Three Friends (1972)
 

1972 was one of the greatest years in rock history. Consider some of the most recently released albums by September of that year (some of these were actually released in late 1971 but I still identify them as coming from '72)

Deep Purple - Machine Head
Led Zeppelin's untitled fourth album (IMO one unbelievably overplayed overblown song from being one of the greatest albums ever made)
Jethro Tull - Thick As A Brick
Yes - Close To The Edge
Wishbone Ash - Argus
Rolling Stones - Exile On Main Street
ELP - Trilogy
Genesis - Foxtrot
Neil Young - Harvest

In other words, some of the best work to come from all of these great bands. About to be released, but not quite out yet, was Black Sabbath Vol. 4. Well, that's a pretty good album but not the best Sabbath album, nearly by consensus, and while most would pick Paranoid my favorite Sabbath album was 1971's Master Of Reality, which in early September of '72 was the most recently released Sabbath album when I went to see them in Memorial Coliseum in Portland (Ozzy was bitching about Vol. 4 not being released all during their set)

Opening that show was a band I'd never heard of named Gentle Giant. We weren't exactly sure what to expect of course. So they get up on the stage, look at each other, then rip off a salvo of tighter-than-fuck riffs from the opening song of what I would discover after the show was their new album, their third release but the first to chart in the US, Three Friends. Then, they all stop on a dime. My friend and I just looked at each other in amazement and at exactly the same time said "TIGHT!", then they launch into Prologue, the appropriately named opening track from Three Friends

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This changed EVERYTHING for me. This is the event that launched me headlong into the world of Progressive Rock, and I've never looked back. This was the greatest and most unlikely opening act I've ever seen, before or since. And I did enjoy Black Sabbath that night, very much so, but leaving the show that night all my thoughts were on obtaining a copy of Three Friends


Three Friends is a concept album, and a brilliantly conceived and executed one at that. The premise of the album is set up in the opening song, Prologue



Of particular note here is the simple little breakdown that starts at 3:02, then builds and builds.

The next track is "Schooldays". This track is just incredible, the way the vocals accentuate each other, the syncopated percussion, the storyline of a simpler life before each of the three friends were separated by the oppresive demands of adulthood.



"How long is ever isn't is strange - Schooldays together why do they change"

Then each of the now-adult friends tells their story

One friend becomes a laborer, a lunchpail workaday blue-collar wage-slave in "Working All Day"



This track ended side one of the vinyl record

Side two opened with the second friend telling his story of becoming an artist, and all the demons and debauchery and a sense of a life wasted that goes with it, in "Peel The Paint". This song was the closest thing to a rocker (although is starts quietly) on Three Friends and was the only track from this album that was performed live on later tours.



The last two tracks of Three Friends are melded together, they can't be played separately without ruining both songs, but before I review them both a note on the CD release. The idiot record company (I forget which one) COMPLETELY fucked up the separation point of the two songs, putting at the 3:23 mark (you can hear this happen in this YouTube). When you listen to this song it will just be unbegoddamlievably fecking obvious. It pisses me off to no fecking end that they not only fucked this up but to this day still stupidly insist that they are right and everyone else in the world is wrong. Idiots. But I digress...

The first section of this incredible medley is the third friend who becomes a "successful" middle-management business executive, "Mr. Class & Quality?" paint a picture of a man who looks down his nose at what he perceives as the lower classes, including his two schoolfriends

"Middleman sees straight ahead and never crosses borders
Never understood the artist or the lazy workers
The world needs steady men like me to give and take the orders
Give and take the orders
Give and take the orders"

This leads to the title track, the epilogue to the story, "Three Friends" (CORRECT timepoint 5:50)

"Once three friends
Sweet in sadness
Now part of their past

In the end
Full of gladness
Went from class to class"

What is most remarkable about this final track is that it is in fact one repeated musical phrase, and is without question the longest such repeated phrase in any music of any genre I'm aware of. The first 28 seconds of "Mr. Class & Quality?" opens with a doubletime tempo of this exact phrase, then once "Three Friends" begins at 5:50 it takes until 6:29 to repeat. This just had me floored back when I first heard this album and it still sends shivers up my spine today.



I've seen there's a poll here on MB about the Gentle Giant discography, I cast the lone vote for Three Friends. Not only is it a great album, but this is the band and the album that changed everything I thought about music. It is unquestionably in my mind the most under-rated Giant release.

I had all of Giant's releases on vinyl. I thought their most underrated was "Acquiring the Taste" but you can make a good case for "Three Friends." "In a Glass House" was another. But then let's face it, this was a horribly underrated band. Ignored by rockers, not fully embraced by the proggers, dismissed by the folkies who went for more "pure" stuff like Steeleye Span. I got to see them open once for Renaissance at Ford Auditorium in Detroit like back in '79 or so. They were phenomenal to say the least. There are very few bands that have that kind of superior writing, musicianship and singing all at the same time. Certainly nothing like it could ever have come out of America.

I also agree that 1972 was an excellent year for rock. Really the period from '70-'73 was great. After that, Kiss showed up and everything began a slow but inexorable decline.

Deep Purple - Machine Head
Led Zeppelin's untitled fourth album (IMO one unbelievably overplayed overblown song from being one of the greatest albums ever made)
Jethro Tull - Thick As A Brick
Yes - Close To The Edge
Wishbone Ash - Argus
Rolling Stones - Exile On Main Street
ELP - Trilogy
Genesis - Foxtrot
Neil Young - Harvest

I had all of those except for the Wishbone Ash. In addition, I had:

Elton John - Honky Chateau
Black Sabbath - Volume 4
David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust
Blue Oyster Cult - Blue Oyster Cult
ZZ Topp - Rio Grande Mud
Lou Reed - Transformer
T. Rex - The Slider
Stephen Stills - Manassas
Captain Beyond (just found it on CD)
Zeit - Tangerine Dream
Gentle Giant - Octopus
King Crimson - Earthbound
Steeleye Span - Below the Salt
Pentangle - Solomon's Seal

That's going through my vinyl collection, which I still have. I bought the Pentangle after seeing them at the Grande Ballroom the year before. I really liked them but the crowd started to boo. Russ Gibb, the owner, stormed out onstage and told everybody to shut up and to show some respect, that these guys came all the way from England to play for us and anyone who didn't like it could leave right now and get their money back but anyone who doesn't leave needs to shut up. Some did leave but most stayed and acted a little more civilized after that. Russ Gibb also owned KEENER radio which started the "Paul is dead" broadcasts that went viral before there was any such thing as going viral. He said it was just a joke inspired by some stoned out kid who called the station and he couldn't believe that it took off the way it did.

Some other great releases from 1972:

David Bowie- The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust...........
Todd Rundgren- Sometime, Anything?
Night Sun- Mournin
Mott the Hoople- All the Young Dudes
Uriah Heep- Demons and Wizards
Randy Newman- Sail Away
Big Star- #1 Record
Captain Beyond- Captain Beyond

As for Gentle Giant I thought Octopus was the better of the two albums that they put out in 1972.:)

A quick update, I've decided to do a catalog review of Gentle Giant. Unlike my Ditty Bops review I won't be starting from the beginning of the catalog, like the Bops review I will be reviewing them in the order in which I heard them. Next up: Octopus

BTW Thank you Pete :)

Looking forward to the reviews and digging in deeper. Embarrassed to say I never heard them until I got involved with the prog rock album club. Love what I have heard so far.

Well I will be using my review of the eponymous 1st album that I posted to TPRAC thread when it becomes time, but I can't over-emphasize what I said there, the 1st album is NOTHING compared to what would come later. IMO they found their greatness on the third album posted above & never let it go until the record executives forced them to dumb their music down in 1977. Not that there's ANYTHING wrong with the DIY movement that was really flourishing then, it just wasn't who Giant was. And their near consensus least favorite of those three last albums is my pick for the only really successful attempt at pop-Giant. I will get to that album last.

Octopus (1972)
 

Having had the life-changing experience of seeing Giant open for Black Sabbath in September 13th, 1972 in Portland I totally immersed myself in Three Friends. However, I was also undergoing some family drama at that time and missed the release of Octopus in December, to me this was a 1973 album. Once I got though all the turmoil of moving out of Mom's house and moving in with my dad, and getting through that awful freshman year of high school, I finally got a chance to pick up a copy of their fourth studio album (although to me at that time it was the second, the first two were not released stateside until after the very moderate success they had in the US starting with the third album).

Octopus is most people's pick for the best Giant album, and while I place Three Friends and The Power And The Glory ever so slightly ahead of it, it is a truly magnificent record and securely placed them in the top echelon of the great Prog bands of the 1970's (although decades would pass before this was widely recognized).

The copy I purchased in 1973 had this cover as it was released in the US

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The top of the "jar" being jigsaw cut where the blue background is in the above image. However, I VASTLY prefer the Roger Dean UK cover

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"There coming over Charaton Bridge / Look do you see the man who is poor but rich"

"The Advent Of Panurge" opens this album and is inspired by "The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel" by 16th century novelist François Rabelais.

Gargantua and Pantagruel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Panurge - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



There was no more "developing" of the Giant style here, it is in full bloom, the nothing-like-it-in-music vocal layering, Minnear's multitudes of keyboards. I never really understood the bridge section with improvised dialog in different languages, but that section would be replaced by an incredible recorder section on future tours, a high point of their amazing shows (this will be reviewed here when I get to their live album)

The second track on the album is "Raconteur, Troubadour"



When I was trying to explain why I loved this album so much to one of my friends in 1973, I described how this song structure reminded me of machinery, how it's beat so wonderfully mechanical. I was met with "oh, you don't want your music to sound mechanical" without even hearing the song or any sense of doing something different than everyone else. And I ran into this a lot in my youth, most of the people I knew had very pedestrian early-'70's taste and almost everybody just thought I was weird. I'm ok with that. :)

Then the closest thing to a rocker on Octopus, "A Cry for Everyone", inspired by the work and beliefs of the Algerian-French writer Albert Camus.



They never really played this on future tours (in fact the entire album would be condensed into a 15-20 minute medley, again this will be reviewed later). I love the round interplay between Keyboardist Minnear and Guitarist Gary Green here. One thing that's the closest thing to a negative on Octopus is here, a fairly clumsy bridge segue that can be found on several songs, as mentioned on the first track. There's a stoppage of everyone but Minnear, who plays a pretty disconnected Synth bridge that somewhat pulls the energy of the song away, but it's short and they get right back on track after.

Then side one concludes with the centerpiece of the album. I have never ever, before or since (with the exception of a track on a future album, the last great studio Giant album) heard any song by any other artist quite like "Knots"



This vocal stylization is all Giant, baby. Plus the melodic percussion. This is the no-doubt-about-it high point of this great album for me. "Knots" is inspired by "The Book Knots" by the Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing.

Side two opens with a laugh and a spinning coin, then the instrumental "The Boys in the Band"



This would be the opening of the Octopus medley that they played on future tours.

Then comes a backhanded ode to their road crew, "Dogs Life"



I have to wonder if they had to hire a new crew after this was released. It is not exactly complimentary. But I love it :)

Then comes, for me, the closest thing to a down moment on Octopus, "Think of Me with Kindness"



I certainly don't mean to sound like this is anything but a lovely lovely ballad, it absolutely is, but I think they have done a better ballad on the first album ("Funny Ways"), and the quiet song on Three Friends (Schooldays) just unmercifully OBLITERATES this. Again I like it, it's not a skipper like many songs on their Pop-Giant albums, but IMO it sits below the level of the rest of this album.

Then the finale



I love the pedal effects Green uses on his guitar on the opening salvo, in fact parts it sound more like Minnear's keyboard than a guitar.

Again, I don't agree with most that this is the absolute greatest Giant album, but it's a solid nine out of the Giant scale ten. Next is a 10/10, The Power and the Glory.

The Power And The Glory (1974)
 

Before I dig into TP&TG a quick reminder that these reviews will not be in a chronological timeline but rather in the order (to the best of my recollection) of which I heard them. There will be some doubt as to this order in future albums but up until the live album (two future reviews from this) there is no question in this regard. This is mainly due to the fact that I'm in the US and three albums were not released stateside until after 1976, including a 1973 album released in Europe but not in my country. Accordingly, the next album that I heard was 1974's The Power And The Glory.

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Most fan polls register either Octopus or TP&TG as Giants best. I place it as #2 behind Three Friends (I appear to be all alone in this). TP&TG is one magnificent album, virtually every Giant fan will agree to this.

The opening song is "Proclamation"



Opening with Minnear's keys, when Derek Shulman begins the first verse, it seems somewhat off beat with what Kerry is playing. It isn't of course, no one in the prog era threw off the time sigs quite like Giant. Once Ray Shulman's bass and John Weathers drums kick in, everything works like clockwork. Then after an instrumental bridge (which was IMO the main thing keeping Octopus out of the top tier Giant for me), they pick up the tempo, then outro into one of the quirkiest (and IMO best) songs in the entire Giant catalog (and that's saying something), "So Sincere"



The track opens with bowed instruments, some playing bowed and some playing pizzicato. This section seems almost impossibly free time, and when the vocals enter this effect only increases. But, after all, this is Gentle Giant, once Weathers enters the song everything fits perfectly. This would become a centerpiece of the future tours, to be reviewed soon.

The next track is the ballad "Aspirations", one of the best pure ballads (I would put "Schooldays" from Three Friends atop that list but I'm not 100% sure I'd call it a ballad), a much MUCH better such ballad IMO than "Think Of Me With Kindness" from Octopus. Just flipping beautiful, but still containing the signature Giant counterpoint and instrumental interplay.



Next comes "Playing The Game" with some incredible round interplay between all the instrumentation. Nobody but Giant, baby. The song appears to be closing at the three minute mark, but they break into a fairly extended bridge section, that effortlessly glides into the last verse and outro. These bridge sections were somewhat of a downfall on Octopus but they're outstanding here.



This ended side one of the vinyl record. Side two began with the frantic "Cogs In Cogs". No one, NO ONE else in rock in the 70's could pull off these kinds of crazy arrangements. Another fantastic bridge section here



Then comes the wonderful "No God's A Man" with incredible roundplay in the voices. I also love Ray Shulman's basswork in the final choruses.



The wild instrumental interplay just keeps coming in "The Face"



This great album closes with "Valedictory", a reprise of "Proclamation". Why wasn't this track named "Proclimation (Reprise)"? Because this is Gentle Giant, that'd be too easy :D



They would next release an album that finally got some VERY moderate radioplay on the AOR stations (at least in Portland), but as usual Giant remained wildly unpopular with most of the Prog fans (BTW the term Prog is relatively recent, we didn't widely use that term in the 1970's), Free Hand will be next

Free Hand (1975)
 

Following the release of TP&TG Giant had changed labels, signing with Chrysalis Records. Up to this point Giant was writing music strictly for their own fulfillment, whether or not it was popular. They succeeded beyond their wildest expectations in that regard, even at the pinnacle of the Prog era, when bands such as Yes, Jethro Tull, and Emerson Lake & Palmer were selling out arenas and selling millions of records, Giant toiled in relative obscurity (In fact I even saw Giant open for Yes in '76 in a 12,000 seat arena in Portland, and while I was blown away, most paid scant attention to their set). Their next offering was a first attempt to be a little more commercially viable, but at the same time staying true to who they were. This would not be the case after 1977.


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Free Hand became the first (and in fact the only) Giant release to crack the US Top 50 album charts at #48. They left the dissonance of songs like "Knots" and "So Sincere" behind, but maintained their trademark Giant arrangements of both instrumentation and vocals, and while few Giant faithful would pronounce Free Hand as their absolute finest work, nearly all would still give it good to very good marks within their amazing catalog. I would give Free Hand a solid 9 on the Giant scale 10.

Free Hand Opens with "Just The Same", fingers snap in a staccato rhythm, Green's guitar and Minnear's keys enter in a counter-rhythm, then drums bass and vocals kick it in what would be unthinkable timing for most bands but par for the course for Giant




Then one of their greatest vocalisms, which is really saying something, "On Reflection" keeps away from the dissonance of songs like "Knots" but is every bit the poly-vocal arrangement and is as signature as any Giant song could ever hope to be. Nobody, NOBODY but Giant could have pulled this off.




And JIC you think this is studio wizardry, they could TOTALLY do this live, as will be demonstrated on my next review.

The next track concludes side one, the title track leaves NOTHING behind in the polyrhythm and evolved arrangement department. The lyrics are a little bitter but this would hardly be the first or last such instance.




Side two begins with maybe the most dated sound on any Giant album, the gameplay sound of pong. Then once the instrumentation of "Time To Kill" begins, full-on classic Giant rhythmic counterpoint here...




Then one of my favorite ballads, done sea-shanty style, in the whole Giant catalog, the gorgeous "His Last Voyage", featuring my pick for the prettiest bass guitar track ever laid down on tape




Then the magnificent instrumental "Talybont", done in medieval style. Again, no one else in music does it like Giant




This great album concludes with another flawless track, "Mobile"




After Free Hand was released, record company executives began sticking their filthy money-grubbing hands into Giant's affairs, Free Hand started to sell a little but bands like Yes, Tull, and ELP were making millions and Giant was still unprofitable. This will be reflected two reviews from now on an album which was released in 1976 but somehow missed by your humble author. The next album I would experience would be a 1977 double-record live album, one of the least produced, truest to the concert experience live albums ever made, and one which told the young Paul Smeenus that there were as yet undiscovered albums in the Giant catalog. Playing The Fool is next

I didn't want to include these in the main review, but I found two student performances of songs from Free Hand that I wanted to post here, something that NEVER would have occurred in the 1970's, demonstrating that great music, even if unpopular during the artist's time, eventually finds it's way to recognition

Playing The Fool (1977)
 

Most live albums aren't nearly as "live" as they appear, there is still a ton of mixing, editing, splicing, filtering, so on and so forth that takes place before the final master disc is made. Other than Joe Jackson's 1986 masterpiece Big World I can't think of any live album that more perfectly abandons this process than Gentle Giant's "Official LIVE" album Playing The Fool

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Not only is there no edits or overdubs, there are even a few (not many) mistakes left on the record. When you spin Playing the Fool you are getting a 100% accurate representation of a Giant performance.

Additionally, they arrangements of these songs, nearly without exception, are an actual LIVE version of the songs and not just a copy and paste performance of the studio versions. An outstanding example comes right on the opening track, merging "Just The Same" from Free Hand with "Proclamation" from The Power And the Glory



"Just The Same" appears to end at 5:27, but then they kick in a reprise, then segue into "Proclamation", then at 9:39 break into "Valedictory", the reprise of "Proclamation" on TP&TG. Masterful.

I stated in my previous review that I would demonstrate in *this* review how they could totally pull off "On Reflection" live and THEN SOME. Well, they start out sounding more like a chamber orchestra than a rock band, recorder, bowed instrumentation and melodic percussion join in an arrangement not appearing on Free Hand, then break into the ridiculously difficult vocals at 2:30. And here's also an example of how this album is presented raw, unfinished and uncut, somebody's microphone is buzzing like a motherfucker at this point. Then at 4:11, rather than the bridge section that appears on the studio version, they segue into the same arrangement that opens the track but on rock instrumentation. Then at the 6:00mark, maybe the greatest ending I've ever heard to any song, by anybody, ever



Side two begins with the Octopus album, brilliantly condensed to 15 minutes



The arrangement here are just fucking *sick*. One thing I didn't realize was that at the 5:06 point in part 1 they break away from Octopus and play a section of "Acquiring The Taste", the title song from an album I didn't know at that time existed as it was one of three albums that had not been released stateside. When I first spun PtF I just thought it was a lovely part of the arrangement. This was the first such example on PtF that there were albums I had not heard, even though I was unaware of it at that time.

On my review of Octopus earlier in this thread I mention how they would replace the odd bridge of "The Advent of Panurge" with a brilliant recorder section, this begins at 2:32 of part 2. And I also mentioned earlier in *this* review that the (incredibly rare) mistakes were left in, and there are two in part two here, on on a recorder at 3:21 and another on bass at 4:13. When you're *this* good live, you can live with tiny imperfections as these

Then, the first time that I became 100% certain there were albums I had yet to discover was the first time I heard the next song, a brilliantly performed version of "Funny Ways" from what I would discover later was their real first album (up to this point I thought Three Friends was their first album)



Then, more such realization opened side three

"This album was called "In a Glass...House!"

Now, not only was I perfectly certain there were albums I hadn't heard yet, I had a title of one of them. I assumed "Funny Ways" wasn't on In a Glass House or it would've been in this medley, so I knew by this point there were at least two albums I hadn't heard.



"The Runaway" melds into"Experience" at 3:55. At this time I'm thinking to myself that I need and I do mean NEED to find these albums. We didn't have the internet in 1977 (or Al Gore for that matter) so that search would have to be done in my local record stores

The next song on side three I'd heard live before, when they opened for Yes the previous summer, this incredible arrangement of "So Sincere" from The Power and The Glory



Love every minute of this, from the faithful-to-the-record opening, to the thoroughly rocked-up chorus (without the vocals) to the incredible extended percussion outro, with everybody playing different drums melding together as one, then into mallet/melodic xylophone/glock again with everyone on their own instrument, then one by one they go back to their own drum. Sensational, no one else in music could do it like Giant.

Side four opens with the title track from Free Hand, with a rocked-up bridge section featuring great guitar work from Gary Green



The album concludes with something familiar, "Peel The Paint" from the Three Friends album (I wish they played more of this album but alas, they didn't) but not for very long, "Peel The Paint" quickly gives way to another song from yet another album I hadn't heard yet. I really don't know how I missed "Interview", unlike the first two albums and In a Glass House, Interview was released here in the US, but somehow I just missed it. In any case, I Lost My Head concludes this great live album. All of the great Prog bands of the 1970's released multiple disc live albums, Yes, Tull, Genesis, EL&P, but I'd take this live album over any and all of them.

From this point forward, I'm a little hazy on the order of discovery, so I will review them chronologically. The last Giant studio album was definitely the last Giant album I heard, the albums between this live album and the final studio album may or may not be in the order I heard them. And a couple of the reviews will not be positive. The next one will be positive with a few reservations, their eponymous first album, which I will copy from another thread and paste here next. Coming up, in minutes, the first album.

Gentle Giant (1970)
 

The following was posted to the Prog Rock Album Club thread, although I notice now that I will need to insert YouTube vids:

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I asked for membership here last summer and haven't posted here since. TBH I think about it from time to time but generally I tend to have difficulty writing in a scripted, template format. And I won't be doing so today. But the topic is Gentle Giant, and I could write an encyclopedia on this topic (if it wasn't so difficult for me to type). So I will post here now.

My first reaction to this when Neapolitan linked me to the above post last night in plug was "That's the wrong Giant album". Not that their first album is a poor album by any stretch, on the contrary, had they never released an album from 1972 on I would think of them as a fine second tier progressive rock band. It's just that what they released between 1972-1976 IMO places Giant in the same discussion as the Tull-Yes-ELP-Genesis prog rock icons of the 1970's.

Since the topic of this discussion is the eponymous first album, I will review it as I see it. It displays the brilliance of arrangement, the multi-instrumentality that none of the other prog behemoths of the era could hope to attain, and the layered vocal style that would become their trademark, but it does lack the cohesion of that form that they so brilliantly honed through the pinnacle of their career. They even discuss this on their last great album (before money-driven record executives forced them to become more "pop", which produced two IMO terrible albums and one, their final album, which to my ears succeeded in melding the trademark Giant sound in a more commercially viable song structure, even though to a man the members find Civilian their worst album, I disagree, I think it's pretty good and do play it from time to time, but I digress...). From the title song of the Interview album:

"What can we tell you?
At the beginning had no direction,
Any other way
After the fourth one, realization,
Finding our road, the same as if today"

(I disagree with one element of that lyric, I think Giant truly found their legs on the third album, Three Friends, which I reviewed here)

The opening track is "Giant". We start with Kerry Minnear playing a Hammond style organ, softly leading into the full band. This is a perfect example of what I've been saying about the rudimentary Giant sound, the elements in place but not yet fully realized in the cohesive form that would follow. I like it for what it is but knowing what was ahead it comes off as comparatively ham-fisted. I don't mean that as a knock, they just hadn't fully crafted their arrangements yet.



IMO the best song off their first album, and one of the only if not *the* only song from this initial offering that was performed live throughout their career is the ballad "Funny Ways". And when I say performed live I mean faithfully, as laid down in these grooves (I have this album on vinyl and I'm listening to the transfer as I type here). This song is the one flawless track off this first album IMO.



Next is "Alucard". Again, the prototypical Giant form is apparent, the unique Giant layered vocal style makes it's first appearance on this track. The biggest problem for me with "Alucard" is that there is a kind of annoying dissonance to parts of the song that keeps me from really enjoying it. Dissonance would become a Giant trademark on future albums, songs like "Knots" and "Design" would make absolutely brilliant use of it, but again here it's not fully developed.



"Isn't It Quiet And Cold" might've found it's best fit on 1973's "In A Glass House". I really like the use of violin, especially the pizzicato sections. Their first featured use of percussive melodic instrumentation such as xylophone and glockenspiel appear in this track.



"Nothing At All" would be in the level of "Funny Ways" on this album were it not for the decision to place an extended drum solo ala "Moby Dick" as an extremely clumsy bridge section. It just doesn't work. I'd love a chance to edit that section out. What were they thinking?



(a quick sidebar on drummers. Martin Smith, who sadly passed in 1997, is the man behind the skins on the first two albums, Malcolm Mortimore takes over on the watershed third album, and from the fourth album forward the drummer was John "Pugwash" Weathers, an outstanding musician but maybe the ugliest man in music history)

The next track is "Why Not". This is again decent enough but suffers from the same under-developed nature as most of this first record. It has a lovely mid-section and the first use of recorders (this type of recorder) that would become a mainstay of future albums and in particular future tours, I was fortunate enough to catch two of those tours (1972 and 1976). Then they unfortunalely meld into a blues outro that just doesn't fit at all



The album concludes with "The Queen", their rendition of "God Save The Queen". This was shortly after Woodstock and the famous Hendrix rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner", so I guess this is Giant doing some kind of tribute to that. TBH they should've left this track on the cutting room floor.



"Gentle Giant" is not where I would recommend starting for someone new to this great prog rock band, but I would recommend it over anything from 1977's "The Missing Piece" or especially 1978's "Giant For A Day". Start with "Three Friends" (review linked to earlier in this review), then dig into all the masterpieces that followed, "Octopus", "In A Glass House", and "The Power And The Glory". Then just below those but still brilliant, "Free Hand" and "Interview" (which does contain one very skippable track but is otherwise outstanding). They also released one of the best (and definitely least overdubbed) live albums ever made in "Playing The Fool". There have since been many DVD's released, I have "Giant On The Box" and it's amazing.

How cool is that? I remember doing lame "wildfire" or whatever covers in student music performance.

Acquiring The Taste (1971)
 

Giant's second album was a significant leap forward in their development of what they would become from 1972 forward, they didn't make most of the inconsistencies that kept their first album down a notch from their pre-1977 catalog. In fact they proclaim in the liner notes:

They succeeded in every way possible on this, including their staggering unpopularity.

http://www.cdmail.fr/medias/9443/94/...41369443xr.jpg


This is a deliberately suggestive cover, the only sex joke I've ever known Giant to make. The unfolded cover reveals that it's a peach, not a butt

http://www.blazemonger.com/w/images/.../300px-Att.gif


The opening track, "Pantagruel's Nativity" (like "The Advent of Panurge" from Octopus, inspired by the books of "Gargantua and Pantagruel" by François Rabelais) is easily good enough to have been included on any subsequent album between Octopus and Free Hand IMO. The Giant trademark style is completely in place here




The use of discord becomes vastly more developed from the first album on "Edge of Twilight", a little short of offerings such as "Knots", So Sincere" or "Design" but still pretty damn close

I could use the usual music-over-album-cover YouTube here but I found a Muppets video & I just HAD to use it




Next is "The House, The Street, The Room", this is one majorly tripped out song with a bridge section that's about as heavy as Giant would ever be. NIGHTMARISH fan vid here, kinda Carroll meets Lovecraft animated by Tim Burton minus the production values




On the original vinyl record, the title track opened with one of those happy-accident things, a tape splicing error that started Minnear's keys below pitch, then the note bends upward to the correct pitch. I am accustomed to this opening and I looked for a YouTube that contained it. I was only able to find the "fixed" version that just sounds weird to me, but it was only about a second of the song anyway. This is a majorly lovely little outro to side one, and is used in the aforementioned "Excerpts From Octopus" track on Playing The Fool (but on two guitars played by Gary Green and Ray Shulman)




Side two opens with "Wreck", a good arrangement but the sea shanty element to this doesn't work *nearly* as well as the previously reviewed "His Last Voyage" from Free Hand, an example of how this album was oh-so-close to the fully developed Giant but juuuust barely short. I do love the recorder bridge but not so much the fade-out that leads into it, a little lazy by Giant standards




Another almost-developed-but-just-a-little-short track follows, "The Moon Is Down", this is still really good

*EDIT: I'm out of my fucking mind, this is one of the best songs on the album. Carry on...




The exact same thing can be said for "Black Cat", the bridge section being my favorite part but I enjoy the whole piece




The album concludes with "Plain Truth", like a lot of AtT it's really good but just a notch below what they would produce on the albums between 1972-1976. There is an instrumental bridge section that goes on a little long IMO. Also, I don't know if I would've used it as a final track, as good as AtT is there is a lack of "flow" that would be found on subsequent albums.




Their next album (Three Friends) completed the development of their unique sound and style which they never let go until 1977 when a failed attempt commercialism reared it's ugly head. The next album that was released in the UK but not stateside, and the best such at-the-time undiscovered record by my favorite widely hated prog band of the day, came out in 1973 but I didn't hear it until the end of that decade. In A Glass House review will be next.

This is some pretty significant news on the Giant front

The Power And The Glory (5.1 & 2.0 Steven Wilson Mix):Amazon.co.uk:Music

Just wanted to put it out there: This is a great thread, Paul. I've had to pleasure of talking to you a number of times in Plug, but had not gotten around to reading this thread. Keep up the great work! Interesting content in here, and its not only limited to you talking about the albums, but also shows and other interesting experiences. Love the thread on a great and unfortunately very underrated band. Keep it up.

Thank you Cicatrice. :)

As for Giant being underrated, that was certainly true in their own time but as time passed their music held up extremely well and they are now considered to be right at the apex of the progressive rock of their time. Their great albums (I have 2 more to review before I have to dig into their falures) sell every bit as well now as the other great prog albums of the day such as Yes, Tull, Genesis & EL&P. The buzz surrounding the Steven Wilson remix of TP&TG is large & that will really do well.

In A Glass House (1973)
 

When I first heard the amazing live album "Playing The Fool", side three opened with Derek Shulman proclaiming "This album was called...In A Glass...House!" followed by the sound of glass breaking, then more and more until it became a clattering rhythm. I was stunned, what? There's a Giant album I haven't heard? The quest was on to find this album, as what was playing on that third side of the live album was outstanding.

http://www.progarchives.com/progress...1617102008.jpg


So the album was found in the import bins (their stateside label at the time, Columbia Records, rejected IAGH on grounds that they felt it was not commercially viable, which was why I never heard of it until PtF came out years later) and it became one of my absolute favorites. In fact, mainly on the strength of worldwide sales but also US import sales plus domestic sales once it was finally pressed stateside in 1978, IAGH remains the top selling Giant album, even exceeding Free Hand (although the announced release of the Steven Wilson remix of TP&TG may have an impact on this).

Another thing I didn't know was that this was the first album after the departure of Phil Shulman, not TP&TG as I'd previously thought. I never made a big deal out of this because, well, they didn't seem to miss him, at least from my perspective. They sounded like the magnificent Giant with or without him. However, for that reason, many members of Giant were not pleased with IAGH at first.

"The Runaway" opens the album as it did side three of PtF




Love this, every minute of it, in particular the recorder bridge

Then, one of the great, most ambitious tracks in the entire Giant catalog, although it doesn't make that apparent on an initial listen, "An Inmate's Lullaby". What makes this track unique in all the Giant collection is that there are ONLY melodic percussive instruments. No bass, no guitar, no violin, no woodwind, but interestingly enough no trap drum either. Well, there is a bit of a reprise of the final notes of"The Runaway", but about eight seconds in the main body of the song starts. The only drum per se are kettle drums, used melodically.

I'm actually going to post two YouTube's of this amazing piece, first the standard music-over-album-cover tube here




But also this version, which really captures the theme of this song but does so in an extremely disturbing way. Graphic images in this fan vid




"Way of Life" picks up the pace next, and then some. This track closes side one with an eerie extended organ outro




Side two opens with "Experience", the other song I'd already heard from the live album. Minnear's keys begin the piece, but midpoint this becomes a rocker, kicking it up in an incredible transition from their trademark medieval hybrid to hard driving guitar rock




Next comes the album's quiet moment, and a wonderful one at that, "A Reunion". Any other band would've hired a string section to pull this off, only Giant could do it themselves




The title track closes this great album, what can I say about this track that I haven't been saying all through this thread, it is prog perfection




At this point in 1973 they had a few years of creative brilliance left in them. My next review will be the last one, then sadly I'll have to discuss how they went horribly wrong. But thankfully I have one great effort left to review, Interview is next

Brilliant thread now that I've had a bit of time to go through all the reviews again. As far as GG are concerned, I'm in that minority camp that considers Acquiring The Taste to be their best album from start to finish, followed by The Power & The Glory and perhaps Free Hand. Then again, I'm just a sucker for anything with a haunting atmosphere, and ATT has a lot of that.

As I mentioned to you before, you should definitely check out U.S. band Advent and their album Cantus Firmus from 2006 if you want to hear what GG might have done in the neo-prog. era. I'll be keeping an eye on your new reviews in the meantime. :D

Here's a link for your convenience: http://advent-prog.bandcamp.com/album/cantus-firmus

^ Thanks Antie. :)

In a way I'm kinda dreading my next review, it's the last of the great Giant albums, after that it's my sad duty to cover the pop-Giant. :(

I'm in an even bigger minority that picks 3F as my favorite...

I just wanna throw this out there. The first XTC album I heard was English Settlement, my reaction (other than loving it) was that this sounded like what pop-Giant might've evolved into given enough time. I'm talking about their post 1977 output here.

Interview (1976)
 

By 1976 Giant had been at it for 6 years, working so hard in such obscurity, endlessly touring as opening acts for bands that were earning millions and millions, many significantly less talented, while they were plugging away making a living wage and not much more than that. In addition the entire Prog genre was receiving mounting criticism and scorn from the by-now fully developed DIY movement (and in many cases rightly so). Out of this comes their last great studio album, Interview.

http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2..._Interview.jpg


Interview is considered by many a concept album, I guess you could call it that but I tend to think of it as a theme album (IMO there is a difference). The title of the album, and the opening track, explains the entire theme (or concept if you prefer), they are being interviewed. And they really let the interviewer have a piece of their mind.

The title track opens with some of the ANGRIEST tones and lyrics in the entire Giant catalog. The music still comes first, of course, they accentuate the loud pissed-off verses with delicate instrumental fills. But make no mistake, they are fed up with every stupid question they've been asked all over the world for the past 6 years. There is even an instrumental bridge beginning at 3:27 that appears to reflect the dolting, slack-jawed idiocy of the music press, more dumb questions being whispered behind the goofy notes




The anger of the title track gives way to tired resignation in "Give It Back", the full trademark Giant instrumental interplay and off-time signatures are all here, especially in the bridge section, the lyrics overshadow this with a palpable frustration




The resignation gives way to utter despair in the centerpiece of the album, one my absolute favorites in all the Giant catalog. "Design" IMO outdoes even "Knots" and "So Sincere" as to the signature Giant dissonance. Interesting to notice that the pre-MTV performance videos that were made for many of the songs on this album were not made for "Design", I'm certain that they knew this track had zero chance of any wide mainstream acceptance, yet they made this the centerpiece, ending side one. This is simply great art for the sake of it. And without question, "Design" is depressing. Great art very frequently is.

"As Years Drift By / And Future Dies"




I can't even begin to explain the love that I have for this piece of music.


Unfortunately, side two opens with the first song in the entire Giant collection (since "The Queen" at least) that I didn't like at all, on any level (although in my next two reviews there will be an abundance of this). "Another Show" is just BITTER. Yes, they had been unmercifully touring touring for six years with very little return in investment, and they were sick of it (even losing one of their members, the third Shulman, Phil, in the process), and I get that the music is meant to reflect that, but OMG is this song unpleasant to listen to. Their chops are all still there, but yikes...




Fortunately the next track is wonderful, "Empty City"




"Timing" is another solid track, reflecting the good-news-offset-by-bad-news story that was their entire career




"I lost My Head" closes this last great Giant album, and the live album aside this is the last truly great song Giant ever released. Absolutely love this, especially the way it stomps on the LOUD pedal at 3:03




Up next, my sad duty to review the single most disappointing album of my life, The Missing Piece.

The Missing Piece(1977)
 

So by now it's September, 1977. I'm 19 years old, living at my mom's house in Northeast Portland, reading the Portland newspaper (they were delivered to your front porch everyday, they looked like this)

http://imgick.oregonlive.com/home/ol...f3ac279bcc.png

(JIC some of you younger folks don't know, they've since kinda gone the way of the phone booth)

...so as I peruse, an ad from a nearby record store catches my eye...There's a new Gentle Giant album!

I drop the paper, run out to my bicycle, and pedal like mad for about a 5 mile round trip, then arrive back home with a copy of the latest Giant album, The Missing Piece

http://rocks.studio-web.net/sibu/gg/120811-05.jpg


I slit the cellophane, pull out the inner sleeve, carefully pull out the record, gently place it on the spindle, and cue up the tonearm to the lead in groove to the opening track, "Two Weeks In Spain". I am fully prepared to be astounded...




Huh? WTF? I'm sitting there all through the three minutes, waiting for this song to start being Giant and stop being boring. It never happens. This is the worst Giant song I'd ever heard. Surely the next track, "Turning Around", will be better




So by this time I'm just sitting there slack jawed. Two dumb songs in a row. They had never disappointed me before, but I'm sorry, this is crap. They sound like they've dumbed their music down, like they want to get radio play. BORE-RING. Ok, *surely* they'll snap out of it on the next track, what's the name? (checks album cover) "Betcha Thought We Couldn't Do It". Uh-oh, that doesn't sound good....




You're right, I definitely thought you couldn't put out boring crap like this. They think, *think*, they're being punk. Not even close. They stopped being who they were and were trying to be someone else, and that just about never works. And it certainly isn't working now. From this point forward I have no expectation of hearing anything good from my favorite band.

The next song continues the crapfest, "Who Do You Think You Are"




Yawn. What'd I pay for this record again?

Next up, "Mountain Time". Zzzzzz




I don't remember for certain, but I don't even think I turned the album over. Eventually I did listen to side two, and it's not as awful as side one, but still not very good. It sounds like Giant trying to be Giant at the jump-the-shark point of their career, "As Old As You're Young"




The best song on this album, without a doubt, "Memories of Old Days", still isn't as good as anything on Interview, "Another Show" included, but it's better than anything else on this gawdawful album.



Another failed attempt at the more classic Giant follows, "Winning". They sound like a parody of their former selves here



The closing track is the only other track that kinda works in the traditional Giant style, "For Nobody", this is actually pretty good, I like the attempt at signature Giant vocal layering but the phase-shifting effects really detract from it. The overall effect is too little too late...




Two albums left to review. As bad as The Missing Piece is, their next was the absolute nadir of their career, by near unanimous consensus. The only Giant album I've never even owned a copy of, Giant For A Day, is, sadly, next

Giant For A Day (1978)
 

This came out when I was living in Bamberg, West Germany on active duty in the Army. I was informed by friends and family not to even bother with this one, it made The Missing Piece seem like Octopus. Wise advise, this. I never bought a copy, I have never owned this album, & I will make this short and sweet. This album is BAAAAAAD.

http://www.hardrockheavymetal.com/ja...tlegiant12.jpg

Of particular note, the STUPID album cover suggests that you are encouraged to destroy it to make a cardboard mask out of it. It would be vastly more entertaining than listening to it.

Side One

"Words From The Wise": Crap




"Thank You": Dreck




"Giant For A Day": Poo




The one, the ONLY kinda/sorta good song on this embarrassment, "Spooky Boogie"




"Take Me": Shit




Side Two

"Little Brown Bag": Just an inch better than the previous attempts at straight-up rock & roll, still horrid tho




"Friends": John "Pugwash" Weathers only song, not as terrible as most of this album, sounds a lot like pre-XTC actually. It's ok




"No Stranger": Excrement




"It's Only Goodbye": Meh




"Rock Climber": Nope, this doesn't work either. Thankfully it concludes this abortion of a Gentle Giant album




There is one album left to review, and while the members of Giant hate it I think it is the only successful attempt at Pop-Giant. Civilian is next

Love this thread Paul. Nice work! Just picked up "Three friends" on vinyl today for $15, in really good shape. As you explained, it's the cover from the UK self titled debut, not the other cover. Loving this band.

^ Just for the love of God don't get TMP or GFAD

:laughing:

I'll save those for last.

Lmao, that mask is amazing. Did GG want people who bought GFAD to follow the instructions and then get mistaken for serial killers? :rofl:

Civilian (1980)
 

By 1979 Giant gave it one more try, surely they could do better than the near-total disaster that was Giant For A Day. The band picked up their entire act, moved it to LA and hooked up with the famed Geoff Emerick, and recorded what turned out to be their final album, Civilian

https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2519/3...74311609db.jpg


(I think the way the band name and album title are melded as one in this album cover is very clever, a MAJOR improvement over the STUPID cover for the previous album)

The idea behind the move was Derek Shulman's, who by this time had effectively become the band's manager, and who saw the US as the last, best hope at commercial viability. Many of the band members didn't like the move, most notably Kerry Minnear and Derek's brother Ray. This discomfort led to a general dissatisfaction with the album (Kerry Minnear was pleased with it) and eventually the band.s dissolution shortly after the album's release.

Like the two albums that preceded it, Civilian is nearly unrecognizable as the trademark Giant form that I had so fallen in love with 8 years earlier. Unlike those two albums, at least to my ears, this time they pulled the stripped-down straight-ahead style off. Don't get me wrong here, Civilian is not even CLOSE to any album between the eponymous debut and the great live double-album, at all, but it *is* IMO the one successful attempt at Pop-Giant, and I do enjoy the album on that level. I hadn't listened to a MINUTE of The Missing Piece or Giant For A Day for YEARS before posting the above reviews, but I've spun the songs from Civilian the entire time. The members of the band may not like it but I do.

Some consider Civilian a concept album, but I don't. I think the "concept" (some kind of futuristic Brave-New-World society) was cooked up after the fact, I don't believe they went to the studio with this plan.

The album opens with "Convenience (Clean And Easy)", pretty clearly a comment on American culture.This is a very good rocker IMO




Another good rock song follows, "All Through The Night"




The next song is the GORGEOUS ballad, "Shadows On The Street". This would definitely be a strong candidate for one of my ATF songs to sing, due almost entirely to the bridge/chorus (hard to say which) that starts at 1:55, just beautiful




Giant has always proclaimed that the decision to attempt to record simpler, more potentially commercially viable songs was a mutual band decision. I've personally believed that was a half-truth, that they were under pressure from the record execs to sell some damn records. My evidence for this is the next track, "Number One" which ends side one.




Side two opens with a KILLER rocker, "Underground"




Yet another fine rock song, "I Am A Camera"




As much as I enjoy every single song on Civilian, my absolute no-doubt-about-it favorite follows, "Inside Out"




The vinyl record concluded with "It's Not Imagination"




...which, as the final note fades, leads into a few samples much in the same way that In A Glass House did, saying the prophetic words "That's All There Is". Thus ends the great career of the mighty Gentle Giant, with a couple missteps near the end that in NO WAY tarnish all the magnificent music they made. (If you got a reissued CD there was a bonus track , but I don't really like it, plus I think it's revisionism anyway and will not include it in this review).

As for what became of them after the 1980 breakup, I will quote Wikipedia

"Following the dissolution of the band, Derek Shulman went on to a highly successful career in the organisational side of the music business (initially promotion and artist development for PolyGram, followed by A&R at Mercury, becoming president of Atco Records, after which he became President of Roadrunner Records. He now is the owner of new music company 2Plus Music & Entertainment). Ray Shulman moved into soundtrack work for television and advertising before becoming a record producer (working with, amongst others, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Sundays, and The Sugarcubes). He has written soundtracks for computer games, as well as producing DVDs for artists such as Genesis and Queen.

John Weathers went on to drum for Man (an association that lasted until 1996) and most recently was spotted playing drums for Glenn Cornick's Wild Turkey again (2006). Gary Green (having settled in America, near Chicago) went on to play with various Illinois bands (including Blind Dates, The Elvis Brothers, Big Hello, and Mother Tongue) and guest on recordings and at concerts by Eddie Jobson and Divae. Kerry Minnear returned to the UK and settled in Cornwall, spending many years working in gospel music. He now runs Alucard Music, the organization supervising the legal and royalty issues regarding Gentle Giant's music.

Phil Shulman retired entirely from the music business following his time in Gentle Giant. He subsequently worked as a teacher, in retail, and ran a gift shop in Gosport, Hampshire, UK before his retirement. He was briefly in a band with his son Damon Shulman and recorded several pieces with him. Several of these (under the collective title of Then) were spoken-word pieces in which he reminisced about his upbringing in the Glasgow slums. One of these pieces - Rats - appeared on Damon Shulman's solo album In Pieces and can be heard as an audio stream on Damon Shulman's homepage and MySpace page (made available in April 2008).

Original Gentle Giant drummer Martin Smith settled in Southampton and drummed with various bands there - he died on March 2, 1997. Second Gentle Giant drummer Malcolm Mortimore has continued to work as a successful sessions drummer in the rock, jazz, and theatre fields."


As for reunions:


"Despite having seen many of their progressive rock contemporaries reunite for moneyspinning tours, Gentle Giant are notable for having consistently refused to reunite as a full band. In 1997, the Gentle Giant fanbase unsuccessfully attempted to persuade the members to perform a reunion concert. Reasons cited by members for their rejection include busy schedules, health problems, lack of practice on instruments, and other personal reasons. Asked about a possible reunion in 1995, Phil Shulman replied "we lead such disparate lives now and different lifestyles, different attitudes... I think it's impossible."[18] In 1998, Ray Shulman asserted "For me and Derek, the disruption to our lives now, I can't see how it would be worth it. It would be very difficult. The whole process would take such a long time and you would have to give up what ever you are doing. We both have careers independent of GG.

There have been two partial reunions, both featuring between two and four of the band members and with neither event being identified as a formal reunion of Gentle Giant. The first of these took place in 2004 and the second in 2008 (developing further in 2009).

The 2004 partial reunion featured four former Gentle Giant members - Kerry Minnear, John Weathers, Gary Green, and Phil Shulman (who only participated as a lyricist). This quartet reunited as a studio-only project solely in order to record three new compositions for the Scraping The Barrel box set ("Home Again", "Moog Fugue", and "Move Over"). There was no live activity and the quartet disbanded immediately after the recordings.

A 2008 partial reunion involved the creation of a new band called Rentle Giant in order to play Gentle Giant material. This band featured two other former members of Gentle Giant (guitarist Gary Green and drummer Malcolm Mortimore) who recruited three noted jazz-fusion musicians to complete the band - Roger Carey (bass and vocals, from Liane Carroll's band), Andy Williams (guitar, collaborator with Carey in the Engine Clutch And Gearbox trio), and John Donaldson (piano and keyboards). Green also contributed lead vocals to some of the songs. In March 2009, Green and Mortimore were joined by a third Gentle Giant member - Kerry Minnear - and Rentle Giant consequently changed its name to Three Friends. At the same time, the band expanded to a seven-piece by adding current 10cc vocalist Mick Wilson as dedicated lead singer. About six months later, it was announced that Minnear was leaving the band for personal reasons, and that Three Friends planned to continue as a six-piece. Minnear later revealed that the split was amicable and that he had left for reasons of respect (as the Shulman brothers had "not been particularly enthusiastic" about the existence of Three Friends). [24] Carey, Williams and Donaldson have subsequently left the band and been replaced by Lee Pomeroy (bass), Gary Sanctuary (keyboards) and Charlotte Glasson (violin, sax).

Minnear has also recently announced plans for him to collaborate with Ray Shulman on a new writing project."

Giant On The Box DVD
 

This is part of the excellent DVD, the 1975 Long Beach CA made-for-TV performance (the other part being a German TV appearance)

Sight And Sound DVD
 

From the 1978 tour, opens with the crappy "Two Weeks In Spain" but has a lot of great stuff too

^ To *the* Gentle Giant???

So, what'd you post once you got past the 15th?


Could this, and the previous post, be deleted please? Thank you

I went through my review and fixed a mess of old, broken links, whether or not anyone cares is a separate issue.

We care Paul. It might look like we don't, but deep, deep down, we care a lot. You bet we care a lot.

I'm long overdue for another GG binge, so I'm glad this thread reminded me of them.

Have you heard "Live on the King Biscuit Flower Hour"? It rivals "Live - Playing The Fool" as my favourite live album of theirs.

Thanks grindy, this is excellent

"A Reunion" off the In A Glass House album, covered by Rob Martino on Chapman Stick

repaired more broken links

Boy do I have a lot of catching up to do. I love "In a Glass House"!