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Playing the Fool - The Official Live: Difference between revisions
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Playing the Fool - The Official Live (view source)
Revision as of 00:51, 12 August 2008
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== Liner notes == | == Liner notes == | ||
=== Capitol Promotional Material === | |||
''- Thanks to Claude Wacker'' | |||
Gentle Giant - Playing The Fool<br /> Capitol - 1/77 Picture by Dick Polak, March 1976 | |||
For the past half dozen years, Gentle Giant fans gave been telling everyone who would listen, "Hey, you've got to see them live. Their albums are great, but they sound so exciting in concert you have to hear it to believe it." | |||
Now everyone can hear what a Gentle Giant concert sounds like. Playing The Fool on Capitol Records presents Gentle Giant's sophisticated rock expertise "au naturel" in all its glory. Their critically acclaimed stage show has finally been captured on this two-record set, their first live album. | |||
Gentle Giant is a complex, classically-influenced, "progressive rock" band that has been around since the beginning of the seventies and Playing The Fool is their fourth album on Capitol. | |||
"The group is a big melting pot of styles and from the bottom drips out Gentle Giant," says vocalist and sax player Derek Shulman, who played with his brother, Ray (a classically-trained bassist and violonist), in a sixties combo called Simon Dupree and The Big Sound before forming Gentle Giant. | |||
The Shulmans (another brother, Phil, was a member for the first four albums) brought together keyboard and cello player Kerry Minnear (a graduate of the Royal College of Music and a band called Rust), guitarist Gary Green (with both a blues and jazz background) and drummer John Weathers (who formerly worked with the Grease Band and Graham Bond). | |||
"Recording in the studio is completely different than playing a concert," says Derek Shulman. "Live gigs have to be more immediate to hit people. Our stage show is much more spontaneous and direct because it's a different medium." | |||
"I think one of the reasons for the difference between our albums and our concerts," explains Minnear, "is because we treat playing live as a separate form of entertainment rather than being somewhat dull and just playing the number as we recorded it. To keep the band and the audience from becoming bored, we give ourselves a certain leeway. We have an improvised section in the middle of each song where we can really play, and I think that's very important. I couldn't possibly play in a band that didn't do that." | |||
The band went through two drummers on their early albums --Gentle Giant (never released in the U.S.), Acquiring The Taste and Three Friends--before finding Weathers, the first who could "provide some power." According to Derek Shulman, "From that point we started to solidify our direction. He allowed us to pull our various elements together into our own style." | |||
Following numerous European tours, Gentle Giant began touring North America. The album Octopus was released, but the group was dropped from their former label and In A Glasshouse was never released in the U.S. At that point Capitol signed the band and with the release of the highly-acclaimed The Power and The Glory (a concept album based on the idea of corruption arising from power), Free Hand and Interview, Gentle Giant has become increasingly popular both here and overseas. | |||
Concerning their recording, Ray Shulman says, "We can make an LP accessible and still be pleased with it. We try not to be too technical and we try to introduce some genuine emotion as well. We don't write love songs in a obvious way, but that doesn't mean they're not emotional. You needn't be obvious to be sentimental." | |||
Gentle Giant can be pulsating, intricate, classical, jazzy, funky, mystical, futuristic or just out-and-out rocking. They have always explored new musical horizons. On one of their earliest albums, the band stated in the liner notes that their sole aim was to make one of their songs totally different and new "even at the risk of being very unpopular." While fervently pursuing quality eclectism (even on this live album the songs are fresh and different from the studio versions), Gentle Giant has gained fans rather than losing them. Their fans expect them to be experimental and daring. | |||
Gentle Giant has always stressed musicianship of the highest caliber as well as innovative, sectionalized song structures. Much of their vocal work is derived (they say) from jazz scat singing where the voice is used as an intrument whether they're singing words or just notes. With the group members playing a wide variety of instruments and being well-versed in their precise production techniques, the resulting music, live or in the studio, is a thick, textural collage of sounds. | |||
Playing The Fool contains 11 of their best tunes including "Just The Same," "Free Hand," "Excerpts From Octopus" and a medley of "Peel The Paint/I Lost My Head." Recorded in England in front of highly enthusiastic audiences, the incredible performances exude vitality and excitement. One of the group's strongest points has always been its arrangements and on Playing The Fool thay are again notable for their intricacy and complexity as well as their innovativeness. Within single songs, the band changes pace and tempo, shifts, pauses, strips sounds away and then builds back to a fullbodied, blazing crescendo. The recording and production are sharp, precise and flawless (rare for any live album). | |||
Within this record, Gentle Giant has managed to sum up their career and move forward at the same time. Playing The Fool, which proves without a doubt that the band is far more than mere studio wizards, should thrill longtime fans who have enjoyed the group in concert and will initiate new listeners to the magic and excitement that happens when Gentle Giant takes to the stage. | |||
=== Castle CD === | === Castle CD === | ||