The Jethro Tull concert in Montreal, Quebec was the evening of July 26th, 2000 at the Theatre St-Denis, a lovely, old-style theatre in the heart of Montreal. The hardest part of getting to the theatre was negotiating the traffic on St. Denis, an area filled with little restaurants and bistros and small shops. Before the concert, it was packed outside the area of the theatre itself with folks hawking Tull tickets, and various people seemingly just standing around waiting to see what was going on.
Once inside the theatre building, security guards stood ready, checking folks out for cameras and the like, and several concessions were set up selling beer, wine, and Perrier water - no soft drinks here, which was kind of annoying when it comes down to it, if one didn't drink alcohol. A small area was selling Tull merchandise, to the right of the entrance into the theatre proper, and I found out that these were the folks from Chester Hopkins in the UK. I bought a couple of t-shirts and a programme booklet for myself. Staircases led up to the balcony level of the theatre, and three sets of large, double doors led into the ground level theatre proper.
I was somewhat surprised by the inside of the theatre, to be honest. I haven't been to St-Denis before, and this is one of the nicest venues for Tull I have ever seen. I needn't have worried about where I was sitting on the ground level, because from what I can tell, every seat in the theatre had a good view of the stage. I was sitting with friends in the centre "S" section, and the view was terrific; one could make out detail on the stage, and you could even see Ian Anderson's flute fingerings from a distance, if you paid attention to them.
The opening act for Tull was that of a band or guy called Joe Bonamassa, if I remember correctly. They had a somewhat blues/rock sound, and I have to say they weren't too bad - but they weren't Jethro Tull. They actually played a Tull track, "A New Day Yesterday," which wasn't all that shoddy, but nothing else I heard from them really sticks out in my mind. The real deal came out to play at just a couple of moments before 9:00 pm.
The setlist for the Tull show consisted of:
Tull played for just a touch under two hours, and the show was really very good. The stage set-up was simple, with a ceiling-to-floor curtain that was blown (probably by fans behind Doane's drumkit) that had images played on it constantly throughout the show. My two favourite backdrops had to be the woodsy scene for "Hunting Girl" and the psychedelic bit for "Dharma for One."
Right from the start, you could see the band was going to be hot. Ian Anderson looked to be in a terrific mood right from the opening notes of "For A Thousand Mothers," and he stayed pretty athletic for most of the night. His voice was clear and crisp for most of the show, and Martin's guitars were right on the money as usual. Doane Perry delivered some of his usual, quality drums work, although I thought he got short-changed somewhat on the drum solo during "Dharma for One" and was a little bit overstaged by the rabbit and the spectacles trick (and if you don't know what I'm talking about, go listen to A Passion Play, please). Andy Giddings was superb on the keyboards, and got in some really good stuff, especially playing the "squeezy thing" on "Water Carrier." Jon Noyce was simply wonderful on bass this night, and got in some terrific licks (notably on "Bouree" and during "Martin's Instrumental").
The audience at the St-Denis was very much an older crowd of folks, and I don't remember seeing more than a few children in the audience. The folks applauded in the appropriate places, and there were some genuine cheers for some of the newer material, but by far, the most applause came for the truly old favourites, "Thick As A Brick," "Bouree," "With You There to Help Me" and "Locomotive Breath." Strangely enough, "Aquadiddly/Aqualung" didn't receive all that great an ovation, although it was done so quickly that one could easily have missed it.
By far, my favourite pieces this night were a terrific, relatively long (for these days) version of "Thick As A Brick," the superb "Beside Myself" and "The Habanero Reel," "Water Carrier" (which I thought had a small piece of "Fat Man" in it) as well as "With You There to Help Me," where Ian gave the impression of actually referring to the audience. I was also very fond of "Dharma for One," the excellent rendition of "In ther Grip of Stronger Stuff" and the jazzy beginning piece to "Locomotive Breath." The sound quality of the show was marred somewhat with feedback from Ian's flute and a couple of other instruments during bits of "TAAB" and "Beside Myself," but seemed to be cleared up for the rest of the show. Frankly, "Hunt by Numbers" left me flat, but by far, "Dot Com" had to have been the weakest number of the evening; that song doesn't have the same quality to it that it has on the album, because it requires the lilting voice of Najma Aktar in the background. I was a little disappointed by the encore at the end of the show, since it seemed to be very rushed and very much a melange of pieces, and almost didn't recognise "Cross-Eyed Mary" at first.
The show was terrific, and had something for everyone - both new and old Tull fans. I went with a couple of friends, one of whom had never been to see Tull before and has only heard bits and pieces of their music, and he was very impressed with the showmanship of Ian Anderson and the quality of the music and show live. (He'll probably go with me to the next Tull concert, so that's a good sign that the boys can still draw in relatively new fans.) Part of the trick with seeing Tull seems to me to be more a matter of actually having a show in the right venue. St-Denis was the perfect venue for a Tull show; if Tull never plays in Ottawa again, I hope they perform at this venue again.
This review is copyright © 2000 John M. Kahane. All rights reserved. May not be reprinted without the permission of the author.