When Jethro Tull won Best Heavy Metal band about 20 years ago, many people freaked out. While I can understand their outrage, it's not so farfetched as many believe. It's just that Jethro Tull is/was one of the most complex, intricate, eclectic bands EVER. They could weave a musical tapestry of hard rock, metal, folk, prog rock, and jazz all into one, and do it seamlessly. This album is a great example of their genius.

For those who want a testament to Tull's heaviness should just listen to the first song. After a charming 2 minute introduction, Martin Barre's guitar takes over and it makes your ears bleed. Barre is one of rock's most underrated guitarists ever, and his playing is as awesome as many of his contemporaries. Barrimore Barlow's drumming on the title track is also incredible. The next song, Cold Wind to Valhalla, isn't as heavy as the title track, but it's still damn good. Requiem and One White Duck are lovely songs (especially Requiem), with wonderful orchestration. The epic, four part song Baker St. Muse is as good as any Tull epic. The guitar playing is awesome, and the band delivers on one of their more complex songs. The album closes on a lovely note with Grace. This is one of Tull's least heard yet most essential albums. It's another great example of a band named after the inventor of the seed drill.

Do you like Aqualung, Thick as a Brick, and Passion Play? Buy it, this one has lots of that.

Are you not a fan of the music of Jethro Tull? Do not buy it, this record will not make you one.

Are you a snarky, music snob with just enough theory under your belt to sound like you know what you are talking about? Go review something that needs reviewing, and quit wasting your time on 35 year old rock albums.

Think I'll go thrash me some Paul Revere and the Raiders.

Good grief.

This is a nice release from 1975 that essentially established the proggy folk rock/hard rock blend that would characterize many of their subsequent albums. Surprisingly, a near-epic is included on Minstrel in the Gallery (the four-part, 16 minute long Baker St. Muse suite). This is surprising in the sense that following the lambasting of the prog epic A Passion Play, the group turned around and released the comparatively lighter album War Child.

Musically, Minstrel in the Gallery includes a nice mixture of progressive rock, early English folk music, folk rock and hard rock. The quieter passages played on acoustic instruments nicely leaven the thunderous, proggier sections. There are some great performances by all of the players and drummer Barriemore Barlow is in especially fine form throughout. This would be the last album with bassist Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond, who was replaced by the fantastic John Glascock.

This remastered effort is pretty nice and reproduces the LP fairly accurately...well, based upon what little I remember of my old LP from a billion years ago. The sound quality is pretty good overall (even on the bonus live tracks). Speaking of which, I thought the bonus tracks were very nice, although I find myself "hard-wired" to stop listening when Grace ends.

All in all, this is a great album that nicely merges prog, folk and rock together and is recommended along with similar albums including Songs from the Wood (1977) and Heavy Horses (1978).

Jethro Tull's eighth studio and ninth overall album Minstrel in the Gallery was released in September of 1975.
At the time of the release of Minstrel, Jethro Tull was one of the biggest bands in the world having released six consecutive US Gold selling albums (five of them which hit the US Top 10).
Lead singer/songwriter/flute player Ian Anderson, guitarist Martin Barre, drummer Barriemore Barlow, keyboard player John Evan and bass player Jeffrey Hammond (whom would leave the band after the tour for Minstrel to take up painting and art) started work on the follow-up to 1974's successful War Child on the Maison Rouge mobile and created an album which is one of the classic Tull albums.
I always get a kick out of people trying to fit Jethro Tull into any particular type of music, because they are just plain not anything. While they have elements of hard rock/metal, elements of pop, elements of progressive, elements of folk, elements of renaissance, and even a bit of classical here and there, they are all of the above and none of the above. They just are.
The opening eight minute plus title cut begins with album in a grand way. The first part of the track is a great minstrel-folk beginning which then gives way into a classic hard rocker with some tasty guitar playing from Barre. Next is Cold Wind to Valhalla which starts out like a renaissance era folk tune but then turns into a great hard but bluesy rocker (which has Barre doing both lead guitar and some great slide guitar). Excellent use of violins in this song to help the orchestration. Who said strings and rock don't mix. Next is another classic, the epic called Black Satin Dancer which features some hard rock riffs and the trademark Anderson folk influences. Its lyrics tell of sexual foreplay and intense longing, perhaps even lust. Unlike fellow prog bands like ELP, Genesis, Pink Floyd and Yes, Tull added some hard rock/heavy metal elements to their works. A most excellent song. The first side ends with an acoustic ballad called Requiem which sounds like it could have appeared on either a Simon and Garfunkel album or even The Beatles' Rubber Soul but is still classic Tull.
The album's second side kicks off with another acoustic number called One White Duck/0^10 = Nothing at All which is a great song. Next is the band's first 10 minute plus track since the 1973 album length epic A Passion Play called Baker St. Muse. The song tells the story about a muse, a very down-to-earth fellow crying out that Jethro Tull wasn't the commercial group that War Child almost made them out to be. The lyrics state that we're still in the gutter singing about things that haven't changed. The other parts of the epic are stories of the street, likely stories of the Baker St. Muse (aka Jethro Tull). These vignettes are very sexual. Had they been released between 1986 and now, they'd probably have a Parental Advisory label. This lengthy piece is their best epic since the Thick as a Brick suite though A Passion Play had its moments. We end the album with the short tune Grace which is a short but affective way to close the album.
Minstrel in the Gallery reached #7 on the Billboard album chart in late 1975 and went Gold immediately. Unfortunately, this was their last studio album with bass player Jeffrey Hammond who would retire from music to take up art and painting.
In 2002, Chrysalis Records (in association with Capitol Records in the US and EMI elsewhere), re-released the album as a digitally remastered CD. The re-issue features five bonus tracks which were the album outtakes Summerdays Sands, March the Mad Scientist and Pan Dance plus live versions of Minstrel in the Gallery and Cold Wind to Valhalla.
This Tull album is RECOMMENDED IMMENSELY!

Ian Anderson really turned in a more acoustic direction with the release of Minstrel In The Gallery in 1975. A very complex and rich set of compositions, one of my favorite Tull recordings. The audio is excellent with this remastered CD (2002) and the bonus tracks are indeed a bonus. Highly recommended.