THE LAST STEPS

Allright, this CD has not such a sound quality as for example PLAYING THE FOOL or BBC RADIO 1 IN CONCERT, but it is not as worse as for example such bootlegs like ARTISTICALLY CRIME or ENDLESS LIFE. However, this review should be about THE LAST STEPS and not about any other album.

First I want to say that I like the order of the songs here a lot. Of course THE LAST STEPS does not contain as much killer-stuff like PLAYING THE FOOL (damn, I'm talking about other CD's again) but the songs of CIVILIAN have much power, for example "Convenience (Clean And Easy)", "Underground", "All Through The Night", "It's Not Imagination" or "Number One" are very, very rocky tunes, if you ask me. I know that the same usually applies for "Underground" but unfortunately you can't hear the guitar that much and the drums are a bit too loud here, in my opinion. "Free Hand" blows you away, the beginning is so beautiful, "Knots" has a new live-ending which is pretty cool (though I prefer the fade in into the guitar duett as they used to play it in their earlier years), "Playing The Game" is a bit too calm on the CD. Very disappointing was the fact, that my loved "Memories Of Old Days", one of my favourite GENTLE GIANT songs, had such a bad sound quality. By the way, it was very interesting to hear "Giant For A Day" live (it was the only song of the same titled album the band used to play live) and the intersection into the a bit psychedelic "Inside Out" was felicitous in my opinion. It is great, that GENTLE GIANT also played more old stuff than on other gigs (like "Free Hand", "Playing The Game", "The Advent Of Panurge" or "Knots"). Also pretty cool was the drum bash after the title "Underground" which reminds you on the old days of the band.

I have to admit, that the sound quality is not as good on THE LAST STEPS as on other GENTLE GIANT-live-albums. If you don't have a live-album of that awesome band and want to buy one, then you should not start with this CD, you better start with PLAYING THE FOOL, EXPERIENCE, KING BISQUIT FLOWER HOUR LIVE IN NEW YORK 1975 or BBC RADIO 1 IN CONCERT. But I also can't deny that this CD was often rocking me, that I liked the setting a lot and that I was positively surprised about the power of the later Gentle Giant songs of the CIVILIAN and GIANT FOR A DAY albums. So I will give this CD 3 stars...