Van Der Graff Gentle Giant Camel

Funny Ways! One of my favourite prog tunes ever! Check out this one, Dellinger, if you haven't already. This is mind blowing stuff, IMO:

GENTLE GIANT!!!

Absolutely Camel. I love Gentle Giant and Van der Graaf Generator (even if I don't know them as well as the other two), but Camel wake up some emotions that I can't find anywhere else in music.

Dayvenkirq wrote: HarbouringTheSoul wrote: Honestly, I seem to be the only one who has always found Gentle Giant very accessible.  What are you so confused about? You really think the weird vocals on and the sound of tape rolling at the end of "Valedictory" is something a girlfriend of a fellow progger could put up with?

Well, you picked an example that I actually think is among their least accessible songs, but as far as the "girlfriend of a fellow progger" thing goes: Very little prog passes that test anyway, and I think it's irrelevant because accessibility to someone who is familiar with prog is often a different than accessibility to someone who isn't. Gentle Giant are a group that carry a certain 'weirdness' and 'density' with them in their sound. If you can't deal with that, you will find them very hard to get into, that much is true. But if you can, then you will find that GG can be extremely catchy. As someone who has been listening to Frank Zappa albums from the age of four, the sound of GG didn't shock me and I gobbled up their entire discography in no time. By contrast, it can take quite a long time for me to get accustomed to a VdGG song because their melodies are usually rather longwinded and harmonically complex. I can memorize a GG melody in no time, but I needed to listen to, say, "Undercover Man" about five times before I could actually remember anything. Even today that I'm familiar with much of their output, I find it hard to assimilate new songs of theirs because many of their melodies are not immediately memorable.

In short: Accessibility depends very much on whether you're new to the general sound of the artist or not. You may find it hard to get into the catchiest band if their sound is new and radical to you. If you're familiar with Ramones albums, you might find Never Mind the Bollocks quite accessible. If you're completely new to punk, you might think it's a lot of noise.

Logan wrote: and found bombastic noodlings in parts hard going, but there were more than enough pay-offs in the music to keep listening..

I still find the album too be too harsh and noisy for my liking, and I doubt it will ever change. A lot of the arrangement for "Lemmings" for example is made up of lots of gratuitous noises that seem to be there for no other reason than to irritate. I can appreciate short bursts of chaos for the purpose of contrast, but this goes too far. Which is sad because I like the 'main' parts "Lemmings", but the noisemaking ruins it for me. The same holds true for Plague. I like quite a few of the moments, but there is just so much noise and so little coherence in the track. I vastly prefer the 1975-1976 albums, which are a lot cleaner instrumentation-wise.

^ Same here.

The Bearded Bard wrote: Funny Ways! One of my favourite prog tunes ever! Check out this one, Dellinger, if you haven't already. This is mind blowing stuff, IMO:

Indeed this is the very song I liked best from "Playing the Fool" on my first listen, though is this version still with Phill on the line-up? I think I liked this one just a bit better than the one on PtF. Any other music similar to this by GG, that I may try to check out next?

^ Yes. Go for the first three albums.

my rank would be

1. VDGG
2. Camel
3. Gentle Giant

Camel!

^ So you think Alt is that good (contrary to the opinion of the many), eh?