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(2019) Gentle Giant – Unburied Treasure (box-set)
Review:
Of all the so-called progressive rock bands that emerged in the late ’60s/early ’70s, Gentle Giant has, perhaps, been the most misunderstood, and the one which failed to reach the same deserved commercial heights of its creatively innovative brethren, like King Crimson, Yes, Genesis and Pink Floyd. Of the bigger names from that time, only Van der Graaf Generator could be considered in the same breath when it comes to missed commercial success opportunities, and even that group has fared better, if for no other reason than that it resumed active service in 2005 and continues to release new music and, occasionally, to tour to this day. Still, there was (and remains) no band that sounded quite like Gentle Giant; even today, its influence on today’s more reductionist progressive rock scene represents a group that has, at times, inspired contemporary groups: imitated and cited, to varying degrees, but never quite capable of being copied. Transatlantic/former Spock’s Beard co-founder and solo artist Neal Morse, Flower Kings and, alongside Morse, fellow Transatlantic co-founder Roine Stolt, Steve Hackett/Agents of Mercy’s Nad Sylvan, Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt, Steven Wilson, Big Big Train, Gungfly’s Rikard Sjöblom, Premiata Forneria Marconi’s Franz di Cioccio, Tim Bowness and many others have all sung high praises of Gentle Giant’s decade-long, unparalleled innovations, documented over eleven studio sets and one live album. Plenty of lesser names, too, collected on recordings like A Reflection (GORGG-O-Sonic, 2008), continue to be inspired by and fan the flames of the Giant’s reputation in the 21st century as one of the finest (and, certainly, most inimitable) bands to emerge from progressive rock’s infancy. Why were Gentle Giant’s attempts to garner the greater commercial success it deserved during its final couple of years met with such abysmal failure, despite an extant reputation for creative excellence that mirrored (and, in some cases, exceeded) contemporaries like Yes, Genesis and Emerson, Lake & Palmer? It can easily be argued that Gentle Giant’s failure and ultimate dissolve was, sadly, the direct consequence of deserting its most ardent fans (and, it could equally be argued, itself) by shifting gears in an attempt to achieve greater commercial success and adapt to a changing musical landscape, becoming something it most certainly was not. Still, Giant’s attempt to become more commercially viable was also the understandable consequence of slogging it out on the road as much (or, in some cases, more) than many. As the band, beginning in 1971 but with greater emphasis between 1974 and 1977, toured quite relentlessly, it watched groups like Yes, Emerson, Lake & Palmer and, most notably, Genesis become increasingly/massively successful, selling millions of albums and filling increasingly sizeable venues. Not that Giant didn’t have its share of success but, compared to its contemporaries, the group always seemed to have to work harder and tour harder to get what it did (not, however, suggesting that these other bands had a cakewalk). Despite some surprisingly bad decisions beginning, in part, with the contrasting shift of 1977’s The Missing Piece (Chrysalis/Capitol), it’s an absolute truth that Gentle Giant’s name and reputation remains significant fifty years after it first rose, Phoenix-like, from the ashes of R&B-turned-psychedelic band Simon Dupree & the Big Sound in 1970. Giant’s debut, Gentle Giant (Vertigo, 1970), may not have achieved the iconic, game-changing success of King Crimson’s 1969 debut, which shook the music world (and beyond), In the Court of the Crimson King (Island). It was, nevertheless, a strong first shot across the bow of creative rock music, and a portent of even greater things to come. Gentle Giant’s largely complex and detailed music featured a broad spectrum of musical devices including, amongst others: shifting (and sometimes irregular) time signatures and tempos; polyphony; hocketing; frequent key changes; instrumental and vocal counterpoint; madrigal, fugal and other classical music approaches, with a particular predilection for early and Baroque/Renaissance/Mediaeval-era forms; multi-part, polyphonic vocal harmonies that often moved from challenging dissonance to greater (but still complex) consonance that were often traded from one singer to another, including the use of staggered rhythms; syncopation, polymeters and, perhaps its biggest definer above all, counterpoint; the breaking up and tonal re-voicing of initially simple chord changes; like some of its vocal arrangements, the passing of phrases/motifs from one player to another, in a tag team-like fashion; and surprising stylistic contrasts, such as moving from medieval chorals one moment to hard-driving rock passages the next. Compositions were initially credited to the band’s two co-founding Shulman brothers, Derek and Ray, older brother Phil, until his departure following the release of 1972’s particularly exceptional Octopus (Vertigo/Columbia), and the group’s secret weapon, the remarkable multi-instrumentalist, Kerry Minnear. Still, the lion’s share of the instrumental writing came from Ray Shulman and Minnear’s pens, with additional ideas contributed by Derek and, while he was with the band, Phil. Phil and Derek Shulman were, on the other hand, responsible for most of the band’s lyrics (which were, more often than not, based on subjects that few other bands either knew of…or were interested. Minnear occasionally assisted with prose that was as unique as the music that, more often than not, supported it, Gentle Giant also being no strangers to remarkable a cappella vocal passages that became even more so in concert. As serious as many have considered/accused the group and its music of being, Gentle Giant was also defined by no shortage of humor; even its attempts at more commercial, punk-informed rawness and naive simplicity might bear a title like “Betcha Thought We Couldn’t Do It” (from the revealingly titled The Missing Piece), or pay a warm tribute to the band’s road crew with Octopus’ “Dog’s Life.” Gentle Giant also included unusual “found recordings,” like the early video arcade machine heard at the start of “Time to Kill,” from the second side of 1975’s Free Hand; the “interview” questions/comments peppered throughout In’terview, or the breaking glass that turns from random to rhythmic at the start and end of In a Glass House. Nor was Gentle Giant averse to including small repetitive motifs, as can be heard throughout Gentle Giant, to provide a certain musical continuity. But if Gentle Giant could be accused of being pretentious and, certainly, musically aloof (especially in its short mission statement-like liners to Acquiring the Taste), it’s hard not to laugh with (rather than at) a band so self-effacing that, during its North American tour in support of Octopus, it sported a giant sign with the word “PRETENTIOUS” flashing behind them onstage. A perfect storm of sorts, Gentle Giant was, until its last couple of years and Chrysalis label albums including 1978’s Giant for a Day!, the band’s rarely disputed low point, and 1980’s somewhat better studio swan song, Civilian, an atypical confluence of: expansive writing; a staggering concert potential to deliver five contrapuntal and/or harmonized vocal parts; and a particularly broad capacity for multi-instrumentalism that few, if any, bands from the time could match. Even in its final years, barring Giant for a Day!, it still largely sounded like Gentle Giant, albeit of a largely simpler, more instrumentally conventionally kind. In addition to his vast, ever-changing array of keyboards (as many as eleven), Minnear, beyond being a distinctive lead vocal alternative to Derek and Phil Shulman (later, preferring not to sing lead parts live and, instead, hand them over the Derek Shulman) was also capable of playing vibraphone, marimba, xylophone, cello, recorder, tympani and other percussion instruments. But he was far from the group’s only skilled multi-instrumentalist: lead vocalist Derek Shulman contributed saxophones, recorder, clavichord, bass and percussion; fellow lead vocalist Phil Shulman added saxophones, clarinet, trumpet, recorder, piano, percussion and mellophone to the group’s broad sonic palette; bassist Ray Shulman, in addition to being an accomplished violinist (electric and acoustic), played various guitars, in addition to organ, bass pedals, percussion, viola, skulls and trumpet on Giant’s studio albums and/or live performances; lead guitarist Gary Green, in addition to a variety of guitars, contributed percussion, mandolin, recorder and, in concert, additional vocals; and John Weathers, the band’s longest-lasting drummer (first joining as a substitute for Malcolm Mortimore following a 1972 motorcycle accident, but ultimately staying with the group until its break-up), added percussion, vibraphone and, like Green, additional vocals during live performances. A band of five notable musicians and vocalists, Green emerged, increasingly, as a truly rare blues-based guitarist nevertheless capable of navigating Gentle Giant’s often-demanding writing, managing to ground the group’s more eclectic leanings while, at the same time, contributing to its distinctive, highly sophisticated musical complexion. Martin Smith, the first of Gentle Giant’s three drummers, was able to comfortably shift from thundering rock grooves to lighter, jazz-informed playing, as was Malcolm Mortimore, who replaced him after Acquiring the Taste (Vertigo, 1971), before Weathers joined the following year and brought an even firmer rock backbeat (even in irregularly metered songs) to the band, rendering its live shows, in particular, a curious yet eminently appealing blend of compositional complexity and rhythmic clarity, with his unshakable, rock-solid grooves. The three Shulman brothers and Minnear were similarly expansive in reach, rendering Gentle Giant’s unparalleled stylistic and instrumental breadth possible onstage as well as in the studio. It would, in fact, be no small challenge to find another group that could, in addition to a more “conventional” vocals/guitar/keys/bass/drums configuration, move from knotty five-part vocal harmonies one moment, to a chamber trio of violin, cello and vibraphone the next; from a bass/drums-bolstered section for three recorders to a staggering acoustic guitar duet; and from a scored percussion workout, with all five members contributing everything from tympani to triangle (and everything in-between) to horn-driven passages featuring saxophone and trumpet. And yet, as important as Gentle Giant clearly was and continues to be decades after it folded, it was a band that, following seven years of largely critical acclaim, made that major misstep as it tried to adapt to a changing musical landscape where, with the advent of punk, things like musical proficiency and creative blending of a multiplicity of musical styles became anathema. Indeed, Giant’s last couple of albums began to lose sight of what defined the band; despite Civilian rallying after the undisputed low point of Giant for a Day!, Gentle Giant ultimately passed, not with a bang but a whimper. Still, even to its 1980 disbanding, Gentle Giant’s live performances remained thoroughly riveting as its members seamlessly moved around as many as thirty instruments onstage. Giant performances could also be counted upon to act as strong contrasts to its studio recordings. Not only did the band rock out with greater power and commitment onstage (especially after Weathers joined), but live arrangements of its music were often substantially altered when compared to its studio counterparts, even more so when the group began to join multiple songs into lengthier medleys. With its members all moving on to other things, ranging from record label A&R, band management, production and DVD/Blu Ray Authoring to teaching and more, one of Gentle Giant’s best decisions, following its poorer ones during its final couple of years, has been to resist the pressure to reform in the 21st Century and tour its music, once again, for younger audiences who missed the band during its ten year run. Yes, a couple of its alumni formed a group named after Giant’s third studio album, Three Friends (Vertigo, 1972), touring Gentle Giant’s music periodically since 2009; But, even so, it has been on a relatively small scale, and not the kind of touring that Gentle Giant might have managed, had it reformed in toto. Its members most certainly did not want to become like the many legacy acts which, progressive or no, have reformed to capitalize on their glory days but have simply ended up being pale shadows of their former selves, rather than the relative few, like King Crimson and Van Der Graaf Generator, that have managed to remain both fresh and relevant. Gentle Giant’s reputation most certainly precedes itself, even half a century on. A variety of reissues, including multiple remasters of its entire catalog and, even more significantly, some fine new stereo and surround sound mixes of select albums by Steven Wilson, have kept the majority of the group’s commercial releases in print. Live shows, on CD and/or DVD, have also been released on the band’s Alucard imprint, continuing to expand the group’s canon. But for a band whose live shows were so vastly different to its recordings, beyond bootleg recordings, there’s never been a proper document of how its shows evolved over the course of its decade-long lifetime. The release of Unburied Treasure is a major event for any who consider Gentle Giant to be the important but undervalued group it most certainly was, a group that had to fight particularly hard (and more than many) for the successes it did achieve. Strictly limited to just two thousand copies worldwide, Unburied Treasure certainly isn’t cheap, and with such a small production number, is likely to appeal largely to existing, hardcore fans. Still, as it documents not only the group’s commercial work, but a slew of live recordings from across its career, beginning in 1971 straight through to its final performances in 1980, Unburied Treasure tells as complete a story of the band as will likely ever be told. It may be a pricey box, but a look at its contents makes clear that a lot of time, energy and effort went into its creation, successfully documenting a group whose studio and live performances of the same material were often not just substantially different, but which evolved over time. New remasters of its entire commercial discography, from 1970’s Gentle Giant through its studio swan song, Civilian, are also augmented by Steven Wilson’s newly minted stereo and surround remixes of Gentle Giant, in high resolution, on the single Blu Ray included with the set. First, the inclusion of Wilson’s stereo and surround remixes of Gentle Giant comes as a major surprise, given that when Three Piece Suite (Alucard) was released just two years ago—a compilation of sorts, featuring (amongst other things), Wilson’s stereo and surround mixes of three tracks from Gentle Giant, two from its 1971 follow-up Acquiring the Taste (Vertigo), four from Three Friends, and a previously unheard track, “Freedom’s Child,” from the Gentle Giant sessions that, a,long with Acquiring the Taste, were produced by Tony Visconti, of David Bowie and T-Rex fame. When Three Piece Suite was released in 2017, the explanation was that multi-track tapes for all the songs on all three albums could not be found (Wilson had already remixed both Octopus and The Power and the Glory (Chrysalis/Capitol, 1974) in full for Alucard, released in 2015 and 2014, respectively). Clearly—and, as seems to happen, thankfully—multi-track tapes continue to be unearthed and so, in addition to engineer Pete Reynolds’ fine remaster of the original mix of Gentle Giant on CD (in addition to all the other CD content), this Blu Ray, featuring Wilson’s new stereo and surround mixes (in addition to instrumental-only mixes of the album’s seven tracks) are a most welcome surprise addition to Unburied Treasure’s 29 CDs. Unburied Treasure also includes, in addition to the commercially released Playing the Fool: The Official Live (Chrysalis/Capitol, 1977), a full sixteen complete or partial live performances, along with a handful of BBC Radio sessions from 1972. One, an audience recording from 1971, was already released by Alucard in 2009 as King Alfred’s College, Winchester 1971, and serves as the earliest known live document of the band. Seven have never been released before, while seven have never been officially released (Giant being heavily bootlegged back in the day) and one has never been available before on CD. Yes, it’s true that of these sixteen live performances, a full seven are sourced from audience recordings. Still, thanks to Pete Reynolds, these live performances remain important contributions to Unburied Treasure. As sonic equivalences to similarly cleaned up audience recordings included in King Crimson’s Larks’ Tongues in Aspic (40th Anniversary) (Panegyric, 2012), they’re of significant value helping, as they do, to fully document Giant’s evolution as a performing band. These live recordings demonstrate just how different Gentle Giant’s material was from its studio counterparts, while also shining a bright spotlight on a group that continued to evolve those live arrangements with every passing year. And with documents included, as best as possible, from each tour, most of the band’s changing set lists are included, in full or in part. Five shows are sourced from soundboard—or, in the case of The Roxy, 1980, a modified mix of soundboard and single microphone—or full multi-tracks. An additional four come from the same series of four fall, 1976 multi-track recordings from which Playing the Fool was sourced (these shows mixed, for this box, by Dan Bornemark), providing the chance to hear one complete show (Düsseldorf, September 23), along with sizeable portions of three other shows from around the same time. A CD including the band’s 1977 tour rehearsals at Pinewood Studios was included in the five-disc rarities/outtakes/live set Memories of Old Days (Chrysalis/EMI, 2013) and, earlier, as MP3 files on the data disc included in the Scraping the Barrel (Alucard, 2004). Here, however, that rehearsal disc has received a sonic upgrade, thanks to Reynolds, and is restored to its original and proper running order. And so, Unburied Treasures combines Gentle Giant’s complete commercial discography with a series of live recordings that, when taken together, paint the most complete aural history of the band that’s ever been available in one place. It’s also true that, beyond Wilson’s remixes of Octopus and The Power and the Glory in full and Gentle Giant, Acquiring the Taste and Three Friends in part, that the group’s entire commercial discography has been remastered on CD more than once, in some cases as recently as 2011 by Alucard. Its entire Chrysalis output (from 1975’s Free Hand through Civilian) was remastered and reissued, along with some bonus material, in the four-disc box set, I Lost My Head: The Chrysalis Years (1975-1980) (Chrysalis/EMI), in 2012. Still, while the sonic upgrades to the commercial discography are subtle, what makes them worthwhile in Unburied Treasure (and even if the hardcore fans who will likely pick it up already have multiple versions of these albums and on multiple media) is that Reynolds brings a certain aural consistency across these twelve releases, even if limitations of the original master tapes from which they are sourced do, indeed vary. Prior reissues of the commercial releases have often included bonus tracks; here there are none, barring The Power and the Glory’s originally single-only title track and “Heroes,” included on more recent reissues of Civilian. In fact, barring these two bonus tracks and three recordings made for the BBC at its Maida Vale Studios on August 4, 1972, Unburied Treasures doesn’t duplicate any of the bonus tracks added to past CD remasters, barring a handful of live tracks that are, here, included in one or more of the box set’s live discs, like the live version of “Prologue,” from the September 8, 1972 New Orleans soundboard recording, that was first included on Alucard’s 2011 remaster of Three Friends. The BBC studio and live recordings released by Band of Joy and Hux Records, respectively, in 1996 (Out of the Woods: The BBC Sessions) and 1998 (Out of the Fire) are also nowhere to be found. The July 3, 1976 Hampstead, New York live album, Live at the Bicentennial, released by Alucard in 2014 and which includes the reggae-informed “Give It Back,” a rarely performed song from In’terview (Chrysalis, 1977), is also omitted. An almost complete show, missing the usual encore medley of Three Friends’ “Peel the Paint” and In’terview’s “I Lost My Head,” followed by a most unusual second encore of Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour” and, in honor of the USA’S bicentennial, an after-midnight “Happy Birthday” to the USA, Live at the Bicentennial was likely omitted as other full set recordings from that year’s tour are of much better quality, like the complete Düsseldorf show. In other words: while there is duplication of the entire commercial discography, albeit in newly remastered form, Unburied Treasure does not include much in the way of bonus material, unless sixteen live shows and a CD of rehearsals don’t count as “bonus.” For Giant completists, this is, in some respects, good news: no feeling that past releases like the two BBC albums, the Bicentennial show and others are now redundant (and that also includes the CDs included in the two Alucard-released videos, 2005’s Giant on the Box—Deluxe Edition and 2006’s GG at the GG—Sight and Sound in Concert).
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