The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Navigation

You are here: Home / Forum / Ray Shulman RIP

Comments

  1. That IS bad news. Astonishingly good bass player – and never got the credit he deserved, because the band ended up under the radar. Also, in a band of multi-instrumentalists, he covered a very wide range…RIP

    • For anyone that has any interest in (or the setup for) surround sound, the Steven Wilson surround mix of Free Hand from a few years ago is absolutely superb, with this track (On Reflection) being a surround “demonstration piece” – you get the individual voices in each corner and then the “all around’” phrasing wizzes around…..

        • I’m not sure to be honest – as is usual with these Steven Wilson remix Blu Rays discs, it holds a load of stuff including a flat transfer of the original and the original 1975 quad mix – but I can’t recall what the quad mix sounded like.

          I shall give it a listen today and report back….

        • Okay, I have just done a comparative listen to On Reflection in both the original Quad mix and the Steven Wilson 5.1 mix……

          They are significantly different – the new 5.1 is definitively more ‘complex’ and a better balance with the instrumentation and vocals. I find that the old quad mix has the vocals too high and over powering – it’s kind of going for the effects of the acapella voices at the detriment to the music. On the new mix you get the piano / glockenspiel in the rear channels when the vocals are in the front and vice-versa. There’s also a difference in the channel placement – the old quad mix starts with the voices at the rest whereas the new mix starts front left, then builds up via front right, rear right, rear left etc.

          I can ‘help’ with the FLAC files if you want to check yourself.

  3. He was a great guitarist and a fine all-round musician, the first and youngest of the 3 Shulman brothers to leave the stage. Gentle Giant evolved from Simon Dupree & the Big Sound who had hit with Kites in 1968. My dear friend and our erstwhile chum, Geacher, still tells the tale on his Argyll FM radio show of the time when SD&TBS were playing Campbeltown as part of their Scottish tour of 1968. The story goes that Geacher and his pals spotted the band having a kickabout before or after the gig and joined in on the game. One of the members of the band was a young chap called Reg Dwight who, shortly afterwards, left the band, changed his name and struck out on his own. A young Dudley Moore also spent a short time on keyboards with the band.

  5. Simon Dupree & the Big Sound are a terrific group.
    There was a Man Alive TV programme about them in 67 (before Kites – 67, not 68).
    Strewth, that show must have given them more exposure than a thousand acts all together get today.

    Their As and Bs are better than their sole LP “Without Reservations” (blighted by aiming for the soul market when they should have gone more pysch), but a 2-CD set came out twenty or so years ago that has everything anyway.

  6. Back in the day when I was at Leicester Poly in the early 70s (now ponced up as De Montford Uni) we has an end of year ball with Marmalade booked. The boys and girls were all dressed up in their finest cheesecloth and flares and looking forward to a good old bop. Unfortunately(?) Marmalade couldn’t make the gig so they substituted Gentle Giant (you have to ask why?). An hour into their set all the girls had gone home and the hall was just full of hairy blokes shaking their locks to the mighty GG. Fabulous !

Leave a Reply