01	Giant						06:24
	02	Funny Ways						04:23
	03	Alucard						06:01
	04	Isn't it Quiet and Cold?						03:53
	05	Nothing At All						09:08
	06	Why Not?						05:31
	07	The Queen						01:40

About the Album
Gentle Giant's self-titled first album was an impressive and unique debut that combined rock, blues, classical, and 1960's British soul. Although the recording quality is sub-par, the music transcends the medium and presents the listener with a variety of musical styles.
"A Tall Tale", from the original liner notes, is a story about the band and the giant.

Musicians
In his namesake, Gentle Giant are individually:

Gary Green - lead guitar, 12 string guitar

Kerry Minnear - keyboard, some bass, cello, lead vocals, backing vocals, some tuned percussion

Derek Shulman - lead vocals, backing vocals, some bass

Phil Shulman - sax, trumpet, recorder, lead vocals, backing vocals

Ray Shulman - most bass, violin, some guitar, percussion, backing vocals

Martin Smith - drums, percussion

Other musicians include:


Paul Cosh (tenor horn) on Giant
Claire Deniz (cello) on Isn't It Quiet And Cold
Roy Baker - Recording Engineerist on all titles
George Underwood - Cover Artiste Extraordinaire
Tony Visconti - Producer



Gentle Giant
Listen to the little synthesizer riffs that occur between songs. They are note-for-note quotes from the guitar part on track 1, Giant, just after the line "The birth of a realization...." The rhythm has been modified, however. (Thanks to Johan Bryntesson.)

The title Alucard is "Dracula" spelled backwards. (Thanks to Chad Bacho.) To match this, the vocals are processed through a reverse reverb. To accomplish this, Gentle Giant most likely sung the vocals onto tape, reversed them, played them through a reverb onto another tape, and reversed the tape again. The effect is that the reverb comes before the words and backwards.

At the very end of Isn't It Quiet And Cold?, after the instruments fade, a spacy whisper says the word "alone," recapping the lyrical theme of the song. It's very quiet and sounds like wind. (Thanks to Dave Didur.)

During the drum solo in Nothing At All, Kerry plays a quote from "Liebestraum No. 3" by Liszt on the piano. It begins around 5:48 and veers off into "jazzy cascades" at around 6:25. (Thanks to Greg Hajic and Adrian Doveral for identifying the piece.)

A guitar part in Why Not sounds distinctly like the Jewish song "Hava Nagila," but according to Derek Shulman, "I think this was purely a coincidence."

The blues shuffle that closes Why Not is very similar to the earlier one in Hometown Special. (Thanks to Eddie Scott.)

A listener reports a similarity between Why Not and Leonard Bernstein's Divertimento for Orchestra, "Sennets and Tuckets." (Thanks to Graham Shrives.)














Other Bands That Have Recorded or Played Gentle Giant Music

Individual Artists
Camera Quintet

On their album "Kamera in Rock," Camera Quintet plays classical ensemble versions of Cogs in Cogs and Acquiring The Taste. (Thanks to Guido Benigni.)
The Jack Chesterfield Band

Circle Square

They did a remix of Proclamation which you can hear at www.thetragictheory.com.
Dead Dino Storage

FSB (Formation Studio Balkanton)

This Bulgarian band covers three (or four) tunes on their album "Non Stop." The songs are The Power and the Glory (titled "Power and the Glory"), a medley of Free Hand and Time To Kill (titled "Free Hands"), and I Lost My Head (titled "Reflections"). All are instrumentals, with occasional background vocal parts.
Reportedly, most if not all of the pieces on this album are covers. There is also material from Patrick Moraz for example.

Fennesz / O'Rourke / Rehberg

This trio of Christian Fennesz, Jim O'Rourke and Peter Rehberg reused the xylophone solo from "Knots" on their album The Magic Sound of Fenn O'Berg, in the track "shinjuku baby pt1." Listen to the RealAudio recording at about 2:30. (Thanks to Svante Eriksson!)
Flower Kings

In concert, this progressive rock band has played a cover version of Spooky Boogie.
Steve Hahn

Krokus?!?

Lootpack

Lootpack used music from Proclamation in their rap song "Likwit Fusion." (Big thanks to Yehuda Kotton for tracking down this mystery!)
Esther Ofarim

This Israeli recording artist covers Aspirations on the double-CD version of her album "Esther Ofarim" (ACUM 64001). The single-CD version does not contain this song. It is titled "Aspiration."
Prism

Prism does a cover of Plain Truth on their self-titled CD. They were produced by Derek Shulman and also opened for Gentle Giant.
Rat Race Choir

A local band from the New York area, they played "Two Weeks in Spain," "Just The Same," and "Free Hand" in concert. I've heard wild praise from several Gentle Giant fans about these performances.
Rockin' Revd

Rockin' Revd (Paul Moore) recorded a wacky version of Betcha Thought We Couldn't Do It (MP3)
Rodan

A cover band from Buffalo, NY that played Gentle Giant and Genesis songs in the 1970s or 1980s. The drummer, Ted Rinhart (sp?), went on to play with Spirogyra before they made it big. (Thanks to "bodean.")
The Spotnicks

"The Spotnicks did a version of Spooky Boogie: same arrangement, but a little bit shorter, on their 20th anniversary album from 1980 (Polydor D 2344 156). They must also have played this song in concert because I heard it on the radio." (Thanks to Joachim Wunschick.)
Still

Twiztid

Twiztid uses music from Spooky Boogie as the background for their song "Diem***af***adie!" (Thanks to Derek Shulman for this item.)















Gentle Giant Trivia

Here are miscellaneous tidbits of information about Gentle Giant that didn't seem to fit elsewhere on the site. Enjoy!

See also cool stuff in Gentle Giant's music.

Interesting Uses of GG's Music

Acquiring The Taste was used as background music for a Christmas television cartoon: "A Cosmic Christmas," produced by Nelvana of Canada. It's about about a poor little boy and three wise men who gave his family every Christmas wish. (Big thanks to Mat Sandford and William E. Hack for providing enough clues to identify the cartoon definitively!)

Weekend Cowboy was used as the outtro (final music) of a radio program, "Off the Hook." Nick Polak reports: "it's the radio show of the folks who publish 2600, The Hacker Quarterly (the guys who published the DeCSS code for decrypting DVD's and are currently in appeals court on this). Fascinating and informative show, and full of (unintentionally) funny material, due to the time which has passed and the incredibly rapid growth of the Internet since 1990. Anyway -- the archived program of 20 November 1992 ends with an outro of Weekend Cowboy! The song appears about 55 minutes into the program.

Spooky Boogie was used by the National Football League (NFL) during the 1993 football season as the music for the "bloopers" portion of its in-studio televised half-time programs. It was also played during the warmups for the 1979 or 1980 World Series. (Thanks to Tal Cohen and Christopher Leo King.)

A Cry For Everyone has reportedly been used as Muzak! Mark Bosma writes: "Recently, at work, on our lovely, easy listening pop Muzak (with lyrics) there has been a song playing by an artist that nobody in the building seems to recognize. The reason I bring this up that during one of the songs (acoustic interludes) the music is exactly the same as GG's A CRY FOR EVERYONE, from Octopus. I kid you not. On the Columbia CD release the portion that is replayed begins at approx. :35 until :60. First time I've ever heard GG in another format. This artist robbed it from GG. I'm telling ya."

Giant Tracks was played as preconcert music for a Daevid Allen and Roy Harper concert at The Bottom of the Hill, San Francisco, California. (Thanks to Biffy the Elephant Shrew.)
Chance Relationships
Billy Sherwood of Yes is reportedly a big fan of Gentle Giant. In fact, Derek Shulman was the guy who introduced Billy to Chris Squire. (Thanks to Paul Secord of Yesworld.)

In the novel Whatever Love Is by UK TV comedian David Baddiel, one of the main characters is a guitarist from a once-nearly-successful band. In a fit of passion he uses a Gretsch guitar to smash open a wooden crate:
"...he was holding the neck of the beautiful guitar; the body had come off and was stuck in the top of the crate, its upper curves still visible above the fractured panel. It looked like the cover of a 1970s album, designed by Hipgnosis for Yes or Gentle Giant or someone, an image of a guitar rising up from burial alive."
Might this be the only mention of Gentle Giant in English literature? (Thanks to Paul Moore.)


"I can recall one of Madonna's co-writers listing GG as a major influence in a Sounds [Magazine] interview." (Thanks to Bill Lavery.) This was probably Patrick Leonard, who also worked with Kevin Gilbert in Toy Matinee. (Thanks to Joe Baca.)

Martin Rushant, responsible for the coinspin and laugh at the beginning of The Boys In The Band, went on to produce the 1980s synth-pop band, The Human League. (Peter Corney)

Terry Shulman, another brother of Derek, Ray, and Phil, is an accomplished musician and artist. Born between Ray and Derek, Terry has written several books of poetry. According to a former neighbor, Terry is "a bit of a wildman," and well-known in the Portsmouth art scene.

On "Boheme," the debut album from German prog band Iskander, there is a track called "eltneg tnaig." (Read the title backwards.) The music tries to emulate Gentle Giant, at least in spots.

Ian Crichton, guitarist for Saga, is a major Gentle Giant fan. In fact, on Saga's eighth album, Beginners guide to Throwing Shapes, they did a tune called "Giant" that is about the band.

Elton John and Dudley Moore have played with Simon Dupree and the Big Sound.

Ozzie Ozbourne reportedly told this anecdote:
"We have no option but to listen to Tool morning, noon and f**kin' night, it's Tool this, Tool that! You know, it's really funny. The other night my son said to me, "I went to see Tool last night, Dad, and saw this great band who opened for them, a band called King Crimson." I said, "Oh yeah, I've heard of them." I was like, if you like King Crimson, you probably want to listen to Yes, then you might want to listen to a band called Gentle Giant. He says, "Really?" And he comes back to me the next day and he says, "I got a chance to listen to the Gentle Giant album. It's fucking great music. How did you know about them?" Oh, I've only been around for fucking 35 years. "

At the end of his novel Le pere de nos peres, French author Bernard Werber lists the music he listened to during his writing: Erik Satie, Roger Waters, Dvorak, and Gentle Giant's "Edge of Twilight." (Thanks to Stephane Sladek.)
Found Objects
"I recently visited Baltimore, Maryland, USA. There I had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. Afterwards I checked out all the memorabilia on the walls: one of Louis Armstrong's trumpets, George Harrison's "I am the walrus" guitar, etc. - and a bass drum with the words "Gentle Giant" painted on it, and a little sign on the wall indicating that it actually belonged to the band. Can this be true? I couldn't believe my eyes! This was the nearest I have ever been to GG: when they split up I was only 10 years old..." (Claus Krebs)
Followup: "Several years ago a GG bass drum was auctioned off by one of the big London auction houses. In one of my "Record Collector" magazines I should still have a photo of it. I remember that it didn't sell for the highest amount imagineable. It might well be this bass drum which ended up at the Hard Rock." (Carsten the Krautmeister)


There's a children's book called Gentle Giant Octopus by Karen Wallace and Mike Bostock (ISBN 076360318X). From the cover, I suspect there's a Gentle Giant connection. I tried contacting the authors through their publisher but received no response.
Artwork
Roger Dean is selling the original artwork to Octopus for a mere $150,000.

George Underwood, creator of the "giant's head" logo for Gentle Giant, also designed several other album covers that were never used. For Acquiring The Taste, his design was the Giant's tongue licking a pearl in an oyster shell. It was rejected by the band as being too similar to "In the Court of the Crimson King." For Octopus, his design was an octopus sitting in the giant's hands with the tentacles coming through between the fingers. The giant's face is not visible, only the beard. Unfortunately, George had to leave the UK to travel to the USA on short notice, and left the art to be delivered with a trusted friend... who screwed up. (Thanks to Dave Lederman, confirmed by John Weathers.)

An alternative cover was used for the USA release of Three Friends. It was a copy of the first album's cover, even including the band members' pictures. One problem: the two albums had different drummers. Yes, Martin Smith's picture is on the back cover instead of Malcolm Mortimore's.
Miscellaneous
On the vinyl album In A Glass House, the word "Ray's" is inscribed on side one. (Peter Corney)

On the vinyl Civilian album, Kerry's last name is misspelled "Minear." (Peter Corney)













Gentle Giant


Gentle Giant (1970)
Acquiring the Taste (1971)
Three Friends (1972)
Octopus (1973)
In a Glass House (1973)
The Power & the Glory (1974)
Free Hand (1975)
Interview (1976)
Playing the Fool (Live 1976)
The Missing Piece (1977)
Giant for a Day (1978)
Civilian (1980)
In Concert BBC Radio One (Live, Recorded 1978, Released 1994)
King Biscuit Flower Hour (Live, Recorded 1975, Released 1998)
Out of the Fire (Live, Recorded 1973, 1978, Released 1998)
Live in Rome 1974 (2000)

Compilations/Other Recordings
The Last Steps (1996)
Out of the Woods (1996)
Under Construction (1997)
The Essential Gentle Giant (1998)
On Reflection: An Anthology (2000)
Totally Out of the Woods (2000)

Country of origin: England
Established: 1969
Styles: Symphonic



Biography

Gentle Giant were one of the defining groups of the progressive rock era. Although certainly not in the same league of commercial success, or cultural renown, as bands like Genesis, Yes, King Crimson or ELP, Gentle Giant were a staple band within the "second tier" English progressive rock groups, along with bands like Camel and Van der Graaf Generator, and were in fact hugely influential in their own right. Gentle Giant were also, quite possibly, the most complex and musically ambitious band of the era, blending every possible style from jazz, rock, folk to medieval music into a unique amalgamation delivered with blinding musical dexterity and a dumbfounding array of instruments.

The initial core of the band were the brothers Shulman, Derek, Ray and Phil, who played in an R&B group called Simon Dupree & the Big Sound. Upon coming in contact with keyboardist Kerry Minnear and guitarist Gary Green, the classic GG lineup began to come together. There first two albums, 1970's Gentle Giant and 1971's Acquiring the Taste illustrating at the growing potential of the band, and their ambitious, daring juxtapositions of electric rock, classical and folk music. 1972's Three Friends proved to be a pivotal album for the band, being their first American release. Momentum had been building, and 1973's Octopus was arguably their best album yet, and hit at a time when the "progressive rock" genre had coalesced and the market was at its peak. However, after the Octopus tour Phil Shulman would depart. this momentum would be crushed when Columbia refused to release the next album In a Glass House in the U.S., claiming it to be overly uncommercial. 1974's Power & the Glory was certainly their most uncompromising, anti-commerical record yet, and effectively continued the band's extraordinary string of artistic, if not commercial, achievement. The 1976 album, Free Hand, may have been an attempt to breakthrough somewhat, though thankfully coming close to compromising the band's vision in the least. In fact, Free Hand could be argued as being one of the most successful attempts of mixing a sense of accessibility without dumbing down the complexity. Surprisingly, Gentle Giant would follow this with the heavily experimental Interview, an album which would, in effect close Gentle Giant's streak of excellence. This portion of the band's career would see a fittingly grand conclusion on the live Playing the Fool album.

Beginning in 1977, Gentle Giant apparently undertook a serious attempt to crack the commercial market. The Missing Piece, Giant for a Day, and Civilian represented a sustained, and certainly purposeful effort towards this end, leaving behind the majority of their established fan base in the process. After the albums proved unsuccessful, Gentle Giant called it quits in 1980, yet not without leaving behind an enduring, and formidable, legacy. Virtually all the albums from Acquiring the Taste through Playing the Fool are essential progressive rock releases (with the possible exception of Interview), standing as a testament to the bands ingenuity, talent and consistent reinvention. One of the masters for sure.

Ray Shulman would go on to become a producer, responsible for hits from bands like the Sugarcubes and the Sundays. Derek Shulman, in particular, would have a very successful career in music, as head of Warner Brother's ATCO subsidiary, he was responsible for the singings of bands like AC/DC, Bad Company and Pantera. Derek is now CEO and President of the renowned Roadrunner Records label, which houses bands like Type O Negative, Machine Head and Fear Factory. - Greg Northrup [October 2001]

Gentle Giant is a unique and fascinating band. By the time they "abandoned all preconceived thoughts on blatant commercialism" on their second album Acquiring the Taste in 1971, the idea of a classical/rock fusion was not completely new -- the style that would later come to be called "symphonic prog" had been around since sometime around 1969. Gentle Giant was different though; while Yes and ELP took their classical influences primarily from the 18th and 19th centuries, Gentle Giant embraced the Renaissance and the 20th century, as well as jazz and British folk music. They also tended to shy away from the exaggerated dramatic gestures of their peers, and moved towards a clearer, more chamber-oriented texture starting with 1973's Octopus. As such, they don't tend to sound particularly "symphonic"; the best term I've heard for their style of music is "chamber symph."

Gentle Giant's career fits approximately into three categories. From their self-titled debut through Three Friends, their symphonic roots are more clearly visible in their thicker textures and occasional grand gestures. They are still in the process of exploring their eclectic influences, and they haven't quite synthesized them into a cohesive whole, which leads to some wonderfully abrupt stylistic shifts. Octopus is a transitional work, with a more contrapuntal texture and a better synthesis of styles, but marred by a showy, pretentious attitude on a few tracks, as well as some amazingly cheesy synths and the ridiculously melodramatic "Think of Me With Kindness." The "classic" albums, from In a Glass House through Interview, show a band that has largely abandoned the pretensions of symphonic prog, a group of five virtuosic musicians who played an average of six instruments each, a band that wasn't afraid of extreme complexity and had the compositional talent to make it catchy and accessible. Gentle Giant's music of this period, in fact, may be some of the most structurally clear complex music ever recorded. Then, the last three albums show the band's attempt to break into the commercial market. To be honest, as of this writing I haven't heard any of these albums, so I won't try to comment on their style or quality. - Alex Temple [October 2001]


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Gentle Giant (1970)

This is a respectable debut album from a band that would eventually become one of the world's foremost progressive rock titans. On the whole, the album is fairly relaxed, based in blues and folk traditions, while featuring no shortage of nice, chunky guitar riffs. There are hints of the medieval feel that would later come to be a major part of the group's sound. Highlights here include "Funny Ways", a soothing ballad that foreshadows Gentle Giant's future sound to an extent, and the monstrous "Why Not?", a bluesy, heavier song that represents the distinctive feel of this album. All in all, this debut is a decent enough effort, but not representative of Gentle Giant's future greatness. - Greg Northrup [2000]


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Acquiring The Taste (1971)

Gentle Giant's second album is often cited as being their most experimental, along with Interview. While this is true in a way, the type of experimentalism here is very different from the complex dissonant counterpoint that pops up periodically on their later albums. A lot of the musical ideas on Acquiring the Taste are not so much "modernistic" as "just plain weird." Take, for example, "Edge of Twilight," with its middle section for timpani (mixed very high) and xylophone (mixed very low), which seems to come out of nowhere. Unfortunately, it seems that Shulman, Shulman and Minnear hadn't quite honed their compositional skills by 1971 -- nowhere is where it goes as well.

In fact, the main problem I have with this album is just that -- the band seems to have an abundance of great ideas they can't quite figure out what to do with. While I enjoy pretty much the whole thing, I sometimes wonder after I've listened to it what I actually got from it. "Plain Truth" is a good example -- OK, gritty guitar soloing that sounds like it's played on an electric violin is pretty cool, but does it really have to take up 60% of the song? On "Wreck," too, the band does a magnificent job of turning the amazingly catchy hard rocking "pirate song" of the opening into an amazingly catchy late 16th-century chamber piece -- but then they're content to take up four and a half minutes with nothing but those two ideas, pretty much unaltered. And when they inexplicably throw in 20 seconds of ridiculous, over-the-top, reverb-drenched, proto-Queen melodrama, I have to wonder why they even bothered.

I'd say that there are about three songs here that are really fully developed. The opener, "Pantagruel's Nativity," must have been a real shock to most listeners in 1971, with its inexplicably cohesive fusion of classical sounding flute and trumpet lines, dissonant four part harmonies, jazzy vibraphone soloing and hard rocking guitar playing. I'll admit that I don't like it as much as many GG fans do (for one thing, I have to make a conscious effort not to be annoyed by the mushy synths at the beginning and ending), but I do like it a lot. "Black Cat" is also an excellent song, and totally unique for the band, with its slinky vocals from Phil Shulman, syncopated violin parts and meowing keyboards giving way to a wonderfully bizarre (if somewhat under performed) middle section that predicts the middle of "Design" from Interview, with its sparse percussion grid and highly dissonant contrapuntal writing.

And then there's "The House, The Street, The Room" -- easily the best song on the album, and probably one of my all-time favorite Giant songs. It's in a loose arch form, consisting of a blazing poly-modal rock-out (bluesy minor guitar soloing over a whole-tone organ accompaniment) surrounded by oddly-timed, aggressive vocal sections based on diminished seventh chords and weird little chambery passages for nearly every instrument listed on the album cover. Here everything Gentle Giant was trying to do on the album comes out perfectly -- the cohesive fusion of several apparently unrelated styles into something completely unique and lacking any "thoughts on blatant commercialism." And although most of the songs here don't work as well as this one, Acquiring the Taste is a testament to Gentle Giant's enormous ambition, as well as a very enjoyable, if a bit unsatisfying, album. - Alex Temple [October 2001]

This is one of my favorite Gentle Giant albums, though still not quite representative of the sound they would come to develop during their accepted "prime" years, from Three Friends through Free Hand. This album is a great mixture of the rock and blues influences from the debut with a lot of progressive experimentation that would characterize the band later. Because of this it's also probably the darkest and heaviest of all the Gentle Giant albums. There is some nice horns, fairly laid back vocals and a general ethereal quality throughout, until the heaping metallic guitar riffs come pouring through the speakers as in the phenomenal "Pantagruel's Nativity". Another plus is that this album tends to stay away from the overt and often annoying overly complicated and dissonant portions from some of their later albums. This record just floats nicely by with some powerful grooves and an overall bluesy and tangible atmosphere, making it great for sitting back and relaxing to on rainy days. "The House, The Street, The Door" and "Wreck" are nice grooving tracks, while "The Edge of Twilight" and "The Moon is Down" definitely have a darkly tangible atmospheric undercurrent that is excellent. Overall, a highly recommended album, but also not really that representative. Prospective fans would do better to start with Octopus or Free Hand. - Greg Northrup [2000]


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Octopus (1973)

Octopus was my first Gentle Giant album, and for that reason is definitely a sentimental favorite. This is the one that truly vaulted Gentle Giant in the big leagues alongside other prog giants like Genesis and Yes, as Octopus is definitely up to par with many of the other great prog classics. Most of the blues influence is gone by this point, but the band has taken huge strides in adopting the sophisticated classical structures and musical eclecticism that would define the future course of their career.

Every track on here is a winner. "Advent of Panurge" and "Raconteur Troubador" are two defining Gentle Giant tracks, rife with medieval atmosphere, varied instrumentation, innovative structure and spellbinding melodies. The tender vocals of Kerry Minnear are absolutely precious, with Derek Shulman providing a more powerful counterpoint. "A Cry for Everyone" is another standout song, relatively simple at first, driven by a blazing guitar riff, but breaking down in the bridge for a dense instrumental break and a pummeling organ riff. "Knots" is an interesting track, featuring all the vocalists in an angular passage where all sing different parts simultaneously. Gentle Giant newcomers will find it off-putting, but veterans will find it irresistibly idiosyncratic. The remainder of the album is as excellent. "Boys in the Band" is a powerful, driving and mind-bogglingly complicated instrumental track, while "Think of Me with Kindness" is a beautiful balled, adding to the melodic power of the album. This is probably my favorite Gentle Giant album, as it is pretty much flawless from front to back. - Greg Northrup [2000]


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In A Glass House (1973)

In a Glass House has been recently reissued, and after finally hearing it I'm definitely not disappointed. Widely touted as one of the absolute finest Gentle Giant albums, I definitely concur, ranking it with perhaps Octopus as one of my favorite album by these symphonic rock legends. The new CD remaster features all the original songs in their full glory, with great sound quality, in addition to a bunch of live bonus tracks. While this is definitely a must-get for those who have all the other Gentle Giant opuses already, it's also not a terrible place to start exploring the band.

In a Glass House almost epitomizes the classic Gentle Giant sound, combining both incredible intricate parts and emotional playing. Of course, every track on here is pretty much a gem, though some take a little longer to grow than others. "An Inmate's Lullaby" in particular was initially quite boring and did very little for me, as do many of Gentle Giant's slower tracks, like the limp "So Sincere" (from The Power & The Glory). Other than that the album is a nice continuation of the Octopus sound, with less of a medieval emphasis. Also, while this one lacks the relative dissonance of The Power & the Glory, it still manages to foreshadow the intense, heavy energy of that album. "The Runaway" and "Way of Life" absolutely rock, with the latter featuring a gorgeously symphonic mid-section of pure beauty. "Experience" starts off mellow and complex, before erupting at the end, while "A Reunion" is an exquisite short ballad. The highlight however is, without a doubt, the immense title track, with its glorious main riff and a driving theme. Like most Gentle Giant albums, In a Glass House takes some absorbing, but overall, it ranks among the more accessible of the band's albums. It is pure bliss from front to back, not to mention the great sound, packaging and cool bonus tracks that are featured on this reissue. Worth getting if you already own on CD? I don't know, as I can't vouch for the sound quality on any of the previous releases. If you're unhappy with it, then by all means pick this up. - Greg Northrup [April 2001]

It's well established that Gentle Giant were more heavily influenced by classical music, particularly of the Renaissance and the 20th century, than most of the "big name" prog bands of the 70s. But even out of their output, In a Glass House is unusual. The structure is a Bartokian arch -- big, immediately likeable numbers at either end, more idiosyncratic weirdness in the middle, and quiet, lyrical pieces in the middle of each side. The textures are more chambery than a lot of GG: no big synths, not too much loud electric guitar, but a lot of intricate instrumental interplay. "An Inmates Lullaby" and "A Reunion" take this even further in that they don't use any rock instruments at all -- just tuned percussion and chamber strings, respectively.

Adding to the classical feeling is the fact that the album is also very tightly composed, without any of the long solos of the first few albums. Indeed, the solos that do occasionally pop up are fairly short and strictly integrated with the complex composed grooves underneath them. Sections like the xylophone solo in "The Runaway" (a Gentle Giant gesture if there ever was one) have more in common with jazz than with 70s rock. The only place where the band really gets funky and rocks out is in the second half of "Experience" -- even the "hard rock" bits of the title track feel very considered.

As you might expect, this careful construction gives In a Glass House a somewhat more intellectual feeling than many of GG's albums. Some might even find it cold. While this criticism has some validity, it's more than made up for in my opinion by the quality of the music, and in particular by the elaborate, fully-developed structures of the songs. While some of Gentle Giant's output tends to abandon a motif before they've really finished using it, these songs are long and dense, and every note counts. "Experience," for example, is based on an idea that Gentle Giant used several times: the foppish, twiddly, Minnear-led pseudo-Renaissance ballad that turns into a bristling Shulman-fronted hard rock song halfway through. This one is different, though; while "Peel the Paint" (from Three Friends) and "I Lost My Head" (from Interview) rely somewhat on shock value, the opposing sections feel completely integrated here. In fact, the instrumental part of the heavier section is based on a bass motif that appeared earlier, interpolated with quiet, Medieval-inflected voice and organ lines.

"Way of Life," too, is a great example of the album's elaborate composition, with its constantly shifting arrangements and motifs. Musical ideas constantly return, but always with different instrumentation. They also tend to be re-ordered when they come back, so the listener is constantly thrown off-guard when the expected motif is postponed in favor of some new bit of development. In fact, the only song that doesn't work so well structurally is the last one, which attempts to cram just slightly too much material into eight and a half minutes and winds up feeling somewhat piecemeal. Still, the individual parts (including a far too brief bit of delicious 12-string playing from Gary Green) are good enough to keep me listening.

In a Glass House also has the advantage for non-symph fans of being the furthest removed of GG's (non-pop) albums from the stereotypes of symphonic prog. Gentle Giant was never all that symphonic-sounding anyway, but here they take it to an extreme. "Washing" synths of Octopus are eschewed in favor of contrapuntal textures (at times reminiscent of ELP's least offensive moments, if you must make a symph comparison). The vocals have a more natural feel than on previous albums, while at the same time being used to their limit -- witness Kerry Minnear's amazing descent into his bass range on "The Runaway." Melodramatic climaxes are nowhere to be found; just when the middle section of "Way of Life" threatens to become cheesy, it saves itself by falling into a rhythmically ambiguous chromatic section in place of the expected last note. All in all, this is a very impressive piece of work, even if it's not my absolute favorite Giant album.

I should probably address the question of whether it's worth it to get the Alucard reissue if you already have an earlier CD version. I would say yes, if only for the excellent first bonus track, which gives "The Runaway" and "Experience" the driving energy and funkiness that are the only thing missing from the album proper. Even the second bonus track, a seemingly interminable hard rock-style guitar solo, may be of some historical interest. I do have to wonder, though, what possessed the band to reissue the album in a paper sleeve. I can never get the CD out of the damn thing. - Alex Temple [January 2002]


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Interview (1976)

I've never understood why this album is so underrated by GG fans. I've heard it cited as the beginning of their downward slide, and some even claim that it's not as "progressive" as their earlier releases. Since this is one of the band's most experimental albums, I'm not sure what such a claim would even mean. The only trace of pop influence here is the reggae accent of "Give It Back" -- and even that is reggae in 5/8 and 7/8, with weird synth slides and chromatic xylophone parts. I will admit that the lyrics are some of the worst the band ever wrote, but nobody listens to prog for the lyrics, do they?

On reflection, I can see one way in which the album "progresses" less than its predecessors, which is that it treads somewhat familiar ground at times. In particular, there are very strong similarities between this album and 1974's The Power and the Glory, to the point that mappings can be made between individual songs -- "Empty City" is the "No God's a Man" of Interview, for example. Still, the atmosphere of the albums are very different -- The Power and the Glory is clear, keyboard-based and somewhat restrained, while Interview is more contrasty, percussion-based, and hard-rocking. More importantly, the songs on Interview are generally much more complex than those on The Power and the Glory.

Take the title track, for example. This is the "Proclamation" of the album, a funky rocker that starts quietly and has something surprising in the middle. The harmony, however, is more ambiguous, with Derek Shulman's hysterical vocal line sliding between major and minor at the end of every other line. The "surprising" middle section, too, has more meat to it than "Proclamation"'s (admittedly wonderful) dissonant vocal harmonies. Here we get a fantastic jazzy prepared piano solo, rhythmic whispered voices, and some of the most mind-bending chromatic instrumental syncopations this side of RIO. The song does get a bit melodramatic towards the end, but the music is so driving and urgent that it somehow seems warranted.

"Design" is another fantastic song, at once the "Aspirations," the "So Sincere" and the "Cogs in Cogs" of the album. It opens unassumingly with Kerry Minnear singing a pretty melody much like other Giant ballads, accompanied by two faintly dissonant vocal chords alternating in the background. But soon the vocals fade out, the percussion fades in, and the music erupts into angular and disjointed vocal lines framed by loud, rhythmically irregular drumbeats. This, in turn, leads into the main part of the song, a four-part atonal vocal canon over a complex grid of woodblocks, cymbals and snare drums that recalls the mid-section of "Black Cat" from Acquiring the Taste. After a return of the ballad section, the song closes with another burst of fragmentary vocalization and loud drumming. If this is treading familiar ground, then please, tread away.

Then there's "Another Show," which is a cross between "Playing the Game" and "Prologue" from Three Friends, but much harder-rocking, darker and denser. "Empty City" has a lot in common with "No God's a Man," but is more chromatic, and it has an unexpectedly harsh bluesy section that recurs a few times. (It also has some annoying background synths mucking up the texture a bit, but I can usually find it in my heart to forgive Gentle Giant their offenses. It was the 70s, after all.) Unfortunately, the album starts to go downhill towards the end.

"Timing" has nicely interlocking guitar and organ parts, and an interesting mid-section in which dissonant violin chords face off against bluesy piano riffing, but the vocal line is irritatingly blocky, and Derek Shulman's vocals seem overdone and grating. The closer, "I Lost My Head," is often considered a GG classic for some reason; to me it seems like little more than an inferior and more repetetive version of "Experience" from In a Glass House. Despite the weak ending, though, Interview is one of Gentle Giant's best albums overall, and the claim that it's less musically advanced than its predecessors is absurd. Highly recommended. - Alex Temple [October 2001]


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Playing The Fool (1976)


This is generally considered one of the best progressive rock live albums of all time, and caps of a lengthy period of musical ingenuity for Gentle Giant. The great thing about this album is hearing the way that Gentle Giant were able to deliver all the complexity of the studio versions in a live setting. Plus the fact that there is a number of interesting medleys and improvisition throughout. There is also some conscious changes made to the studio versions that adds a nice element of surprise and helps this album to succeed in delivering within the live atmosphere.

The album opens up nicely with a medley of "Just the Same" and "Proclamation" and by the time it gets to the "Advent of Panurge" portion of the Octopus medley, it has really hit it's stride. The Octopus medley also contains some extensive and totally phenomenal solo acoustic guitar passages. One drawback is the 10 minute rendition of "So Sincere", a song that I didn't like in th first place. However, after that comes some highly energetic renditions of "Free Hand" and "Peel the Paint", the latter of which definitely tops the studio version for raw power. A great live album that isn't simply an excuse for a "Greatest Hits" package, this one actually has tons to offer the most devout Gentle Giant devotee, a must-have for fans of the band. - Greg Northrup [2000]