SCRAPING THE BARREL

Being a long time fan of Gentle Giant, I finally got to the point where I was scraping my wallet and bought this beautifully packaged box. It contains 3 audio cd's, 1 cd- rom and a book. In total it is over 12 hours over music. The cd-rom contains, next to all sorts of mp3's, GG videos, tourbooks, promo material, manuscripts, etcetera. The book has all the information you want to know about the recordings. The whole project is in the same vain as the Anthology series from The Beatles. There are a lot of demos, studio noodeling, alternative takes, rehearsals. What you must not expect are unreleased or unfinished songs by GG. If you are looking for that, you better purchase "Under Construction". And if you already have that, this box compares to the second disc of that one. The sonic quality of the music is good. A part from the strange "FBI tapes" and some live material.

The first disc covers material from "Gentle Giant" (1970) to "Free Hand" (1975). Highlights include the beautiful "Think of Me With Kindness", the instrumental "Playing the Game" and "The Power and the Glory" parts. The second disc continues with "Free Hand" and ends with "Civilian" (1979). Great parts are the studio outtakes of "Mobile" and "Empty City". The third disc is devoted to solo material of GG members plus two tracks by Simon Dupree and the Big Sound. This I find the least interesting disc of the foursome. There are some nice tunes (like "Moog Fugue" from Kerry Minnear) but overall it is rather standard pop music. Disc number four (the data disc) contains hours of material both by GG and solo members. Again there is lots of stuff to explore. There is almost an hour of GG live in Torino, 1973 and over an hour of rehearsals in Pinewood, 1977 with good sound quality and excellent performance. There is a 24 minute file with the recording of "So Sincere". There is also an excellent rehearsal of "Octopus" in 1975, and a good guitar-duet rehearsal. This data disc may be the best disc of the set. The mp3's, by the way, are all 128kb/sec.

And now over to the ratings. If it was about the music then it would definitely be 5 stars, because Gentle Giant is an excellent band, who wrote truly progressive music. Many examples of this music can be found on this box. On the other hand, if you just want to listen to their music, you better listen to a studio release or to the excellent live album "Playing the Fool". In the end this box is mainly for the true GG fan who already has all their albums and still has a hunger for more GG material. Not all the stuff on this box is worthwhile, but there are many good performances and alternative versions to be found. And even listening to the vocal mix of "Three Friends" you can hear GG's brilliance.