4th Round Class: Scheherazade v. Octopus

i voted for "Scheherazade and Other Stories".

Godspeed You! Gentle Giant

Octopus for me for sure

GG

Scheherazade gets the vote, a name that would eventually move on to represent a cool Japanese prog rock band in which its members would then move on to even cooler Japanese prog rock bands.

t d wombat wrote: So many people speak fondly of GG but I'm afraid I simply do not get it. Its not awful, indeed well played no doubt but another highly respected mob who have simply never wormed their way into my heart. Renaissance on the other hand are obviously a whole lot easier to listen to than GG and seemingly just as competent. I confess that I find them a wee bit trite, too much hippy dippy for me to really love them but like yes definitely. Looks as if the Giant is gaining the upper hand though. I should really give them both another good listening too before voting but .... not now ... Hybris hasn't finished yet.

Which albums have you heard from GG? I almost gave up on them with my first album, which was the Live "Playing the Fool". It was almost noise to my ears... or simply I didn't find any enjoyable melodies. Actually, I still don't particularly like it, and since I had heard The Power and the Glory on Youtube and didn't really like it much either, I thought I wouldn't bother more. But there was the song Strange Ways, which I did love, plus I had also heard Octopus on Youtube, and that one was OK, as much as you can take in with one such listen. So, somehow I ended up giving them another chance (some recomendations in the forum helped me make up my mind) and got their fist 4 studio albums, the ones that still had Phil... and well, Octopus was better than Playing the Fool, certainly, but the ones that I really got to love were their first 2 albums. They were much warmer and with more beautiful melodies to make contrast to their noisy weirdness... with 3 Friends they started to go into the more noise less melody mode, though.

Octopus is a great album, probably my favorite album from GG. I'm listening again to it now and loving it.

But Scheherazade has that epic, epic sidelong title track that grabs me, regardless of what the rest of the album is like - rather like Echoes from Meddle, or 2112...

So I've just temporarily reduced the minimal lead GG currently has...



And my cat has just left the room - she does not seem to like the screeching strings and shouty sounds of GG doing Troubador...

t d wombat wrote: OK, I'll give Acquiring and three Friends a go. It is many years past but I know I did have GG on vinyl and it didn't do a great deal for me. We shall see but thanks for the suggestion. I think with many bands you need to find the one album that clicks and go on from there.

those are the two IMO that if you are going to enjoy the band.. that will grab you. They have more emotional depth, more atmosphere, in those that the whole lot of the rest of their albums have combined. They just don't impress with abiity..  they can be quite touching.  That kind of thing works for Fusion..lack of anything outside of technical displays of ability I suppose.. but for the most part GG impresses the head. but fails to really impact the soul..outside of those two albums


Edited by micky - September 03 2015 at 14:52

Strange, I find Octopus to be their warmest and most listenable recording. Great melodies and interesting ideas and sounds.  Without trying too hard to be complicated like their more prog-cred albums.

Scheherazade by God!