Customer Reviews

In A Power Free Interview

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Gentle Giant was and is the finest of the prog bands. They threw influences from classical music and madrigals into the mix, all while retaining a hearty dose of rock, but never did Gentle Giant descend into the insult of "let's just take a classical piece, add big drums, and call it progressive". Best of all, with Gentle Giant if you didn't care for one song, they had sufficient variety in their sound that there was a strong possibility that you might be contagiously enamored of the next song.

This four song sampler contains one classic from each of four of the band's finest albums. My favorite among the bunch would be "Playing the Game" from the album "Power and the Glory". I still remember cautiously examining this album cover at the swap meet before I was familiar with Gentle Giant. I had two albums in my hand and, not being familiar with Gentle Giant, I returned "Power and the Glory" to the stack of albums. The guy selling his collection was boggled, "Look which one he's putting back!" That was enough to convince me to retrieve the Gentle Giant album, which quickly became one of my enduring favorites. It's my hope that I can likewise encourage you to check out this amazing band. In spite of the music's intricacies, everything you hear the band do in these studio recordings they were more than able to do in live performance.

Sometimes with Amazon samplers you get the feeling that the artist(s) threw second tier songs out there for free in hopes that you'd be lured in to buy the rest of the albums. Not so with this sampler; these are all tracks worthy of inclusion on a single disk retrospective. Gentle Giant can afford to put out a sampler like this because the albums from which they come are uniformly strong with numerous highlights. "Just the Same" was the set opener for the one tour I had the chance to see. "Experience" is one of only six songs on the excellent "In A Glass House" album, but you'll probably find that for as good as this number is, you'll like the title track and "The Runaway" even more. If you're into prog-rock, "Inmate's Lullaby" will really spin your head.

If you're curious about the origin of the sampler title, it's derived from the titles of the albums from which these songs are taken - "In a Glass House", "Power and the Glory", "Free Hand" and "Interview". If you look to explore the band's catalog further, these four albums along with their predecessor "Octopus" would all be excellent starting points.

Gentle Giant was one of the very best and most interesting of progressive rock bands during prog's heyday in the 70s. If you haven't heard them, you really should check them out. There's no one else quite like them.

Gentle Giant was arguably the best of the 1970's prog-rock bands. Much as I loved Yes, Pink Floyd and other such bands of the 1970's, these guys were multi-instrumental virtuosos, sculpting some heady rock with elements of jazz and classical for a sound that I don't think anyone has yet duplicated. I saw them during their tour for "In a Glass House" in about 1974-75, and it remains one of the most amazing concerts I've ever attended. Though they disbanded in the early 1980's, I hope this sampler finds them new fans, because they seem all but forgotten in the rock firmament today. This is an excellent taste of their catalog, taking one track from each of four of their best albums, and every one is among their very best work. And you can't go wrong for free. I have all of these tracks on CD already but downloaded them anyway for convenience sake. Give them a try.

As others have mentioned, this sampler is surprising because usually Amazon.com puts some duds or tracks that don't rightly represent a band's volume of work on their samplers. But this time then did it well.
All 4 tracks are outstanding GG songs, and chances are, if you like what you're hearing then you'll dig most of their discography.

I would have prefered a track or two from their earlier works, such as Three Friends or Acquiring The Taste(my personal favorite), but these should give you a good idea what you are in store for. Actually "earlier works" is a misnomer because it's not like we're talking several years between albums. GG put out an unprecedented 10 (mostly excellent) albums in 9 years from 1970-1978.

Amazon doesn't list what album each track is from, so here they are ...
Interview - Interview 1976
Experience - In a Glass House 1973
Playing the Game - The Power and the Glory 1974
Just the Same - Freehand 1975

If you like what you're hearing on this sampler, and would like to take the GG plunge, then I'd start in this order ...
Acquiring the Taste 1971
In a Glass House 1973
Three Friends 1972
Freehand 1975

Or if you'd like to explore their sound further without buying individual albums, then may I suggest the Excellent "Live" album, "Playing The Fool - The Official Live" 1977
Here it is from Amazon's dowload store ...
http://www.amazon.com/Playing-Fool-Official-Live/dp/B002SWQR1O/ref=dm_cd_album_lnk_alt
You'll be amazed that they can pull off these complex arrangements "live"!

As a musician in the 70s buying "import" albums from UK (remember vinyl) this was really a great band. Lots of twists and turns to their music, and all were quite acommplished musicians.