Quote:
Originally Posted by Trollheart
Re Gentle Giant: If you look back I did a whole feature on them during the 1970 segment and came to the conclusion that they were very good, but just not good enough to command my attention. The fact that they only became retrospectively famous, as it were, kind of backs that up. I think they tried to be too much, all things to all men sort of thing. I just couldn't see the attraction at all. Kind of like a lot of early Yes or ELP maybe. Just one of those bands.
As for Can, well, you know me and Krautrock/experimental stuff, is all I'll say. I really struggled with that one though.
Thanks for reading, both of you!  |
Gentle Giant are an important band for me because they were one of the first bands I got really into when I delved deeper into the genre.
The thing about them is that their music is very condensed, unlike most prog bands their songs are relatively short, In a Glass House is their longest track and it's only 8 and a half minutes, which for a prog band is hardly epic length.
Yet their songs have just as much going on as any 20 minute Yes epic, but Yes will let a piece of music breath and different parts build up to each other, Gentle Giant on the other hand don't like to dwell on anything too long, they compress all of their ideas into these little mini-epics which now that I think about it is something Cardiacs also did a lot, they probably had more in common with GG than any other prog band. Their music is very erratic and that's also big part of their appeal at least for me.
I think they are long overdue for some kind of rediscovery, whether it be because of reissues or the YouTube algorithm or being referenced in some popular piece of media or Pitchfork or some other music site revaluating their work. They have already had that happen to them a little bit because of their songs being sampled by popular hip hop acts like Madlib, A Tribe Called Quest and Run the Jewels but I don't think it will end there.
Much of the modern indie scene right now is art pop, progressive pop, anything that's "quirky" and Gentle Giant fit that mold better than any of their peers. I think it's only a matter of time before some popular indie act cites them as an influence.