When music was music.
A. Preziosi | Mantua, NJ USA | 03/29/2000
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Gentle Giant was one of the great "unknown" prog-rock bands of the 70's. This live BBC cd is a great testament to that. Starting with the rare "City Hermit" and following the boys from 1970 sessions through GLASS HOUSE, OCTOPUS, POWER AND THE GLORY and FREE HAND we get a nice look at how they grew musically from 1970 to 1975. We can hear their confidence and ability grow as they found their musical identity on tracks like "Just the Same", "Free Hand" and "On Reflection". Notice the great work of Kerry Minnear's keyboards. And, yes folks, those are REAL strings, recorders and xylophones! Not your sampled versions of today. Overall, it's a pretty good sounding CD, although maybe a little too much midrange and treble (at least it's clear, not garbled), but it's a product of its time. Disc 2 is the better sounding of the two. The versions of the songs here are similar to what we hear on PLAYING THE FOOL, only a little cleaner since they're in a studio. We can hear breath on the recorders and fingers sliding on strings. Definitely recommended for Giant fans. A beautiful stroll down a musical memory lane. We won't hear the likes of them again."
Live and at the top
Bert Vijn | Soegne, Norway | 12/06/2002
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Awesome live performances rescued from the BBC vaults, this double CD shows that Gentle Giant were fantastic musicians.
The sound quality is so good that with the right system you can feel that the band is all around you - the different parts get easy to follow, a unique feature that is not surpassed by the studio albums. Far from!
To me, this ranks even higher than the great Playing the Fool, and among the best in my rather complete GG collection."
Slightly different than the original studio versions
kireviewer | Sunnyvale, Ca United States | 01/04/2006
(3 out of 5 stars)
"MOST OF THE PERFORMANCES ON THIS CD ARE TOO MUCH LIKE THE ORIGINAL STUDIO VERSIONS TO MAKE THIS SET OF MUCH VALUE.
This is a re-issue of Out of the Woods. Out of the Woods was a single CD that was 56 minutes long. With Totally Out of the Woods, a bonus CD that is 27 minutes long has been added. So this new CD set has 83 minutes of music.
This music was recorded live in the BBC studios. The sound quality is excellent on most of the tracks. It sounds as good as Gentle Giant's studio albums. In many cases, it is clearer than some the Gentle Giant CD releases. There is absolutely no audience noise, so it is difficult to tell that this is from a live broadcast. On a couple of songs on the first CD there are a few pops, as if the source material was an LP. That may be possible as radio shows were recorded on to vinyl for distribution to radio stations. However, these were broadcast quality recordings.
The problem is that there is not much different between the songs on this CD and the original studio versions. There is an extra 40 second keyboard solo on one song and a 30 second accoustic guitar solo on another. Every once in a while, they throw in a little ditty. But, these flourishes are actually not very good and detract from the songs. Especially annoying is when they throw in Yankee Doodle everytime they do a recorder solo (it is featured twice on this set).
There may be one or two tracks that are done differently enough to make them interesting, and one or two might even be slightly better than the studio version, like Aspirations. Plus, there is the song City Hermit that is on any of the original Gentle Giant albums. But, I don't think any of this makes this CD worth getting.
I WOULD RECOMMEND GETTING PLAYING THE FOOL, AND THEN THE KING BISCUIT LIVE DISC. Be careful buying other live Gentle Giant albums, even on Amazon. They may look like legitimate releases, but they have horrible sound quality.
BBC radio which is owned and controlled by the British government and paid for by a radio tax, required that a certain amount of broadcasting time had to be devoted to original material. So, there were many BBC radio shows featuring live, in the studio broadcasts. On many of these programs, groups would come and just replay their studio albums to promote them. On other programs, groups would jam. The sound quality on most of the early programs, in the sixties, was horrible. Starting in the seventies, most of the time the sound quality was fantastic.
"
Track Listings (6) - Disc #1