30-disc studio & live box coming from Gentle Giant

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by spice9, Nov 6, 2017.

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  1. Torn on this one, how hasMadfish’s product been lately ? They are very much like Cleopatra, capable of good product, but ...
     
  2. heepsterandrey

    heepsterandrey Forum Resident

    I wasn’t fond of the compression on the Kevorkian remasters, I hope these are definitive and are released individually. The live material and the extra stuff in the box I don’t really want.
     
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  3. jay.dee

    jay.dee Forum Resident

    Location:
    Barcelona, Spain
    Family's BBC box is fantastic, presentation and sound quality-wise.

    And although I tend to skip all those studio+live behemoths, e.g. Streetwalkers, Steve Hillage, Wishbone Ash, now Gentle Giant and Gong, plus upcoming Caravan, the more recent Madfish mega-productions (Streetwalkers, Hillage, Ash) have been uniformly praised for their quality.
     
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  4. bRETT

    bRETT Senior Member

    Location:
    Boston MA
    I know there has been a series of these boxes, but I truly don't get the reasoning. Is there really anyone who'd spend hundreds of dollars on a Gentle Giant box that does not own the best available copies of the studio albums?
     
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  5. alakulju

    alakulju Music is the best! - FZ

    Location:
    Finland
    GG is one of those bands that is worth listening live only when sound quality is good. Their arrangements were mindboggling and you need to hear every detail properly to appreciate their incredible talent. So no need to collect crappy sounding bootlegs of GG.

    I'm sitting on the fence with this one, because I'd like to find some info on the sound quality of the live shows.
     
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  6. 93curr

    93curr Senior Member

    Of course not. But that's the way these sets are marketed now. The fear is that no one will consider them of good enough value if they only include the previously unreleased stuff. Everything from the vault has to be attached to an already accepted classic album or albums. I guess the fear is that people won't buy just the new stuff but that they will buy a deluxe edition of stuff they already own.

    Personally, I really don't need to re-buy the classic albums that I've already owned in multiple formats over the years (and I REALLY don't need 'Giant For A Day' or 'Civilian' even for the first time!) but I was hoping this would clear up the mess of all the various posthumous releases (Glass House) over the years - there's a ton of live discs on various bootleg or semi-bootleg labels (or possibly legit but just packaged to look like bootlegs?) that I'd be more willing to get all in one lump rather than one at a time on eBay or Discogs. Not to mention random vault releases of unreliable quality like 'Memories Of Old Days', 'Under Construction' or 'Scraping The Barrel.'
     
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  7. jay.dee

    jay.dee Forum Resident

    Location:
    Barcelona, Spain
    I am definitely not the target, because I am not interested in (re)purchasing the studio back catalogue to get a few live recordings I'd happily buy separately or in a smaller, better curated and more affordable (live) box. Family's BBC set was a perfect release for me in that respect.
     
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  8. Lownote30

    Lownote30 Bass Clef Addict

    Location:
    Nashville, TN, USA
    I wonder why they don't include the other Steven Wilson 5.1 mixes, or the Quad mixes of Free Hand and Interview? Weird!
     
  9. JediJoker

    JediJoker Audio Engineer/Enthusiast

    Location:
    Portland, OR, USA
    Back when they held the survey, this is exactly what I asked for:
     
  10. izgoblin

    izgoblin Forum Resident

    GG is one of my favorite bands, so I have to buy this box simply for the live recordings that I don't have. However, the price is kinda steep for me given that the 12 previously released albums are of no use to me and half of the live albums are audience recordings. That kinda hurts. I hope I can find it at a lower price somehow in the US, because comparing it to the Tangerine Dream box which I paid about $120 for, I'm not really seeing the $200 in additional value here. The autograph card is a really nice touch though.
     
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  11. Norco74

    Norco74 For the good and the not so good…

    Very tempted but probably another case of wait for the reviews. I am really at peace with my decision.:edthumbs:
     
  12. BrunoSamppa

    BrunoSamppa Forum Resident

    Location:
    Brazil
    In my opinion the 2009 Remasters done by Fred Kevorkian was atrocious. They killed all dynamics of the GG music with so much compression. Man, when i heard the album In A Glass House, a album originally with lots and lots of dynamics and transients, but Fred handled to destroy all completely, I've very frustrated, pissed off...I threw it to the trash. Not even for resale I had courage to do, because I could not bear the blame of bringing such bad material to another fan. So, i keep with my "alu-gg-02" version which sounds gorgeous to my ears.

    I have the box set of Manfred Mann's Earth Band which Peter J. Reynolds remastered all their huge catalogue and sounds incredible. Hope he nailed GG box too.
     
  13. Mirror Image

    Mirror Image 200 Years Of Anton Bruckner

    Location:
    United States
    Boy, I’ve never done something like this even if I hated it --- I just resold it or gave it to someone who may like it. You throwing music in the garbage tells me more about you then what you threw away.

    Thread duty -

    I’m definitely not buying this box set. I would like to hear the remasters from Pete Reynolds and hope these remasters are released individually. I definitely would pick up Acquiring the Taste through Octopus (my favorite period of the band).
     
    Norco74 likes this.
  14. Tristero

    Tristero In possession of the future tense

    Location:
    MI
    This looks like a lovely package but way too rich for my blood. I don't feel compelled to buy the same studio albums yet again when I'm content with the versions I have. I enjoy a lot of their live output, but there's not enough variation or improvisation with their performances to merit so many discs, some of which may not be top quality recordings. Also, I'm always disappointed that some of my favorite albums of theirs (Acquiring the Taste and Three Friends) never seem to be represented in their set list. I'd be more interested in a S. Wilson package for Playing the Fool.
     
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  15. alakulju

    alakulju Music is the best! - FZ

    Location:
    Finland
    These box sets are really wonderful to have from the favorite artists of our youth. But at the same time I'm feeling myself a target of a special brand of product. Let's face it folks, we, the fans of classic rock / prog bands from 60's - 70's, we are a dying breed. And while the main bulk of music business is targeted at younger generations via Spotify and other streaming services or whatever, we are the target audience of these fancy boxes. And we will be milked as long as we are around.

    Basically these boxes have 3 ingredients to justify their existence, and sales, in the $100+ category:
    1. Fancy packaging, booklets, books, unseen photos etc. non-musical content (can be produced in unlimited quantities)
    2. Previously (officially) unreleased live recordings of varying sound quality (can be produced only depending on surviving recordings)
    3. New fancy (5.1, surround, whatever) re-tweaked versions of old classic albums (every 10 years or so a new technology, a new round of releases)

    Now, which of these 3 ingredients appeals to you, that's your choice. For me no. 2 is the main reason for buying these boxes. That's why I have all the King Crimson sets, but I passed all the Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin sets. This forthcoming Gentle Giant set I will probably pass, because I have heard lots of their live stuff, and it must be of pristine quality in order to be enjoyed. But what I have heard is pretty hard to call pristine.

    What I have said above is not against these boxes and their marketing, it's always fine when supply and demand meet. But it's also nice to be aware, how things are being sold to us.
     
  16. Kim Olesen

    Kim Olesen Gently weeping guitarist.

    Location:
    Odense Denmark.
    Same here. Have all the studio albums and the live sets you mentioned. But i am glad for the hardcore fans. Seems they are getting one mofo of a fine set.
     
  17. Dok

    Dok Senior Member

    I'd say that is unlikely as Dan Bornemark has remixed 3/4 of the shows that made up 'Playing the Fool' and it's in this box. Of course somewhere down the road Steven could do a 5.1 surround mix but I'd be surprised.
     
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  18. gojikranz

    gojikranz Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sacramento
    Plus I believe Wilson has gone on record saying he doesn’t like doing surround mixes of live shows.
     
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  19. maki881

    maki881 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Germany
    To be fair, Kevorkian was instructed to modernize the sound. They sure are compressed, but I still think it's a case of compression done well. The old RGOF/Terrapin on the other hand, are in some segments so dynamic that when I listen to them on headphones, I have to turn the volume up, up, up for the quiet parts and then down, down, down again in order not to damage my hearing.
    The alu-gg-02 of IAGH is on my purchase list, is that somewhere in the middle dynamics-wise?

    I would agree that box sets like this one are targeted towards the original fans. Remixes on the other hand can be seen as an honest attempt to make a band's core catalogue future-proof.
     
    Last edited: Sep 22, 2019
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  20. KCLizard

    KCLizard Forum Resident

    Location:
    Montréal
    What I found paradoxial with these mega Box set, is that they should appeal to what I will call "hardcore Fan", but if you are already one of these you probably already owned at least much of the classics album produced by the artist already... so you are just being milked another time.

    For myself, with what I have discovered about mastering, I am now willing to wait a little bit before jumping on the bandwagon. What would be my main interest would surely be the live recordings as long as the sound is not abysmal.

    I will surely not buy this box set.
     
  21. MichaelCPE

    MichaelCPE Forum Resident

    Yesterday a friend and I watched the blu-ray of the documentary Man On Wire. As expected this is mainly talk, but it does feature the music of Michael Nyman at times. I mentioned to her while watching this that we now live in a world where movie videophiles expect audio in hi-res quality, and complain bitterly if a blu-ray does not have this, yet it seems most audiophiles are happy with just CD quality.

    For me one of the highlights of the Three Piece Suite blu ray was the flat hi-res copy of the master tapes of the first 3 albums (of course the other highlight was the surround mixes).

    So not only is this box expecting me to buy a huge amount of stuff I already have yet again, this to me is like a box set of a favourite movie directors work being released only on DVD.

    So I'm another huge Gentle Giant fan who will NOT be buying this box.
     
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  22. Crestfallen

    Crestfallen Active Member

    Location:
    Macon
    Somehow I hadn't noticed before your post that there's no blu-ray audio. I agree, that is something of a deal-breaker.
     
  23. alakulju

    alakulju Music is the best! - FZ

    Location:
    Finland
    Maybe this box will have everything at correct speed…?;)
     
  24. maki881

    maki881 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Germany
    You know what would be hilarious? If they accidentally put the casette-sourced version of Heroes No More on this set. I foresee pages-long calls for a Maxi CD replacement disc :D
     
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  25. JediJoker

    JediJoker Audio Engineer/Enthusiast

    Location:
    Portland, OR, USA
    There's one Blu-ray, but the only specified contents are Steven Wilson's new mixes of the full debut album (5.1, stereo, and instrumental stereo). Assuming minimal video content, they could/should have included his other Gentle Giant mixes plus flat transfers of the original mixes (including the two quad mixes). Maybe all that would have required two Blu-rays; maybe three. Regardless, such an "exhaustive" box set is incomplete without these things.
     
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