Thick as a Brick
Thick as a Brick is a concept album by Jethro Tull (band), built around a poem written by a fictitious boy, "Gerald Bostock" or "Little Milton". The album on LP vinyl runs as one seamless track on both sides of the record, being thus "one song". This album was released in 1972.Band leader Anderson was surprised by the critical reaction to the previous album Aqualung as a "concept album", a label he firmly rejected. With Thick as a Brick, the band set out to create an album deliberately integrated around one concept: a poem by an intelligent English boy about the trials of growing up. Beyond this, the album is intended to be a send-up of all pretentious "concept albums". The formula was successful, and the album quickly reached #1 on the charts in the United States.
The original LP cover was a spoof 12 inch by 16 inch multipage local newspaper with stories, competitions, adverts etc., lampooning the kind of horribly parochial and amateurish local journalism that sadly still exists in many places today. The spoof newspaper had to be heavily abridged for conventional CD covers, but the 25th Anniversary Special Edition CD includes a complete facsimile.
