Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Don't waste time reading this, just buy it now!, 29 Oct 2005
This band are incredible, I've known this for many years since I heard Experience/Cogs in Cogs on Tommy Vance's rock show and immediately scrabbled about for a tape to find out what it was! I'd never seen them play live, till I bought this DVD.
There's plenty of good material on the disc, but the highlight for me is the broadcast from a German show in 1974. The director of the show, Christopher Nupen was a classical music director and invited the band on to perform on his "Sunday Concert" show. I think this is why the sound balance is so good and clear, surprising for a TV broadcast, especially from that time.
The band are on storming form and the musicianship and commitment displayed are out of this world. Every note is full of life and obviously enjoyed by the band as they display their versatility on a whole host of instruments including violin, cello, trumpet, sax, recorders, drums and chime bars!
If you don't know their music, yes, it is an acquired taste and possibly won't grab you right away. They seem classically influenced, with complex rhythms mixed with medieval music and driving rock solos too. I hate the term 'Prog Rock', for me it's just amazing music.
If you do know their music, you'll have bought this by now. If not, what are you waiting for?
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
TEN Stars! Acquire this Taste immediately!, 3 Aug 2006
Several hours after receiving this riveting disk and following constant play, I just managed to pull myself away for long enough to write about it - and now find myself in "What can I say?" speechless ecstasy! Nothing as inarticulate as "Wow!" will convey the thrill of this; so you'll have to imagine one of those climactic sigh-grunts accompanied by flickering-closed eyes for the gist of the joy this gives me. Words simply can't say how wonderful it is to see and hear Giant "live" again after all these years.
...Oh, all right, then. Gentle Giant were/are the best live band I ever saw/heard, their albums some of the most complex, entertaining and intelligent music of the day - and that still holds. Victims, however - like so many decent (and some less decent) `70s bands - of punk nihilism and Genesis' easier transformation from progressives to crowd-pleasers, Gentle Giant only had a decade in which to enchant us. They produced just under 10 albums in their day and I saw them in concert 4 times, twice in Birmingham, twice Cambridge. As I said, the most engaging, daunting live act ever (the famed multi-musicianship, the complexities, the sheer, driving rock - sublime to witness); their songs probably the most "worth listening to" ever put out by a rock band, truly rewarding to the patient ear and mind. Still listening myself to their albums on a regular basis, always remembering those fantastic shows.
So this disk was approached with all the trepidation of one whose nostalgia-bubble might be painfully pricked, either through failure to capture the class and quality then through the media of now; or the removal of the rose-tint of youthward retrospection when the actuality hits the recollection - er, "disappointment" is what I think I mean (I'm justly reminded at this point of the big ironic neon "pretentious" sign the band took to displaying after certain critical chewings). Anyway, you'll have gathered from my gleeful opening paragraph that we are in territory diametrically opposed to a let-down with this DVD. The smiling starts as soon as you hear the new, but oh-so-typical Intro theme as the menu assembles. And then things just get better and better.
The concert footage is simply superb. The TV studio "Sunday" concert only really misses out in one dimension; and that's the possibly impossible to capture effect of being amongst a thousand or so young people with their hearts and brains on fire and screaming for another madrigal or string quartet (! Yup, that's what you got from a Gentle Giant concert hall gig). But a smaller, quieter audience is more than made up for by the exceptionally good camerawork in and around the band on stage. Really good filming for the day, especially in the German segment, is alone worth the price of the set.
The sound quality is magnificent, too. But, most of all, of course, it's the band, the band! God, they look good: obviously enjoying what they do, at the top of their game and playing their hearts out, smiling, grooving. Just beautiful! That "difficult" reputation their music has sometimes borne evaporates the moment Weathers bashes those drums; the guitar duet between Ray Schulman and Gary Green both sounds exquisite and looks as if they're really into it; the percussion work-out on "So Sincere" is even more powerful than I recall (even though we don't get the twinkly lights in the TV studio setting). Gorgeous, gorgeous stuff. Like their oxymoronic name, they could complement the rock-outs with lyrical, Gentle stuff, too; and on this disk, "Funny Ways" in particular stands out. Just get it! Now!
And if anyone else out there has ever felt the urge to induct younger fans into Giant-appreciation (perhaps even younger wives a little cynical about "all that showing-off stuff from your teens"), well, have no fear; this will definitely do the trick. Yes, in the end, what really delights me about this is that it does a superlative musical outfit the justice they deserve. After all these years, here's the proof: they were (and are) the best - and utterly unmatchable live.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
All Of The Above!, 22 Feb 2007
I can only agree with all of the above. I saw Giant around this period and they were simply mindboggling. My only niggle would be about the camera work on the German TV gig. Gary Green is doing a blinding solo and the camera is on Kerry Minnear's fingers! This kind of thing permeates the show. Also the camera would spend time on a face when the fingers are producing amazing stuff; this is paticularly true of Ray Schulman. But despite these niggles it is essential viewing for any Giant fan and indeed any prog-rock fan. It is from an era when musicians were exactly that.
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~ Gentle Giant
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~ Gentle Giant
