When Lee Abrams of Rock Radio approached lead vocalist of Ian Anderson recently about doing a live recording of "Aqualung" as part of an XM Radio series, he wasn't excited about doing the project "But the notion of re-recording the Aqualung album began to exert its charm," he said, "especially since some of the songs had never been performed since the days when they were recorded back in January 1971. And, of course, the current band line-up apart from Martin and me, were babes-in-arms; or even more embryonic in the case of bassist, Jon Noyce, when the original was made. And to do this in front of a small invited audience of fans picked from the replies to our web-site invitation gave an added impetus."

Meeting at the high-tech XM Radio complex in Washington to record, "A quick sound check in the performance studio was effected before ushering in the audience of some 40-odd folks who were to be subjected to an hour of very familiar but close-up-in-your-face music," remembers Anderson, "performed straight through with just two retakes - one when Martin had a technical glitch with a guitar lead in 'Slipstream' and another when Andrew Giddings mysteriously stumbled over the piano intro to 'Locomotive Breath', which he must have played more than a thousand times by then. Probably had something to do with the proximity of the audience, the strength of the XM coffee and the horrible realization that he wasn't getting paid for the job."
And all the while drummer Doane Perry was "bashing the bongos in a specially soundproofed drum booth but with the doors left partly open so we could hear him playing acoustically and see him, more or less, through the gap. The rest of us played through a small PA system to feed some semblance of audio balance to the assembled family gathering. Like being in your living room, really, but with the record player cranked up to 11."

The line-up this time around is Ian Anderson on Flute, vocals, acoustic guitar; Martin Barre on Electric guitar; Doane Perry on Drums and percussion; Andrew Giddings on Piano, Organ and keyboards and Jonathan Noyce on Bass guitar.

This review is available in book format (hardcover and paperback) in Music Street Journal: 2006 Volume 3 at lulu.com/strangesound.