One, that the production was miles beyond any Tull album to that point and the band sounded amazing on it. And two, I was working at my college radio station at the time, and Chrysalis provided us with a ‘banded’ copy of the album so we could play snippets of it rather than a whole side at a time. We just filed that copy in the music library and played either side one or side two, and sometimes loaded up the turntables with two copies of the record and played the entire album in one go.

Behold, the strange story of ‘Thick As A Brick.’