Jethro Tull: Live at Madison Square Garden 1978 (DVD/CD)

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(5 stars) - Old Tull is great
Have been a Tull fan for a long time, and saw this concert in 78 on TV. It still stands as one of very best Tull concerts ever filmed.

(3 stars) - I am a die hard tull fan, but.... the video editing sucks!
I am a die hard Tull fan, and I am indeed going to buy this. But once again why does the video editor
have to take speed before he started to edit video?? It is like he isn't showing his value if he is not
blending camera images, and switching cameras at 1 ever 3 seconds! God, I hate that!!

It really degrades the performance because all we really want is to "Feel like we are there", but
give us a "Good seat", know the damn music so you know when to switch to lead guitar, drums, Tull.

It seems like the editor is some jackass from Cablevision that did the mixing because CV owns MSG??
This would make him the same dude that does camera coverage for the hockey games. OK, yes, there
you are switching angles every 3 500 milliseconds, but not for a concert.

Great concert. Normally when the video editing is this bad I pass. But when it is one of my Fav's
I have to live with it. I wouldn't hire this editor to edit my kids sweet 16 video. Jackass!
Took off two stars based on the unprofessional video editing, otherwise it would have been 5 stars.
Video Techs really are the scum of the music industry.

(4 stars) - The end of an era
During the early 70s, Tull concerts were a curious, explosive mix of heavy flute-driven blues rock, jazz influenced classical folk.... and comedy! kind of a rock concert-meets-circus, featuring non-rabbits, firemen, zebras, gorillas taking pictures of the audience, weather reports - at one point Anderson stopped the music during a ferocious hard rock passage to answer an on-stage "Tull-a-phone". As the music started again, without missing a beat, a soaking wet aqualung-clad scuba diver flapped across the stage in flippers to take the call. You never knew what would happen next... the shows were clever and funny, but the musicians were serious and rocked like no others - in my opinion, for a few years Jethro Tull was the most entertaining live rock band in the world. Throughout the early 70s they would come to town every summer on their US tours (Aqualung, Thick as a Brick, Passion Play, Warchild) and my high school friends and I looked forward to these concerts for months.

Now fast-forward a few years - to 1978 when this DVD was filmed. Many have stated that the "Heavy Horses" era was Tull's musical peak. I disagree. I think they had long since peaked and were by this point running out of ideas - so in the absence of strong new material they concentrated on honing and polishing their live performances to a note-perfect delivery of their repertoire. But the "surprise" factor - the creativity, humor and sheer wild-rock abandon that made their concerts such incredible experiences in earlier years - were all but gone. Still, it will be clear to anyone watching this DVD that Jethro Tull still put on an amazing performance in 1978, still peerless musicians in the rock arena.

I thoroughly enjoyed this DVD; Tull were as much fun to watch as they were to listen to. Maestro Anderson essentially conducts the group with his flute, leaping, twirling, spinning in perfect time with the music. But he's a camera magnet and the focus is almost exclusively on him while so much else is going on - like guitarist extraordinaire Martin Barre leaping onto the stage extension to riff it up during Locomotive Breath.

It's really only during the last few minutes of the show, as the balloons are heaved into the audience, that we get a glimpse of the old Tull energy - rocking out as John Evans, the group clown, abandons his organ to dive about and play air guitar.

Anderson wisely recorded a live album (Bursting Out) and filmed this concert in this same year because he knew the downhill slide was gaining speed and the end of their era was looming - already being labeled "dinosaurs" by the rock press, the "big tent" was about to come down. Two years later only Anderson and Barre remained to carry on the Tull name, and the glory days were over.

We're very fortunate to have this document of the powerful stage presence of this truly unique band.

(1 stars) - Won't get ripped again!
I was sixteen years old when I went to Madison Square Garden to see my favorite band, Jethro Tull, in November 1978. I had lousy seats but I didn't care - until the show started and the sound was so bad, the sections around mine started chanting, "We can't hear!"
At the beginning of the show it was announced (I don't remember by whom) that the show was being broadcast in England and I thought, "Great, it's GOT to be a good show." I was wrong. The set list was okay but the whole show was an hour long, no encores, AND for some reason they did Aqualung twice!
Those tickets must have cost me 6, maybe 8 dollars, times two for my girlfriend, plus train fare and a couple of joints, comes to a total of about 20 bucks.
I will not be paying for this show again!

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