WAY OF LIFE

This is a 2-CD compilation of live tracks (1973-1977) from the previous GlassHouse releases: "In A Palesport House", "Prologue" ,"Interview In Concert", and "The Missing Face". All these recordings are either soundboard (rather good sound quality) or cheap tape recording from the audience (collector item only!!!). Most of these boots had been made official,(like Zappa' s boot politics : better release them on your own, than somebody else does) but are un-edited. The first disk represents the period '73- '75,mainly from "Prologue" : tracks 2-4 the '74 Münster concert and tracks 5-8 the '75 White Plains concert. The sound quality of the first disk is bad, especialy if you are not used to boots.The second disk represents the period '76-'77 : tracks 1-5 the '76 Hempstead concert and tracks 6-12 the '77 Cleveland concert. The second disk has average to good sound quality, the best sound comes from the Cleveland tracks ("The missing face") which is IMHO the best GG boot. Now,a part from the sound quality this compilation gives nevertheless a good overview about GG as a live group. If you are not familiar with GG go for "Playing the fool", the official live recording. If you want to have an overview of the boots go for it (it is cheap) and decide than which "original" boot you want to have. Five stars for the music. From 1 - 4 stars for the sound.

Albums like these should be avoided like the plague unless you're a fan of this band. This compilation of mid-70's Gentle Giant performances has a great tracklist, but often horrible sound quality which makes it worthless for new fans. It's a shame that the people responsible for this release didn't mix the track so they sounded good in the end or else this would be a great representation of Gentle Giant's live skills in their prime days. Unfortunately, they didn't and two CD's with bad to average sound quality is just irks me. Hardcore fans should get this one, newcomers should get "Playing The Fool" instead. 2 stars because of the music.

What an insult to devotees of Gentle Giant - forking out good money for sound quality the producers should be ashamed of. The only decent track - soundwise is exerpts from Octopus. Gentle Giant and their fans deseve better than this!

I was fooled by Amazon/myself to buy this double CD due to the "excellent value" it offered. Hah !!!

The sound quality is not worthy this band. It actually diminish the songs. The songs itself is OK, but nothing more. Their message is lost in the translation......ie the bad sound quality. This album has been released just to rip off prog newbies like myself. I even bought it before I knew the excistence of this website.

Behind the bootleg sound, the music is not bad. Their official live album "Playing the fool" more than prove that Gentle Giant is an excellent band. And so does the more unofficial live album "Experience" (which is ripped from a King Biscuit show) too. But this double CD is doing Gentle Giant no service and I almost gave up on the band afterwards. What a shame that would had been. Avoid !

2 stars

This is a collection of poor to at best fair sound quality tracks from a number of live concert releases. I can't imagine that this could actually have been a legitimate release, but I did find this one (at an extremely low price, luckily) in a store that does not usually carry bootlegs.

For the price of the disk, you get some sound board mixes, mostly with drums and bass mixed way down, keyboards too loud, and awkward vocal mixes, some audience recorded tracks, with drop outs, tape warbles and all, and a few songs that sound like the band was in another room.

There is not much here that can't be found on other Gentle Giant releases, with better sound. Avoid this one, unless you must have everything from this band.

Such a shame that the sound quality is so bad. GG seem to have a lot of this type of release out on various labels. It is advisable to look up any GG cd that is not part of their official studio release before buying as some of these CD's are truly horrible. However there are far more good live recordings of GG than say VDGG as an example. So whilst I would not suggest you buy this CD, there are a few GG live sets out there that are worth paying for. Give this one a miss but seek out Under construction or the BBC recordings which are very listenable.

As always the material is first rate, and this is not the worst CD available, but even at its best the sound is not great or is badly mixed. GG are slowly gaining the sort of support they deserved, it is a great shame that some of the live CDs are of such poor quality, as they undermine this excellent bands legacy.

I will give this two stars as there are a couple of listenable tracks, but this is one for GG fanatics who have money to waste.