The Crest Of A Knave Tour: photograph taken during the concert at the Hempstead Nassau Coliseum, NY, November 13 1987.
By kind permission of © Bruce Mironov

 

Annotations

Said She Was a Dancer

• This is possibly a song about illusions people (want to) make about each other and themselves, or about projected feelings, wishes, dreams.
  Two people from different sides of the Iron Curtain ("eastern steel - western gold") meet and make their own image out of the other by way of wishful thinking: "Well maybe you're dancer, and maybe I'm the King of Old Siam", in other words: "you might be a dancer to me and I might be the King of Old Siam to you. We don't know each other well enough to contradict it, but if we want to believe it, why not? ".... best to let the illusion roll" and ".... but if your dream is good, why not share it when the nights are cold?".

• The image of "King of Old Siam" refers to Thailand. Ever since Thailand had been discovered by Europeans in the16th century, it had been considered a mysterious, fairy-like country, due to its large amount of temples, the wealth of its kings and a (Buddhist) culture that was considered awkward in the eyes of the Europeans in those days. Within the context of this song I presume, that the narrator would like to be considered as a man of wealth and mystery, evoking the lady's interest. She however keeps it all very formal, revealing nothing but being a dancer and any attempt to overcome this distance is prevented.
  * Jan Voorbij
  
  

Dogs In The Midwinter

• This dark, brooding and pessimistic song with its threatening atmoshere is a metaphore for Western society in the eighties, suffering from the economic depression. In the "Broadsword" songs Anderson portrayed how this economical crisis affects us all. Ever since "Aqualung" album this critique in one way or another has been popping up from time to time. Here he brings it up once again, as if it were a warning. We are the "Dogs In the Midwinter" with our eyes on each other ("You look around and every face you see: dogs in the midwinter"), starving, suffering from the cold (disintegration of communities, individualism?), greedy (selfishness?), unpredictable (opportunism?) and therefore: dangerous. Homo homini lupus est - as a Roman writer once stated.

• There is an implicit reference to the Cold War threat in the lines:
  "And it's hard to find true equilibrium
  when you're looking at each other down the muzzle of a gun. Dogs in the midwinter. Dogs in the midwinter".
  * Jan Voorbij
  
  

The Crest Of A Knave Tour: photograph taken during the concert at the Hempstead Nassau Coliseum, NY, November 13 1987.
By kind permission of © Bruce Mironov

Budapest

• In the summer of 1986, Jethro Tull did a show in Budapest ("We had to cozzy up in the old gymnasium ...
  dusting off the mandolins and checking on the gear"). The next day, while drinking his morning coffee, Ian watched a big athletic waitress, serving sandwiches in a hotel in Budapest, who inspired him to write this song. (2, p.22)

• "Feel it blowing from the sidefills ...": Sidefills are a set of speakers on both sides of the stage used to monitor a band's performance. (2, p.387)
  * Jan Voorbij

• Checked the Hungarian dictionaries for the translation "middle distance runner" and there is a word very similar to it which means "middle-of-the-roader" from an issue or political standpoint. I can't put the Hungarian words into the computer because of the dots and accent marks which go over the various Hungarian letters. Maybe Ian meant it in the context of 'extremely average' or similar? Egesegedre (or however you spell it!).
  * Norman Griffiths in Riga, Latvia (SCC vol. 9 nr.4, January 1998)

• During the Soviet Bloc era, one way in which the Soviet countries got positive publicity was thought athletics. In addition to somewhat obscure sports (e.g. weightlifting, greco-roman wrestling, rhythmic gymnastics, etc), as well as better known ones (ice hockey, gymnastics, etc.),the countries put all students in school through all sorts of athletic tests. One area where the slavic and baltic countries excelled was track and field. In particular, these countries produced middle distance runners (at 200m, 400m, 800, or the mile). Most of the current world records in these events are held by women from Bulgaria, Russia, etc. So maybe Ian was really talking about a middle distance runner. Such a person (male or female) would be svelte and lanky. And probably pretty nice to the eyes. Your budding track & field official Mikers making up the words, but when Joe was pronouncing the two words for "middle-distance runner" and "middle-of-the-roader" they sounded extremely similar.
  * M. Freese (SCC vol. 9 nr. 8, January 1998), with additional comments by Pelerin.
  
  

Mountain Men

• The lines "where these mountain men are kings and the sound of the piper counts for everything" indicate that the narrator in this song is referring to Scotland. He calls these men "kings" in their own realm, as he considers them to be proud, independent and self-assured of which the sound of the bag-pipe gives evidence. The atmosphere is portrayed in the first stanza and comes to a sudden end like waking up from a dream: ".... as the ship moves sadly from the pier (...) ... two hundred brave souls share the farewell tear".

• Now the perspective of the narrator changes: he had to leave his beloved country and filled with homesickness he dreams of getting back: "Lay down and let the slow tide wash me back to the land where I came from", which implicitly raises the question why he left in the first place. The answer is given in the lines: "Did my tour, did my duty. I did all they asked of me" (and) "Long generations from the Isles sent to tread the foreign miles where the spiral ages meet". This is referring to all British soldiers who in the past centuries were sent abroad to fight in wars far from home. This theme occurred earlier in the songs "Queen And Country" and "Ladies" from the "Warchild" album and there are related lines in the first part of "Thick As A Brick" (compare e.g. " ... the mercenary's creed","the young men of the household have all gone into service and are not to be expected for a year..." etc.).

• "Died in the trenches and at El Alamein"; the trenches refer to the First World War, where thousands of soldiers died in the trenches in France and Belgium. El Alamein refers to the battle of El Alamein that took place between June 30 and November 3 1942. This Egyptian coastal city, west of Alexandria, was part of the last ditch defensive line of the Allied, mainly British soldiers. They scarcely withstood general Rommel's Afrika Korps' attempts to break these lines thus preventing them to occupy the vital port and city of Alexandria.

• ".... died in the Falklands on T.V.": In 1982 the Falkland war took place between Argentina - who had occupied the Falkland Islands claiming the "Islas Malvinas" as their territory - and Great Britain. Visit this site for detailed information on the Falkland war.
  * Jan Voorbij
  
  

The Crest Of A Knave Tour: photograph taken during the concert at the Hempstead Nassau Coliseum, NY, November 13 1987.
By kind permission of © Bruce Mironov

The Waking Edge

• Like the song "Spiral" of the recent : J-Tull Dot Com" album, this one is about the waking-up process in which we spiral out of the dream state into reality wondering which is the dream and what is reality: "... the edge of half dream glowing". There is a description of a 'dreamscape' wherein our narrator dwells, a dream about being with a loved one that is dearly missed:
  "....I felt her in my dream last night.
  Strange how the sheets are warm beside me."
  and from which he has to leave reluctantly as his sleep fades away:
  "Did I try to hold it down?
  Freeze on the picture, hang sharp on the sound.
  Catch the waking edge another time."
  in vain trying to hold on to the dream by re-living it:
  "Private movie showing in my head....
  what button di I press for re-run?
  And how do I catch the waking edge?
  The edge of a dream about someone."
  * Jan Voorbij
  
  

Raising Steam

• Due to its imagery and subject, this song evokes associations with the on-the-road songs by white American folksters like Woody Guthrie and the many songs about rambling and hoboing by the black country blues singers: feeling locked up in one's environment, the urge to look for new possibilities:
  "Thin vein creeping; hot blood flow ...
  spill a little where the new towns grow.
  I got my whole life hanging in a sack,
  heading out into that wide world wide."
  (compare the equivalent in so many blues songs: "traveling light"), the inevitability of leaving a family behind:
  "Left a lady with a heart
  all in pieces come apart raising steam."
  and the almost 'mystical' role of the train, being the key to freedom: "roll those tracks out".

• Note the projection of human qualities on the locomotive:
  "You got your locomotive sitting on your track
  and I don't care which way I ride" (...)
  "That engine up front must
  have a big heart for the both of us"
  and the sexual innuendo in the last stanza:
  "Let me be your engineer ...
  have you smiling ear to ear raising steam.
  And will you tell me how it feels
  when you're up and rolling on your driving wheels?" (...)
  "I'll be your locomotive blowing off its stack".

• The expression "raising steam" might in this context mean: gathering one's strength and courage to start a new and probably far from easy life.

• Whereas American blues and folk singers have portrayed working class people travelling the country new opportunities, Anderson here does probably the same, but now it's all about working class people in economically undeveloped parts of England migrating to the cities looking for work during the Thatcher era. I think these lyrics show how he somewhere down the line was influenced by the lyrical content of American country blues. However, here he applies the imagery to the situation in the UK.
  * Jan Voorbij
  
  

Sources:
1. Greg Russo: Flying Colours, The Jethro Tull Reference Manual (Floral Park, N.Y., 2000)
2. Karl Schramm (ed.), Gerard J. Burns: Jethro Tull Songbook (Heidelberg, Germany, 1997)
3. Giles Oakley: The Devil's Music, A History Of The Blues (London, UK, 1976).