ACQUIRING THE TASTE

Many artists try different ways of "sticking it to the man". GG was one of the early pioneers of this, and it hurt them monetarily and fame wise, but sticking to your guns was never easy. GG could have been silent and giving, going the path to fame that many other lesser progressive bands found. Acquiring the Taste forever black labeled them to a sub group of Prog.

A definite improvement from their first release, this is significantly more quirky, proggy, and enjoyable. My favorite is The House, The Street, The Room, with one of my favorite guitar performances, melding perfectly with the backing music. It's also very dark, which is good, to see a sinister GG. The popular Pantagruel's Nativity is not as good as others would make it out to be, but still a strong track. Wreck is also extremely strong with a good influx of vocals. The Moon is Down is perhaps the weakest track here, with too many "niceties" to it. The album closer is also a shocker, with unexpected format and style, but most of this album is very exploratory, or was so for its time.

This was quite easy for me to get into, given my more extreme taste in music, but for those with a more popular taste this would not where I would start with GG. A must have for the GG fan and should easily fit inside your top 5 favorite GG albums. Another great work from '71.

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