The Final Blog: We’re in the Endgame Now

 

Since I believe this is the final passion blog of the semester… its time to talk about endings. Not just any sort of endings. While explosions at the end of movies or emotional speeches at the end of a chapter of a life are fine and all, how artists choose to end their albums can sometimes make or break the whole album. So we are going to take a look at the endings to some of my favorite albums, and see if they hold up to the beginnings.

 

 

For the sake of this blog, I am going to say the last one to two songs can be considered the ending. Only because that second to last song is sometimes too much of a bop to leave out.

 

 

Since I haven’t brought up JETHRO TULL in a while, I feel obligated to talk about Heavy Horses. I’ve spoken about the first song to this album before, And the Mouse Police Never Sleeps, and how the energizing drums and guitar part make for an amazing song that really encapsulates a chase between a cat and a mouse. But this song does not compare to the majestic masterpiece that is the title track, Heavy Horses. The second to last track is an epic that tells the story of how industrialization made the horses obsolete, with amazing guitar work by Sir Martin Barre as usual. My favorite line is when Ian is singing about the world running out of fossil fuels and then asking the horses for forgiveness to come back and help tend the fields and support society as they used to.

 

 

The last song on this album, Weathercock, sounds like something a Scandinavian rock band would write but in the best possible way. The Mandolin, electric guitar, large drums, a wild bass line, and the flute come together to tell the story of a wise weather vane (sounds dumb but is actually amazing if you like medieval sounding music with distorted guitar solos). It wraps up the folk rock album perfectly, encapsulating everything I love about Jethro Tull. Luckily, Ian Anderson’s modern singing is nowhere to be found in this album. Please don’t look up any live videos past the 80’s. It’s just no goo in terms of vocals. That man will rock a good flute solo till his deathbed.  

 

 

Traveling one year later to 1979, we stumble upon an album I’ve been listening to since 2014 when I was part of a show that performed the entire album at School of Rock.

 

Pink Floyd’s The Wall ends like no other rock album but exactly the way you would expect a rock opera to end. The second to last song, The Trial, finds the main character being charged with the freedom of thought and expression. This song finds many of the characters met in previous songs, such as the “how can you eat your pudding before you eat your meat” Scotsman and Pink’s mother. It’s a Broadway style song that builds up to the eventual tearing down of the wall to expose the person, Pink, behind it. The use of orchestral instruments with the heavy rock riff at the end, not to mention to the wall being torn down at the end, allow this song to be an epic yet fitting end for this great album.

 

 

It then transitions to a quiet piece, with children singing along with a man narrating the lyrics like a poem. This last song, Outside the Wall, I find ingenious for one specific reason. If you restarted the album immediately after it ended, it seamlessly restarts, as if Roger Waters and the rest of Floyd intended for the story to be circular. I find this crazy, as I interpret this to mean that the Wall can be put right back up while it is so difficult to take it down. For context Roger Waters felt disconnected from the crowds when performing, as if there was a large wall separating the audience from him and his playing. This served as the context for the Wall album and makes the restart at the ending feel like a constant struggle to escape certain feelings like Waters was.

 

 

Anyway, it was a fun time being able to write this blog about the musical experiences that shaped my life and tastes along with other crazy songs I wanted to talk about.

 

Thanks for sticking around if you did, through all the niche facts and information stored within my crazy head. If you ever want any wild music suggestions, I am here to offer them. If you have cool music, I would love for it to be shared with me. Let me know. Music exchanges are wild.

 

– JF