The Missing Piece (1977)(There are no musician credits, but they're something like this)
Gary Green: Electric and Acoustic Guitars
Kerry Minnear: Keyboards, Vocals
Derek Shulman: Lead Vocals
Ray Shulman: Bass, 12-String Guitar, Percussion
John Weathers: Drums, Drum Machine, Percussion
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1 Two Weeks in Spain (3:07)2 I'm Turning Around (3:59)3 Betcha Thought We Couldn't Do It (2:25)4 Who Do You Think You Are? (3:35)5 Mountain Time (3:20)6 As Old as You're Young (4:21)7 Memories of Old Days (7:18)8 Winning (4:18)9 For Nobody (4:05) ----------
Gentle Giant were at a turning point. The live album
Playing the Fool was recognized as an artistic success, but commercially it fared much better in The United States and Europe than in their home, Great Britain. (It is not insignificant that
Playing the Fool was recorded on their European tour.)
The music scene in the U.K. was changing. Prog was suddenly quite out of fashion, in favor of New Wave and Punk. These same trends would soon be echoed on this side of the Atlantic. Overnight, the amazing musicianship and esoterica in which Gentle Giant prided themselves were scorned, seen as pretentious. The public ear was ready for a change.
After working hard for six years to build a following, they were still frustrated by how little real success they had found at home, and what little they had seemed about to evaporate. Their mantra of doing what they wanted to do artistically, popularity be damned, was being severely tested.
One could, however, argue that
The Missing Piece was exactly the album that they wanted to do. Ray and Derek were drawn to some of the newer music being made, both Punk and New Wave. Kerry wasn't quite so eager to compromise their artistic vision, but, as always, Gentle Giant were a blend of many styles. There was no reason why some newer influences couldn't be added to the mix.
The Missing Piece, then, is back-to-basics Gentle Giant. Guitar, bass, keyboards, drums, and vocals. No violins or cellos, saxophones or trumpets, recorders or tuned percussion.
In 1981, my roommates and I sat and played this album, the copy we'd found in a used record store in East Lansing, Michigan; and we could tell by the year of release, 1977, that it must be the next album right after the amazing live
Playing the Fool. We couldn't wait to hear what they'd done next.
Two Weeks in Spain had us staring at each other in disbelief. It
sounded like them. That's definitely Derek's distinctive voice. The guitar and keyboards combined and played off of each other in that Gentle Giant way, and that sure sounds like John Weathers on drums, with that GG backbeat holding it all together. Also, where in the heck is the downbeat? Where is "one"? The song sounds at first like a "simple" song in 4/4 but, as always, Gentle Giant is not as simple as it seems.
I remember grabbing the record jacket, looking for the musician credits, but there are none. The sleeve was plain paper, but this was from a used record store, so it's possible that there were credits, lyrics, and/or pictures on the original sleeve. We didn't know. But we were sure of one thing: This was a different sound for Gentle Giant. Stripped down. "Commerical" was the word we used for "the opposite of Prog", but then "Prog" wasn't the word we used yet, either. I believe it was still "Art Rock" at the time.
But really, what the hell was this? How could the same five guys, on the very next album, create music so fundamentally different?
I'm Turning Around starts with Kerry Minnear's Wurlizter electric piano, and is a nice little "mellow" song with a chorus that's a bit less mellow, but the song overall is firmly in "ballad" territory. And yes, the arrangement is quite simple compared to earlier Gentle Giant. We already were bracing ourselves for an entire album of... well, "disappointment" is the easiest way to describe it.
Gentle Giant, ever self-aware and self-deprecating, come right out and tell us what's up.
Betcha Thought We Couldn't Do It boasts that this is the album (they assumed) no one thought they could make. Of course it comes down to exactly what the question was. Did we think they couldn't make a commercially viable album, one that could actually sell, maybe break the Top 100? Or did we think that they couldn't channel their considerable musical talent into something still recognizable as Gentle Giant, but somehow radio friendly?
I betcha thought we couldn't do it. And if you did we wouldn't try
I betcha thought we couldn't do it. But if we didn't we would die
We built our house stone by stone. Little help, we were on our own
Made the town, torn it down. Now you know, tell me how it feels
We've been waiting such a long long time. To fit the pattern, fill the rhyme
Now we can't stick in our old ways. Now it's out we'll see how you feelSo this is it. Gentle Giant does Punk. Now we knew what we were listening to. It's not that we didn't think they could do it. It's that we really didn't want them to even try.
Who Do You Think You Are? takes us a step back towards... something. It's bluesy, it's got some kind of dark shuffle thing going on. The melody doesn't quite do what you think it will, not all the time anyway. It's hard to describe this one.
The trend continues with
Mountain Time, which is reminiscent of mountain music, with a little bit of 30's jazz vocal thrown in, and a dash of blues and pinch of honky-tonk for flavor. An odd tune, but catchy.
As Old as You're Young is the other keyboard-driven Kerry song. On earlier, more adventurous albums, this would be the simpler song which serves as a break from the insanity. Interestingly, it serves a similar purpose here.
Memories of Old Days is the one which catches the attention of long-term Gentle Giant fans. Gary and Ray on their dueling acoustic guitars, the moody keyboard melody evoking children's tunes and times gone by, and lyrics mourning the passing of time and of innocence. A beautiful, wistful piece, by far the longest track on the album, though that's not saying much. Gentle Giant songs usually aren't long anyway, and on this album, with a focused effort to keep things simple, they're downright short. So at just over seven minutes, this one's an epic by comparison.
It took me a long time to be able to listen to
Winning, and I'm still not sure how much I like it. Once I got past all the percussion, which is very upfront and very "in-your-face", I could hear the guitars and keyboards intertwining, finishing each other's phrases, as with the puzzle-piece Gentle Giant of old. This song is very much in the vein of older Gentle Giant in terms of innovation and just plain going for it; it's just not a side of them I've always cared for.
For Nobody is, as is so often the case, the straight-on rocker to end the album. On an album full of more stripped-down rock and roll, that's not really a shock. But this is a good song, reminiscent in some ways of songs like "Mobile" from
Free Hand (the break features odd vocals harmonies, with some kind of phasing of flanging effect on them), which was another great album closer.
And then it was over. We'd turned the record over between "Mountain Time" and "As Old As You're Young", and maybe we'd noted that the second side was more Prog than the first side, though again we didn't use that term at the time. All we knew is that Gentle Giant had "gone Commercial". They had to change their sound or die, as they said so clearly in "Betcha Thought We Couldn't Do It". So they changed their sound. Still Gentle Giant, still the same five guys, the same lineup since
In a Glass House. But this was the new Gentle Giant.
Okay fine, I'll just say it: I don't like this album. But I said it before: There are no weak Gentle Giant albums. How did I decide that? I used the old tried-and-true method of asking myself "What if this was the first album I'd ever heard from this band?" The problem was that we had come to expect a certain
something from Gentle Giant, and if it wasn't there, then something was missing. The missing piece.
But if I'd never heard Gentle Giant before, whether or not I cared for the style right away (anything can grow on you after a while), I could not deny that these guys have chops. And as much as this sounds like a stripped-down, back-to-basics album, there's a lot going on here. Intricacies you just don't normally hear in Punk or New Wave. A sophistication in the arrangements, even if that very sophistication is being used to make the songs seem simpler than they are.
Unfortunately, this album did not sell well, and was not received very well artistically, either. Most longtime Gentle Giant fans were alienated by the drastic change in sound, and Gentle Giant didn't exactly make a lot of new fans, who had no idea what to make of this strange band.
Contemporaries Yes, Genesis, and others managed to change their sound to meet the end of 70's Prog and the rising New Wave and Punk. Gentle Giant had a more awkward transition, and this was it. An awkward, transitional album.