BassTractor

Commemorating bass player Ray Shulman, who died last week, here's one of GG's (to me) most tantalising songs:

Thanks! Your googolplex is larger than my googol. 😃 It again shows that my local record store was quite special. Another example is the guy offering me a copy of "Boris" by Yezda Urfa - rarer than hens' teeth chewing on rocking horse poo, and also more hygienic, I assume.

These messers were nearly wholly forgotten by me. Listening to the album right now. Thanks for posting! Does anyone remember this record label and its use of the Yes space glider? I do remember one or more musicassettes having been released like this, but have no idea about YESS or what they've put out.

I don't know the guy, but did a picture search, and it's probably guitar and bass player Heinz Fröhling, who also played Mellotron. Apparently, he was in prog trio Schicke Führs Fröhling.

The stuff as presented in that vid is, I believe, well-represented in their middle period - say albums from Octopus to Free Hand or Interview, so you might wish to start there.

When the Shulman brothers disbanded Simon Dupree and the Big Sound to form Gentle Giant, I somehow didn't catch up despite liking SD&tBS, and despite looking forward to the announced project, which was worded much like the later liner notes of Acquiring the Taste (in short they were gonna change the face of pop music - - "Pretentious - for the sake of it!" as they'd later say). Much later, when The Power and the Glory had just been released, I listened to the first few tracks of that and Octopus, and told the shop lady: "Just sell me Octopus; the other one is way above me head". Later that same day I'd regained trust in my brain, and went back to the shop to buy it anyway. I'll try and re-tell Ray's account of the story about how Elton John didn't become a member of Gentle Giant, but not today. The story was online, but didn't follow the rest during a site move. I guess you haven't seen it.

Personal, telling little about Ray: In the beginning, to me personally, Ray first and foremost was a great composer, then one of the people who provided the bridge I needed between my childhood's classical music and rock and jazz music. Much later I realised that he also was a bass monster. Gentle Giant's music has been central in my life for nearly 50 years, and the band's tightly knit group of fans and friends for nearly 30. We started meeting up in the mid 90s, later alternating between continents, and eventually band members joined and would become highly respected friends - not objects of adoration. Two decades ago, also Ray wanted to join, but his health prevented him. The news of his death hit me harder than imagined, and harder than similar deaths have done previously. Non-personal: Some of you may know that Ray and his then girlfriend are behind the smart lettering on the front cover of "Civilian", where the album's title is visible in red within the words "Gentle Giant" in yellow. This showed yet another side of Ray's ingeniousness (and it took many fans years or decades to discover this bit). A man has gone. Requiescat in pace.

Oh, the memories! You guys reminded me of the first record-player-with-built-in-speaker amp, and as we of course were advanced electronics designers at age 12, we understood that we'd better put a resistance on both plus and minus sides of the mono lead, as ... ... one could never tell from which side the sound really came!

In the late 70s we used a "Sound-on-Sound" reel-to-reel stereo recorder (Akai, I believe - everyone had an Akai). I think it could mix 'n' bounce, but at any rate it could bounce ... ... BUT the crux is in the bounced signal's time shift due to separate Play and Record heads on that model. Cue BassTractor writing STEREO music specifically designed for that delay bouncing --- a bit like a two part round, but with the second part coming in very soon after the first part starts. At that point in time I'd already been in real recording studios, and later I'd use a Portastudio, but that Sound-on-Sound thing is still the most fondly remembered. I still have a tape somewhere with music like that, but on that tape it's a fluke: we had no idea about the delay whatsoever, and the second part just accidentally fit the first. Maybe that bit is part of the fond remembering: unplanned stumbling over fluke coincidence ... by accident!

I feel your pain. In fact, for me it was two of each, so I feel your pain twice. 😁 The Bongos were Dargie Delights, one a 4-HH of gen. 1 ('06-'07) and one a 4-HS of gen. 2 ('09) The Rays were a Neptune Blue 4-H PDN from '14 and a '95 5-H fretless. I loved the Bongos to bits with their looks, ergonomics and 4-band EQ, but it's the Rays I miss mostly, especially the fretless one. Other MMs I sold aren't missed - in part coz they went for getting the above ones.

A sensibly balanced double neck, and not that heavy either. I call it the A2-B2.

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Great album cover though ...

No, that's the 'Vibrachelle' (TM).

Ah! Solved then: two kayak cockpit rims glassed in the holes you made into the lid, two tight neoprene skirts, and two helmets. Kids will have the time of their life!

Bah. Vid maker must've been one of those obsessed heterosexual women. Roughly 51% of the vid shows well-dressed gentlemen, and only 49% are half-naked girls. 😐 Thanks for posting, @musicbassman. Cardiacs = wonderful

Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Fauré, Penderecki, Xenakis, the Zombies ... and of course: Kaempfert and Mantovani!

LOL. Let's not crawl down that particular can ... 😄

Of course it is, and I hope you understood the tune of my post, and the concept I jokingly introduced 😃 (but with a serious undertune: it's just how one decides to look at it; I've played baroque organs where the whole orchestra had to retune to the organ - a daunting task with some of the instruments).

I hate all these tunist comments, you bloody keyists! No, the guitar player kept it in E all the time, but changed from the recording's Handel tuning (at roughly 415 Hz) to the band's modern tuning (440 Hz). 😉 😃

Lovely man indeed, and indeed he did - after a short What The Heck hesitation.

Essentially this, with caveats and notable exceptions.

Oddrun Lilja Jonsdottir, aka Lilja, works in a JazzTradWorld kinda setting. This one, "Bagamoyo" from 2020, has a lot of African vibe. Sweet!

Valkyrien Allstars, an artfolkrockpopband from Oslo: They started out as a folk / folkrock band, but quickly put in such diverse elements as surprise. Surprise and .. er ... This song from 2020 is called "Slutte og byne" despite what the band try to tell you. The title means "Finishing and starting" in English. It starts out very soft, and then gains volume as the song continues.

Oh, I hate you so much right now, Frank Blank! This is gonna cost me money! Luvverly.