Gripsweat - JETHRO TULL - THIS WAS 1st UK Press Eyeball ISLAND rough textured label 1968

JETHRO TULL - THIS WAS 1st UK Press Eyeball ISLAND rough textured label 1968

Sold Date: February 9, 2020
Start Date: February 2, 2020
Final Price: £67.00 (GBP)
Bid Count: 15
Seller Feedback: 763
Buyer Feedback: 112

JETHRO TULL -

THIS WAS

ISLAND

ILPS 9085

1st UK Press 1968

Machined matrices: ILPS+9085+A and ILPS+9085+B

Rough textured very earliest label.

Weight: 157 gr (one of the heaviest of the time)

I AM OFFERING ANOTHER HIGHLY SOUGHT AFTER PROG / PSYCH ROCK VINYL LP RARITY FROM MY COLLECTION OF SIMILAR ITEMS !! THIS IS PROBABLY ONE OF THE BEST BLUES/PROG ALBUMS EVER MADE!!!!!!HARD TO FIND AS A FIRST PRESS THESE DAYS. THIS IS THE "EYE" LABEL WHICH IS THE ONLY ORIGINAL FIRST PRESS ISSUE FOR THIS CLASSIC ALBUM. LATER LABELS ARE MORE COMMON LIKE THE "I" LABEL AND THE PALM TREE LABEL.

A fantastic ultra heavy vinyl and even despite a couple of ultra light hairlines this plays really well. The ultra high groove walls ensure the very best audio experience possible for this album. The vinyl retains its beautiful gloss and has probably not been played very much. The earliest ISLAND vinyl is the equivalent of a Rolls Royce in the motor industry; heavy, long lasting and nearly indestructible. Of course NO skips, jumps, crackle etc.

One of the first pop/rock records to feature a flute, (but Jefferson Airplane had been using them sporadically since spring 67, when this one is from October 68), this album is the start of a long and successful string of excellent albums, always daring if sometimes flawed. And as you might guess this debut is hardly perfect, but still a must for progheads. While strongly bluesy but with a very present folk influence, the album boasts an unusual four instrumental (a record for the group) and a real tightness for such a young group.

Get a load of Serenade To A Cuckoo (where the Tramp/Mad Flauter learned and lived on Jazzman Roland Kirk's stuff) and tell me this is not worth four stars at least. Listen to the guitar solo of Cat's Squirrel and then to War Pigs of Black Sabbath and you will hear what Iommi learned from J T as he replaced Abrahams for four weeks, as Mr Barre is still to come. Get a whiff of Beggar's farm and tell me that this better than anything from Minstrel (tension between the guitars and the superb flute interventions). Listen to the claghorn on Dharma For One, and every other track is a minor gem in its own right, especially the My Sunday Feeling and A Song For Jeffrey.

Mick Abrahams will leave JT after this one and create another fine outfit called Blodwyn Pig in the honour of the Tramp with whom he was having disagreements about musical directions. If you listen well to those two albums from BP, you will see that although bluesier, this should also be on this site, and one really wonders if it was musical differences they disagreed upon. Two very much underrated albums as well as this one from Tull.

Back to This Was, the remastered version comes with a few bonus tracks including a lovely jazzy instrumental One For John Gee (yet never available elsewhere), the Love Story (sounding a bit like Song For Jeffrey) and Christmas Song (the first Tull track to feature strings), both available as non-album singles and on the compilation Living In The Past. Great added value to this debut and making it even more essential to have. (review progarchives.com)

Vinyl: VG+. A smashing ultra heavy first press vinyl with only two shallow scuff/hairlines on side 2. These do not at all affect the fantastic audio. The groove walls on these first Island pressings are extremely high and it sounds!! Under an intense light there are some paper retraction traces visible. The earliest Island and Decca vinyls are the Rolls Royces of vinyl, fantastic built heavy quality. The audio is splendid and the stereo separation supreme!! This is the way this splendid debut classic Tull album should be listened to. Any re-issue or CD does not give you that same experience. The audio is far better than the appearance would even suggest. . Of course NO jumps, sticks or skips. Just some light static on the dead wax in between tracks.

Gatefold sleeve: EX. Hard to find this sleeve in such great condition. Fully laminated front an back. The opening is still super crisp. There are hardly any creases and there is only some minute storage wear on the extreme corners, the spine is 100% legible. The opening is very crisp.

The original inner sleeve which is polyl ined and blue printed is in EX condition.

Though there are rarely ever any problems with my items, I always try my very best to describe everything exactly! PLEASE REMEMBER to contact me FIRST, if you have any problems at all, before you leave feedback and star ratings, so I get a chance to turn any negative experience into a positive one! I can always happily sort anything out for you, if you let me know you have a problem! This way no one has to leave Negative/Neutral feedback - and we both walk away happy! Similarly with the amount of stars, anything less than a full 5 * rating is effectively detrimental to a seller's rating as lower ratings will incur higher Final Value Fees and lower priority in the bidlists eventually making it unattractive to list items on Ebay at all. I know of at least one major previous Ebay seller who has decided not to list via Ebay again. Please do NOT bid if you cannot give me at least 1 chance to sort everything out to your FULL satisfaction in the unlikely event of a problem. Thanks again!!

This an excellent investment opportunity!!! Any questions please ask me and I will try to answer soon.

JETHRO TULL - THIS WAS 1st UK Press Eyeball ISLAND rough textured label 1968

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