THE MISSING PIECE

For me as the person from the former Soviet Union, it is easy and evident why I love song-oriented things or at maximum extended song-oriented things or at absolute maximum one reasonably avantgarde piece per career.

That is why my faves are Gentle Giant and most of Queen. That is why I see TMP as the good abum with bad tendency of artificial lengthening of otherwise classic 2-3 minutes' great pop songs. As well as artificially epicized (episized!) "Memories..." and two real progressive rock standards, that are As Old and For Nobody.

Those who ever visited the brilliant laconic informative site called Vintage Prog (I'm not its creator and it's hardly an ad) were probably shocked that Gentle Giant is presented there with ALL 12 (11 studio + 1 official live) releases. Which is an exceptional result for a band of more than five albums there.