LIVE AT THE BICENTENNIAL

In the past, I've been more than disappointed at the quality of GENTLE GIANT live albums. It's hard to find some that have good enough production value that you can actually enjoy them thoroughly.

Live albums, especially from the Interview - Civilian era are sort of disappointing. A key disappointment is the bootleg (and misspelled) Prolouge', which had one of the worst productions I'd ever seen. Other live albums have fluctuations from 'meh' recording to awful recording. The only live album that I've seen as incredibly good is Playing the Fool, one of their first live albums to hit the stage. This live album is good enough to join Playing the Fool with my favorite live albums. The production is good, you can clearly hear the crowd's excitement, and you can tell that the band members are having fun.

Aside from that, the setlist is also pretty good. It as usual opens with some material from The Power and the Glory', which goes to Free Hand, to Interview, and bridges with the usual coupling of 'The Runaway' and 'Experience' (my favorite GENTLE GIANT track), which are both from In A Glass House. Just to say, the way they play 'Experience' is just dazzling.

As usual, they play not individual tracks from Octopus, instead playing 'excerpts' from it instead in an epic-style. They wrap it up with the fan favorite, the seven and half minute long 'Free Hand'.

Overall, this is a Gentle Giant live album to add to your collection, a great one at that.

Go give it a listen.