EXPERIENCE

I recently picked up this album in a cut price CD shop for the absurdly low price of three pounds. The extremely reasonable asking price earned the album an extra star - it's good but definitely non essential.

What you get for your money is 45 minutes of the 5 piece Giant playing live in the USA in 1975 on the Free Hand tour. The sound quality is pretty good (it was recorded for the King Biscuit Flower Hour) and there are some interesting takes on a few of their classics. Knots (actually Selections from Octopus) contains an inspired acoustic guitar sequence that takes in some pretty tasty blues (Gary Green's first love) and an acoustic reworking of The Boys in The Band. It's only about half the length of the Octopus excerpts on Playing The Fool and skips over some of the better moments, but it's worth checking out for the acoustic interlude alone. The Advent of Panurge incorporates their tongue in cheek recorder quartet which slips in a few bars of Yankee Doodle for good measure, and is another demonstration of Gentle Giant's ability to play complex music with a knockabout sense of humour. The 7 track selection is pretty representative of the band's output up to that point, although there's nothing included from 3 Friends.

Playing The Fool and Out of the Woods are both better releases than this, but the arrangements are sufficiently different to make this worth owning if you're a diehard fan. If you're new to Gentle Giant and you see this lurking in your local cut price CD store it's a good introduction to the band at a bargain price.