Gentle Giant - On Reflection - Live 1978

From one video to the next, John Weathers has on the same Oakland A's hat and jersey. Did he ever change clothes? Ha haaa!

LOVED GG, music of my teen years. The only problem is that also Pure Disco music like the Bee Gees.... My freinds would have killed me lol.

Ever noticed? Sometimes at a party you might slip a prog song into the playlist and see people move to an instrumental song section, even actually enjoy it - but then some dissonant vocals or strange patterns are always around the next bend and will instantly remind them that you added prog to the playlist, yell "What's this crap?!" and skip to the next song.

Love to torture some of my friends who hate GG with this song, but only time they ever let me finish it is at my own parties... :D

@y00th00p, I think for the most part, its because, despite prog-rockers amazing creativity and talent, they by and large, sucked at writing lyrics...with few exceptions of course.

bump (answering to the other guy)

@velocity500
I think they were better at writing lyrics than most others as well.
Ian Anderson, Peter Gabriel, Peter Hammill etc. They had a vocabulary of more than 50 words :-), and were miles above the rest. What you see in the charts are pure rubbish. Now AND back in the 70s.

happens to me all the time. Friends will actually tell me "this stuff is good!" or "what song is this?". If I tell them it's Gentle Giant or if they here the vocals they get turned off immediately. If only they knew what they were missing.

It's even different for me, as I'm German and thus we get the English lyrics subconsciously at best. By the way, this is something you prog lovers have to envy us for! :)

The convoluted lyrics aside (mum to mud to mad to dad - keep in mind: I LOVE IT!), the problem with them is the musical style, "quirky", "cheesy", take your pick, it all sums it up badly. Especially with Gentle Giant, there's so much that feels "out of place" for modern day Lady Gaga lovers. And no classical background...

Point of information: "Mum to mud to mad to dad" was from Genesis ("Supper's Ready" on the Foxtrot album) , not Gentle Giant.

All that people want at a party is a beat they can dance to. It's understandable. But that's not really what music is about. This is art. Comparing this to party music is like comparing a gift card to a painting in a museum.