My mother and I don’t have very many things in common, and in fact for quite some time I avoided becoming a fan of Jethro Tull because she liked to play along with some of their songs on her flute. I probably don’t like them in the same way that she does, of course. I listen a lot of their stuff from the ’80s, stuff that most Tull fans turn their nose up at. (They especially despise the Under Wraps album, and I adore it.)

Because the song “Steel Monkey” played on the radio a bit when I was starting my music collection in a big way, I picked up Crest of a Knave, the Grammy winning “heavy metal” album. (There are layers of irony in the fact that so many people were incensed because “Metallica should have won it!” Now, of course, it’s fashionable to loathe Metallica… go figure.) During my later boxed-set craze I acquired the compact disc rendition of the 5-LP box, 20 Years of Jethro Tull, a 3 disc set that seems to have vanished in favor of a single-disc Highlights sampler rather quickly. The 20 Years material guided me through the back catalog, and while I did pick up a couple of their later releases I just don’t have the same fondness for their post-Rock Island work that I do for the “middle years” material. With that said, I do highly recommend the live A Little Light Music album from 1992. It’s worth the cost almost for the stage banter alone. I’m a sucker for that sort of thing sometimes.

I’m a weirdo, in case you’d forgotten.

At any rate, let’s play three of my very favorite Tull tunes. “Broadsword” comes from 1982’s excellent Broadsword and the Beast, “Heat” is off of the highly electronic Under Wraps, and “Part of the Machine” was the sole new piece of music on the 20 Years compilation. (It shows up on a recent reissue of Crest of a Knave as a bonus track, for what that’s worth.)

Next week we’ll come home for some fluffy American ’80s pop/rock music, the kind that Grandma… never used to make, come to think on it.

We’re starting off the back nine eight seven with something silly and not terribly meaningful. I like an occasional bit of Duran Duran, not because they’re the greatest band ever or because of some event in my youth or anything of that sort. No, they just happen to write some songs I like tapping my feet to on occasion.

So, for want of any other criteria for selecting songs, I went with (sort of) a theme. Enjoy “Planet Earth,” “Taste the Summer” and “Winter Marches On.”

We’ll be plowing ahead next week with one of the old masters of the trade. Stay tuned, won’t you?

Usually I take a slightly unusual path to finding and following a particular musical act. To the older “progressive” bands from the UK I’m a latecomer, and to the Japanese performers I’m a foreigner. In the case of Midnight Oil, however, I’m like a lot of American fans from the mid-80’s: I heard “Beds Are Burning” on the radio and became curious about this politically-motivated band from Australia. “The Dead Heart” hooked me even deeper, and giving their Diesel and Dust album a full listen made me a fan for life. It is still, arguably, their finest album. They’ve written fantastic songs before and since, but Diesel and Dust is entirely brilliant and timeless.

Naturally, then, I won’t be playing any songs therefrom. Call me perverse if you must.

What you’re getting instead are a track each from 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 (the very second music CD I purchased), Redneck Wonderland and Earth and Sun and Moon. I recommend working outward, chronologically, both directions from Diesel and Dust if you want to get “into” the Oils. A couple of steps forward and backward through their catalog will take you to two of the three albums listed above (barring EPs and live records, that is). Redneck Wonderland comes a bit later and takes getting used to, as it’s considerable harder in tone early on than much of the material from the previous few albums.

So without further ado, please enjoy “Short Memory,” “Seeing Is Believing” and “My Country.”

I think it’s time for more bouncy pop music next week, don’t you?

This week’s musical selection is one of those acts that most people think peaked and went away within a few short years back in the ’80s. While the case could be made that they’re not as commercially successful in the “hit records” sense nowadays, they’re still packing ’em in on the dance floors, not to mention collaborating with musical stars both new and old.

Coming up with an approach to the Pet Shop Boys mix stymied me for days. This evening I had almost settled on starting with the single version of “Left To My Own Devices” from 1988 when I realized that the song is twenty years old and counts among their early material. That’s when I decided to look at what albums came out when, and the solution finally presented itself as I noticed that Please, Bilingual and Fundamental are spaced at a ten year interval. (What? Bilingual is twelve years old now? That can’t be right…)

Please enjoy, in chronological order, the songs “Tonight Is Forever,” “Up Against It” and “Integral.”

That last track is a bit sociopolitical in lyrical tone, which leads rather neatly into our next musical selection. Join us for a trip Down Under next week…

This isn’t part of anything, nor is it meant to have meaning, nor does it flow very well in a musical fashion. I’m inflicting it upon the world anyway, at least the part of the world curious enough to give it a listen.

I was walking to the MAX station after work and The Church’s “Much Too Much” came on, followed by Genesis’ “Feeding the Fire,” which includes the lyrics, “Well I have seen you stung by poisonous flies / And you suffer much too much from their bites.” I realized that not only was that a nifty coincidence born of random song selections, but I happen to have a string of songs with a similar, connectable title scheme.

I give you, therefore, a mix which could be titled “Much Too Much Too Many Too Many Too Many Too Many People.” (I tacked the Pet Shop Boys track on because… well, the Genesis track is painfully ’70s. Trust me. I’d rather end on a high note than leave the title theme unbroken.)

Don’t worry. The Project entry is in the works even as I take a break to type this up…

Jon Crosby seems to be a guy who just likes noodling around musically. I’m not too sure about the direction he’s going lately, but I like a lot of the material he released under the guise of VAST. Please enjoy a song with the name “Song Without A Name,” a song I sort of panned in my review back when Nude came out named “Don’t Take Your Love Away,” and the song which got me hooked on VAST back when I was experimenting with MP3 downloading way back in the day named “Touched.”

We’re about one third of the way through the project, my friends. Our next outing will once again send us back to the UK for a date with one of the most successful pop duos around.