No. 904 – Songs from the Wood

Performer: Jethro Tull

Songwriter: Ian Anderson

Original Release: Songs from the Wood

Year: 1977

Definitive Version: None

As I’ve said before, I’m not on Facebook (and won’t be if I can help it) or Twitter. I just got my first smartphone last month, but if you think I’m not exactly the most tech-forward person, you should see Laurie.

When we met, Laurie didn’t have a cellphone, which is crazy for a professional actress. She had a notebook computer, but it stayed in its carrying case at all times. She had no Internet service. She had a CD player … that was broken. The latest album she had in her voluminous collection of tapes was from 1994 or thereabouts.

I wouldn’t classify her as being behind the times, however. Laurie knows far more about current music than I do. Rather, I’d say Laurie isn’t interested in spending money to further complicate her life with stuff. She likes what she likes and keeps it around rather than create a constant churn of buying and trashing just to have the latest thing. It could be worse; she could be like me. I spend money on new stuff but without ever purging the old. You do that long enough, and you end up throwing away money on storage, like I did for years in Columbus and—some would argue, not entirely incorrectly—now.

What does any of this have to do with Jethro Tull? Well, Laurie loves to make brunch on the weekends. (Coincidentally, I love to eat brunch on the weekends, so it’s a good match.) And when she cooks, she likes to have music on. When I moved to Chicago, it would always be tapes.

That continued when we moved to our new place in 2007, and that year she was in the midst of a major Tull jones, so Songs from the Wood was in heavy rotation in the late morning. I’d be in the office while she cooked, and the scent of sausage or muffins would waft through the room as Ian Anderson’s dancing flute conjured folky visions of bygone knights and flower-bedecked maidens.

A few years ago, we got a stereo that plays MP3 thumb drives, and we got XM Radio. It’s far more cutting edge, and, for the most part, the tapes have been kept on the shelf. I don’t know that we’re the better for it.