Tag Archives: Gentle Giant

019. The Final Countdown*

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Installment #19. of the Final Countdown aired in October 2018 (c/o CiTR.FM.101.9).

Selections available on this Youtube playlist (not exactly accurate).

The Final Countdown* is Randophonic’s longest and, if we’re doing it right, most relevant countdown yet – the end of result of a rather convoluted process that’s still evolving such is the existential nature of the project question: the 1297 Greatest Records of All Time right now right here. Whatever that means. What it means is dozens of radio programs if all goes to plan, and when has that ever happened?

TFC-019

Installment #19 of The Final Countdown* went like this.

934. Jesus Loves You – bow down mister
933. Horslips – King of the Faries
932. Bob Marley – Mr Brown
931. African Head Charge – Orderliness, Godliness, Discipline And Dignity
930. FM – one o’clock tomorrow
929. Kraftwerk – numbers + computer world 2
928. Michael Rother – Neutronics 98
927. Link Wray – Batman
926. Seeds – pushin’ too hard
925. Blodwyn Pig – variations on Nainos
924. Santana – Oye Como Va
923. JJ Cale – call me the breeze
922. Led Zeppelin – Bron-Y-aur stomp
921. Gentle Giant – wreck
920. Yello – blue green
919. Speedy j – pepper
918. Robert Fripp + David Sylvian – 20th Century dreaming [a shaman’s song]
917. Brian Eno – Over Fire Island
916. Brand X – unorthodox behaviour

Randophonic airs pretty much every Saturday night, starting 11 pm (Pacific time) c/o CiTR.FM.101.9, with streaming and/or download options usually available within twenty-four hours via our Facebook page.

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453. inmate’s lullaby

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Second of two in a row from Gentle Giant’s prolific and dense and rather brilliant early 1970s phase. Inmate’s Lullaby being one of those songs that you know what it’s about, even if you don’t pay attention to the lyrics. It’s about madness, insanity, but in a nice way, like a nice day at the asylum. The inmate looks out his window and smells the flowers and hears the birds and comes to believe he’s in paradise, heaven even. Does heaven have inmates? If it does, you know they have a band, and it likely sounds a lot like Gentle Giant do here, working all manner of archaic and weird (for any kind of rock outfit) instrumentation to evocative effect.

454. knots

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“I first stumbled onto Gentle Giant via late night TV, maybe 1975.  My first thought was, these guys are strange. And I’ve never wavered in that estimation. Or more to the point, the stranger the better. And they never got stranger than Knots, from the album called Octopus, and Knots is nothing if not Octopus like – at least eight separate arms all reaching for something beyond their grasp. I’m sure I’ve heard it a thousand times, yet I’m still not entirely clear how it even goes, though lyrically, it does seem very connected to the psychology of RD Laing.” (Philip Random)

gentlegiant-1972-promo

46. The Solid Time Of Change

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Installment #46 of the Solid Time of Change aired on Saturday September 16th (c/o CiTR.FM.101.9).

Youtube playlist (not entirely accurate).

The Solid Time of Change is our overlong yet incomplete history of the so-called Prog Rock era – 661 selections from 1965 through 1979 with which we hope to do justice to a strange and ambitious time indeed, musically speaking.

solid-crop-46

Part Forty-Six of the journey went as follows (38-29):

  • Donovan – hurdy gurdy man
  • Aphrodite’s Child – the four horsemen
  • Aphrodite’s Child – all the seats were occupied
  • Mothers of Invention – brown shoes don’t make it
  • Beatles – I am the Walrus
  • Genesis – dancing with the moonlit knight
  • Van Morrison – astral weeks
  • Gentle Giant – knots
  • King Crimson – 21st Century schizoid man
  • Mike Oldfield – Ommadawn [part 1]

Fresh episodes air pretty much every Saturday night, starting 11 pm (Pacific time) c/o CiTR.FM.101.9, with streaming and download options available within twenty-four hours via our Facebook page.

31. The Solid Time Of Change

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Installment #31 of the Solid Time of Change aired on Saturday March-4-2017 (c/o CiTR.FM.101.9).

Podcast (Solid Time begins a few minutes in). Youtube playlist (somewhat inaccurate).

The Solid Time of Change is our overlong yet incomplete history of the so-called Prog Rock era – 661 selections from 1965 through 1979 with which we hope to do justice to a strange and ambitious time indeed, musically speaking.

solid-crop-31

Part Thirty-One of the journey went as follows:

  1. Queen – tenement funster
  2. Queen – flick of the wrist
  3. Queen – lily in the valley
  4. Cat Stevens – 18th Avenue
  5. Gentle Giant – wreck
  6. Donovan – celtic rock
  7. Led Zeppelin – no quarter
  8. Led Zeppelin – the battle of evermore
  9. Jethro Tull – cold wind to Valhalla
  10. Jethro Tull- with you there to help me
  11. Emerson Lake + Palmer – Knife Edge
  12. Emerson Lake + Palmer – Tarkus [somewhat modified]
  13. England – poisoned youth
  14. Electric Light Orchestra – one summer dream

Fresh episodes air pretty much every Saturday night, starting 11 pm (Pacific time) c/o CiTR.FM.101.9, with streaming and download options available within twenty-four hours via our Facebook page.

825. I lost my head

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Gentle Giant were weird even for a so-called prog rock band, determined to push every envelope available, and then some. Philip Random recalls discovering them on TV late one night. “One of those live concert shows. 1976, I’m pretty sure, because I was still in high school. They immediately reminded me of Jethro Tull, except they just took everything further in a wigged out medieval sort of way – tooting recorders, plunking harpsichords, tutting strange harmonies. And then things got to rocking and and heads were most definitely lost.”