(((O))) Review: Gentle Giant – Playing the Fool: The Complete Live Experience

Part of the joy that brings in the celebration and wonders into capturing a band in its live performance, you can witness it by closing your eyes and imagine yourself, being at the venue, watching these five musicians pour their heart and souls to audiences who had been there with them originally as a six piece since their formation in 1970. But it also shows a complete re-imagining detail of Gentle Giant’s European tour from September to October 1976.

This 2-CD set consists the wonder of the band’s amazement as the way they were meant to be during the time they were promoting their eighth studio album Interview. Originally released on the Chrysalis label in the UK, Capitol in the US, and on the Alucard label, Playing The Fool: The Complete Live Experience is the band’s power and glory to give the venues they played in Europe, a night that fans will talk about in the years to come.

Most of the recordings took place in Paris, Belgium, and Germany from September to October that same year in 1976 when Italian prog maestros Banco del Mutuo Soccorso opened for them when they were promoting their sixth album As in a Last Supper (Come in un’ultimta cena), released on ELP’s label, Manticore Records. When you have two bands like that in the same bill, that’s a combination like no other.

The live recordings have been remastered and remixed by Dan Bornemark, a musician from Sweden, is one of Gentle Giant’s active and loyal fans to the band’s music. He helped out with the 2-CD set Under Construction and the 4-CD box set Scraping the Barrel. He’s also in a band called Egentilgen Giant, a Swedish progressive rock group that celebrates Giant’s legacy.

For Bornemark to step into the shoes of remixing the live album, this was a big leap for him to step into that role to revisit the missing piece that were left from the cutting room floor including Derek’s banters when he would talk to the audience from the venues the band were playing. Listening to this live album, you feel the power, the glory, the vibrance, the complex time signatures, blues, wah-wah pedals, medieval grooves, folky arrangements, this was a band that were often under the radar, but bringing clarity to the world.

They go through classics ranging from albums such as In a Glass House, Free Hand, their sole self-titled debut album, Octopus, and the title track from Interview. There’s a lot of chemistry between the quintet as each play their parts very well. Whether it’s the fiery take of ‘Timing’, featuring the late, great Ray Shulman’s incredible violin work where he uses the wah-wah pedal in maddening speed, honouring Curved Air’s Darryl Way, you can tell audiences are encouraging him to continue.

When he does that stop-and-go routine, it’s something quite astonishing for the crowd to see Ray pouring his heart out on his instrument, adding in the tension and flaming motifs to get the energy flowing in the band’s chance to give him carte blanche as the reverb goes back and forth in the venues. But his take of the 1925 jazz standard ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’ featuring Gary Brown’s nod to Django Reinhardt, audiences clapping along to the beat in Brussels, it makes every bit enjoyable.

Not to mention the clicking effects from I believe it’s Weathers adding in that swinging groove while raising the roof between ‘Just the Same / Proclamation’ that sounds like a cannon blast from Ray’s bass work, followed by Kerry’s groovy keyboard lines on the clavinet and Derek’s ranging vocal arrangements, knowing they have each other’s back before laying down the funk with a burst of a powder-keg from Weathers’ drumbeats behind ‘Interview.’

When you hear audiences cheering on for ‘Excerpts from Octopus’, they know this was going to be a night they’ll never forget with its unexpected difficult time signatures ranging from ‘The Boys in the Band’, an acoustic instrumental of ‘Raconteur Troubadour,’ the challenging vocal chant on ‘Knots’, and the climatic finale ‘The Advent of Panurge’. There are so many different versions of the live recordings from the Octopus medley.

This one holds out as the best. You feel the chemistry between Gary and Ray’s intensive acoustic guitar duel, Derek playing the bass like a conductor, signaling when to come in as John and Kerry take a break from their instruments, giving the duo a chance to pull all the stop signs out and revealing the beauty that Ray and Gary have with each other.

The different versions of the new mixes Borneman has done to the original album, took several months of painstaking work to make sure he stayed true to the re-imaging vision of the live album. It sounds very crisp and enhancing. He wanted to capture the different venues during the Interview tour of positioning the band, coming towards the left, right, in the middle, and behind you.

So, it does feel like the concert in your own living room when it comes to Playing The Fool. The album was released in 1977 in that time frame as Punk, Disco, and New Wave was coming across the horizon as the progressive rock scene was under attack from that era. Despite calling it a day after unleashing The Missing Piece, Giant for a Day, and Civilian in 1980, their music lives on to the next generation who are discovering the band for the first time.

But, if you are new to the band’s music, then Playing the Fool is the one to start with. It’ll make you want to realise that prog was more than the big names like Floyd, Genesis, Yes, and ELP. Gentle Giant had their own sound, their own creation, and their own complexity when it comes to real good music performed live in front of an audience to get their money’s worth.