Jon Anderson and Ian Anderson's respective websites

Jon Anderson or Ian Anderson? Ian Anderson or Jon Anderson? Sometimes you need an aging British prog rocker, and it's hard to decide between Yes' winsome troubadour and Jethro Tull's intense, codpiece-sporting bard. You like the whole stalwart flautist thing, true. You even like the word flautist. But there's something about that song about chess and all good people turning their heads each day.

The place to turn, then, is the Web.

Both J. Anderson and I. Anderson have made their presences felt on the Internet, Jon through his own site jonanderson.com and Ian through Jethro Tull's site, j-tull.com. By comparing the two in six different areas, it's possible to get a sense of what makes these musicians so different and yet both so beloved by Ren Faire attendees everywhere.

But Ian is "the crowned exponent of the popular and rock genres of flute playing." The biography goes on to note that a "pretender to the throne has yet to step forward," which may or may not be a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment that the rock genre of flute playing has yet to catch on to the degree that he may have anticipated.

Writings. Both provide readers with four carefully selected bits of prose — Jon short stories, Ian essays. You'd expect the short story to be the less autobiographical form, but Jon artfully makes it his own. "It was his friend across the valley playing his favourite band, YES's new album, seven notes, seven words, seven harmonies, what was this song?"

Ian's essays run a bit more toward the news-you-can-use variety. "Ian witters on about cats," runs the headline for one, and that is indeed what we get — a windy but sober-minded piece on the pros and cons of captive breeding of wildcats, and the dangers of the fur trade. Another provides helpful first-hand information about deep-vein thrombosis, accompanied by a photo of Ian in beige support stockings, fixing his unyielding gaze on one and all.

Love. Jon can pretty safely be characterized as in favor of love. "...LOVE...IS...SO...POWERFUL..." he writes in a "Notes from a Touring Nutcase" journal entry, which ends, "Enjoy each day, and give love each day eh'? So much love. Much love, Jon and Janeee." And from one of his stories: "For the song is a universal one, the one we call God, the one we call 'LOVE', 'LOVE', 'LOVE.'

Ian seems, if not outright hostile to love, far more restrained. He cites a "love" for "clarity, scientific convention and misplaced humour in any order of preference." He mentions the love of his wife only once, in lower case.

Photoshop filters. Jon's picture is rendered in delicate Conte Crayon, and the signature that appears after each of his comments makes use of Emboss, as does the mystical symbol that makes up the background of many of the pages. A picture of Jon in the News section seems to get its "oil painting" look from Oil Painting, and Blur is in use throughout the site.

J-tull.com is more sparing, employing only a Gradient.

Spinal Tap references. Spinal Tap looms like a sarsen stone monolith over concept-album enthusiasts like Jon and Ian. Should they deny its existence, or tackle it head-on? Both of them choose the latter route, making passing references to the too-close-to-home mockumentary.

Jon cites Spinal Tap in relation to his burgeoning "Owner of a Lonely Heart"-era stardom. "I felt a bit out of the reality of it all, I'd seen Spinal Tap!" he writes. To show that this reference isn't of the obligatory, okay-we-get-it variety, he makes mention of it again just one bio-frame later. "It was us, and every band that ever was!"

Ian's mention comes in the Jethro Tull press kit's Instant Interview, where he predicts a postmortem "ascent to heaven, probably on a stairway flanked by Page, Plant and all the members of Spinal Tap."

Self-deprecation. These guys are adored by fans around the world, playing to cavernous arenas everywhere. They should be able to laugh at themselves a bit. Unfortunately, Jon's Spinal Tap references are about as close as he gets, although he does point out that the structure in which he meditates backstage is not "an actual tipi, it was a tent I got at Sears for a hundred and fifty bucks."

Ian is full of self-effacing wit. He gently mocks his old touring costumes ("the tights and codpiece," he says, "have long since been consigned to some forgotten bottom drawer") and his band's name (the historical figure he'd most like to meet is "the original Jethro Tull, so I could try to persuade him to change his name.") He even describes the experience of urinating without realizing he could be seen by an East German audience.

This is all very well, you think, but how do I actually choose? Well, that all depends on what you're looking for. Ian can be thought of as your typical middle-aged Unix sysadmin with a fastidiously trimmed beard and a laconic, exacting manner, who can be drawn out in conversation to show an oddly vulnerable side. Jon, on the other hand, is more like...okay, I give up. It is the sheerest folly to try to relate a man who tosses off remarks like "Why don't we develop (the Interdimensional Reality Machine) and make it into a glass one with workings on the inner spheres, and make sure the spheres are numerogically right" to anything else I've ever encountered in this life.

But if it is at all hard to decide between these two giants, it's because of the way they tower over prog rock. Like mountains in and around a lake, they come out of the sky, and they stand there.

— Julia Lipman (julia@flakmag.com)