My two favorite bands of all time are Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull. Earlier this year, Jennifer and I got the chance to see an excellent Pink Floyd cover band called Brit Floyd. To my surprise, Jennifer really liked the concert, and wanted to hear more of Pink Floyd. That only left introducing her to Jethro Tull.

Well, it turned out I would get my chance. Ian Anderson (the guy behind Jethro Tull) was doing a world tour promoting his new album, Homo Erraticus; the tour touted that not only would he perform material from his new album, he would perform the best of Jethro Tull. Needless to say, we got tickets as soon as I learned about it.

The concert was tonight. To be perfectly honest, it was something of a disappointment.

The first half of the concert, aside from the last two songs, were all songs from Homo Erraticus. The songs pretty much reminded me of one track from Jethro Tull’s last album, J-Tull Dot Com, called “Hot Mango Flush”. That track was kind of discordant, and had rather nonsensical lyrics. The music from the CD felt the same way; as “Hot Mango Flush” was easily my least liked Tull track, you can imagine I didn’t care for it.

Once they got to the actual Tull material, things improved a bit. I knew the songs, and the musicians were all good and played very well… with one notable exception.

Is it sad that the one whose name is on the group is the weakest of the group?

Anderson’s instrumentals on flute and mandolin were excellent as always. However, his singing was terrible. He was off-key, his intonation was off-sequence, and it sounded like he was straining badly. Personally, it reminded me of when I would sing karaoke and would sing a song that was out of my range; in those cases, my voice would break and end up rasping near the end. Anderson was no different.

The sad thing is that he had a backup singer that would sing alongside him, and he honestly sounded more like Anderson in his prime than Anderson himself did. The backup singer would alternate with Anderson on lyrics; Jennifer and I were both of the opinion that he should have stayed on vocals and Anderson should have stuck with instrumentals.

The real telling sign of how this concert reflected Jethro Tull was what happened afterwards. After the Brit Floyd concert, I played Jennifer some Pink Floyd because she wanted to hear more of it. After this concert, I played Jennifer some Jethro Tull to prove that Anderson wasn’t always that bad.

It’s a real shame, because with this concert I’ve decided never to go to any more Jethro Tull or Ian Anderson concerts. If this was any indication, Anderson’s singing career needs to end. He can stay with instrumentals when touring and have someone else sing, but he needs to give up the singing part himself.

It’s almost October, so you know what that means. Halloween is upon us! :-)

I try to make it a ritual to find a couple of different ways to entertain myself throughout October, whether it be going through a book, a video game, or some movies on the day itself. For example, a couple of years ago I played through the entirety of DOOM 3: BFG Edition. I’ve also watched movies on Halloween night such as John Carpenter’s Apocalypse trilogy (The Thing, Prince of Darkness, and In the Mouth of Madness), Psycho, and Bram’s Stoker’s Dracula. This year, I’m thinking of doing both, plus adding a book or two to the mix.

I’ve mentioned in an earlier post that I’ve picked up a new copy of the original Dracula novel. I may go ahead and do a re-read of it. In addition, I have a copy of Stephen King’s novel The Shining that I picked up while visiting the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado (the inspiration for the hotel in the novel). Admittedly, I never got around to reading it, so this month would be a good time to rectify that oversight. :-)

On the gaming front, there has been an indie horror game that I’ve tried that might be fun to try and beat: Five Night’s at Freddy’s. You play as a security guard in a Chuck E. Cheese pastiche called Freddy Fazbear’s, where you have to stay alive despite the animatronics coming to (accidentally?) kill you, and the limited power to operate the security cameras, lights, and doors. A typical game session provides plenty of paranoia and jump scares, as you frantically try to locate the animatronics in the restaurant and risk having them screeching at you unexpectedly. While I picked up the iOS version for my iPad, I’ve come to find I need to get the PC version. I’m not proud of this, but I was playing the game while in bed and tossed the tablet away when one of the animatronics caught me unexpectedly and screamed right in my face. With the iPad not in a protective case, I was lucky it landed on the mattress.

As for Halloween night itself, I’m thinking I’d like to do a relatively innocuous double feature. As I’ve decided not to go to the Alley Theatre production of Dracula, I figured I would watch the original Dracula film starring Bela Lugosi, as it was based on the same stage play. The second film would be The Crow; it’s not horror, but it does take place on Devil’s Night. It also helps that it’s one of my favorite comic book movies. :-)

All in all, I think I’m pretty much ready for this upcoming October. I’ve got good books, a good game, and good movies. I just hope I get to be able to get through them all. :-)