For almost 40 years Jethro Tull have retained a loyal fanbase with their quirky, thoughtful and melodic driving rock. To get a choice overview of the body of their work down the years I suggest you buy their live double album, Bursting Out, first.

It features some of their finest numbers including Jack In The Green, Songs From The Wood, Thick As A Brick, Too Old To Rock And Roll Too Young To Die, Minstrel In The Gallery, Aqualung and Conundrum. This album is a distillation of the very best songs from their most successful live gigs of their European tour in 1978.

Since then the line up has changed quite a few times but flute-playing, singing troubador Ian Anderson is still fronting Tull and still sounds as bizarre as the night I saw him playing his flute while standing on one leg - the other leg snaked around the mike stand - in a North East nightclub back in my late youth. Stormwatch was the last album to feature bassist John Glascock who died a few weeks after its release.

It is a dark and brooding reflection of Britain living through the oil and energy crisis and features North Sea Oil and Dark Ages. A is the first Tull album not to include Anderson's acoustic guitar skills and is a more balanced, stripped-down hard folk-rock offering. It showcases Protect And Survive plus the awesome Black Sunday. But Breaking Out is the re-release to catch Tull at their best.

Updated: 08:36 Thursday, March 11, 2004