This should be called "Thick as a Brick revisted", as I hadn`t heard the album for 52 years. In fact, I remember very little, but I do remember that obscure oddity on side 2. I wasn´t even out of secondary school when this album came out, a couple of months before Roxy´s debut.

I turned away from the album after a few hearings for simple reasons. This was not blues rock in the manner of their previous albums. The musical interludes sometimes were too hard and the real songs too soft. However, there are some very beautiful interludes that are even softer.

I view the album differently today. Now I´ve made myself a cassette recording of the 1998 brilliant CD remaster. The songs are really tuneful. The harsh Anderson/Barre interludes are to be put up with. Jazz rock fusion stuff, huh?

Side 1 is great, side 2 not so. It sounds as they had enough music for one side plus a rarity that functions as a song in the song, a bit like "The Hare Who Lost His Spectacles" from the follow up. It´s that "-Do You Believe in The Day" thing. It´s too sad. The sadness stands in the way of it´s beauty.

Sticking to prog forums and the like, you get the impression that this must be prog heaven, and in this case, rightly so. Yet this album too contains stuff that gives prog a bad name. I´m thinking of the last part of side 2, which begins with some banging out of the main chords from "Do You Believe in The Day" by electric guitar, luckily tried mellowed out by some accompanying soprillo or sopranino saxophone.

To wet your appetite, the "hits" abound; "I Really Don´t Mind", "The Poet and The Painter", "From The Upper Class", You Curl Your Toes in Fun, "Clear White Circles" and the best one; "Childhood Heroes".
-Tut-tut-tut!!! (flute).

Hmm, It`s hard not to think of the similarites in tune between these ones:

I see you shuffle in the courtroom
With your rings upon your fingers
And your downy little sidies
And your silver-buckle shoes
Playing at the hard case
You follow the example
Of the comic-paper idol
Who lets you bend the rules

(Jethro Tull Childhood Heroes 1972)

Well i've been up all night again
Party time wasting is too much fun
Then I step back thinking
Of lifes inner meaning
And my latest fling
Its the same old story
All love and glory
Its a pantomime

(Roxy Music Mother of Pearl 1973)

-Just throwing in some additional thoughts considering the music and lyrics. Several attempts have been made to understand the meaning of the lyrics, `cause the music is so good, I gather. Ian Anderson himself has been reluctant to give any meaning, simply `cause he don`t know it by himself, I guess. It`s the ol` "think for yourself" and all that. The net is full of discussion and interpretations. I don`t think there are any meaning. The view is shifting wildly as the music proceeds. Like the lyrics of The Doors, it`s meant to ryhme and sound good, that`s all. -Made on the spot, together with the music.

There`s no denying that `cause the album is more the 50 years old, it makes it sound like "words of old". To me, it seems odd that this album has been lying dormant through all these years. Where was I? Yet I have no problem understanding that I was "put off" after 3 minutes as soon as the "See there a son is born" set in. To my 1972-ears, this wasn`t cool. This wasn`t rock. This was music for the stage, some kind of theatre stuff. Besides, how come they play so fast during the "make a man of him, teach him to play Monopoly and sing in the rain" -stuff? Are what we hear keyboards? No doubt there are drums. Are they using the recorded tapes at double speed? -Not very easy on the ear.

Then comes the ability to take in the album`s totality, one of the strenghts of the album. That`s what strikes the more grown up listeners of today.