Author:Gary Steel – Peter Kearns – Geoffrey Feakes
Delighted to have a look at the next three titles in this consistently good series, which looks at the recordings of an artist song by song, album by album, throwing in along the way a generous amount of background information on the band’s activities at the time. Of course, the books all follow the same format, so how interesting a specific title is depends on your affection for that artist, as they are mostly aimed at fans rather than the casual reader.
Looking at these three individually then:
Gentle Giant – I have to confess that other than Octopus and The Power and The Glory I find a lot of their work quite hard going. I always find these books are better if you listen alongside reading them, but I must admit I only dipped my toes into some of their later albums. It was a pleasure though to rediscover the Steven Wilson put together Three Piece Suite from a couple of years back.
10cc/Godley & Crème – as I said in my review of the Worst Band In The World book last year, they are a band that has somehow almost totally dropped off the musical radar, despite producing some excellent innovative music in the early/mid part of their career, the albums from their debut up to Deceptive Bends. After the departure of Godley and Crème and Eric Stewart’s serious motor accident, the band were never quite at the same level, and their latter albums didn’t add much to their overall body of work as they gradually ran out of inspiration and rather petered out. There’s also good coverage of Godley and Crème’s solo albums – hands up who bought their triple album Consequences, showcasing their Gizmo device alongside contributions from Peter Cook.
The Who – I enjoyed this one the most of these three titles overall, and fittingly we’ll celebrate the 49th anniversary of Who’s Next at the end of this month. I’m not a huge fan of their early stuff other than the obvious classic singles, but listening to their canon from Tommy onwards shows what a great incendiary rock band they became. There were, of course, troughs to go along with the peaks – By Numbers and Face Dances were uneven efforts and It’s Hard was one album too many for Townshend, who was seemingly devoid of inspiration and enthusiasm by that point. However, last year’s self titled set showed in flashes that there was still a bit of gas left in the tank, which for a pair of guys now in their mid seventies is something to be applauded.
Length of Read:Short
Might appeal to people who enjoyed…
The careers and music of these artists, other books in the series
One thing you’ve learned
Pleased to see that there are more of these titles in the pipeline in the coming months after something of a pandemic caused hiatus – Burning Shed’s store is the best place to get hold of them.
Arthur Cowslip says
Bargepole, does the publisher send these to you directly for review? There’s a Mike Oldfield one in this series coming soon, and I’d love to be the one to review an advance copy if you get one!
dai says
The Who By Numbers is a fine album, as is (early album) The Who Sell Out. I do wonder how useful such books are these days, they were pretty good 20 or more years ago, but now you can find so much info/discussion on the internet that they may be redundant, unless we are talking about very good writers here.
deramdaze says
A celebration of the 49th Anniversary of something?
Quick, if you send your CV to The Who’s website, you’ll be on the payroll by the end of the month.
Record Collector have bizarrely chosen this month to remember the 45th (eh?) Anniversary of a Queen album. I didn’t buy it.
Bargepole says
I think the anniversary is just coincidental – but I am available to go on The Who’s payroll (-:
count jim moriarty says
Me sir! Me sir! I bought Consequences. Triple vinyl box set at the luxury price of £11. The extended pieces (basically sides 1 and 6) became a little tiresome, and Peter Cook’s contribution is more than a little odd, but there’s some corking songs on there.
Bargey is spot on with his analysis of 10cc – the two halves were never as good apart as they were together. I suspect that it was the lack of internal criticism/tension between the two established songwriting partnerships that meant the two halves went in different directions: 10cc became increasingly bland, G&C almost wilfully obtuse. I do listen to G&C much more than post-split 10cc these days.
dai says
I love some of their songs (10cc), but found them to be a bit clever clever, like a UK version of Zappa. I think Greatest Hits is what you need.
Twang says
What’s wrong with being clever? Would you say “this is brilliant, they’re dense as hardwood?”.
dai says
Maybe smart alecs were the words I was looking for?
H.P. Saucecraft says
It’s such a fine line between clever and stupid.
garyt says
surely clever clever is better than stupid stupid?
Bargepole says
After pressure from the record company, G&C did appear on half a dozen tracks on 1992’s Gary Katz produced Meanwhile, but their role was really limited to backing vocals apart from one Godley lead, so it was all a bit underwhelming really.
garyt says
The split also meant you didn’t get the ‘cross pollination’ between the two nominal teams.
count jim moriarty says
LIke I said.
RobC says
I’d pay seriously good money to here Frank do 10cc. I could listen to that.
Diddley Farquar says
It would be shit.
H.P. Saucecraft says
Here here!
thecheshirecat says
Ver Giant are a band about whom I know very little, yet I think I have all the studio albums (plus some truly awful live albums). I don’t even know which Shulman is which. So, thanks for the tip off; I shall be seeking this out.
fitterstoke says
FWIW, I found that I disagreed with the author’s opinion at various points….
SteveT says
Odd that the live albums are truly awful – I saw them twice in the 70’s and they were great live. Their early albums Acquiring the taste, Octopus and Freehand were good. Thereafter I lost touch.
fitterstoke says
I don’t think that the issue is with the performances. There are a lot of bootleg-quality, “grey” live albums out there, mostly sounding pretty awful…..“Playing the Fool“ is definitive and official (and essential listening): there are also some BBC and semi-official radio broadcasts which have reasonable sound quality…
thecheshirecat says
I can believe this. There’s stuff on YouTube which I think is extraordinarily good.
fitterstoke says
See also….seven former GG members appear among the fans….some well-known names among the fans, come to that….
Mousey says
Gary Steel, the author of the Gentle Giant book, is a New Zealander who has been writing about music for 40 odd years. Here’s his website, if you’re interested, obviously NZ-centric but has good interviews and reviews of all sorts of stuff. Worth a peep.
https://witchdoctor.co.nz/index.php/category/music/
fitterstoke says
Lots of interesting-looking writing there, Mousey….
I haven’t been writing about music for 40 years….but I have been listening to Gentle Giant for about 45 years. I was looking forward to the book but found it a bit superficial and repetitive, something avoided by other books in this series which I’ve read (so it’s not a “short read” issue) – last straw was when he put the boot into Interview….
As always, other opinions are available….
H.P. Saucecraft says
Crème? WTAF?
chiz says
LOL
H.P. Saucecraft says
LÖL
Freddy Steady says
@chiz
Excellent!