Gentle Giant
“It is our goal to expand the frontiers of contemporary popular music at the risk of being very unpopular. We have recorded each composition with the one thought — that it should be unique, adventurous and fascinating. It has taken every shred of our combined musical and technical knowledge to achieve this. From the outset we have abandoned all preconceived thoughts of blatant commercialism. Instead we hope to give you something far more substantial and fulfilling. All you need to do is sit back, and acquire the taste.”
Gentle Giant was a British progressive rock band of the 1970s who were critically acclaimed but found little mainstream attention. Their lyrical content has been described as a reincarnation of Voltaire, the French lunatic from the 18th century, while their mad Medieval musicianship was akin to other prog bands such as ELP but more compact, performing songs of six minutes rather than 16 minutes.
History[edit]
Derek Shulman began his recording career as the singer of '60s boyband Simon Dupree and the Big Sound, alongside Pete O'Flaherty, Eric Hine, Tony Ransley, and his brothers Phil Shulman and Ray Shulman (but oddly, no Simon Dupree). They experienced some commercial success with several top 40 hits, including the top 10 hit "Learning to Fly High as Kites". However, their record label Porkaphone Records, who also managed The Beatles, eventually dropped them for sounding too much like The Beatles. The band struggled with creative difficulties, and dissolved in 1969.
Undeterred, the three brothers soon reconciled and formed prog rock band Gentle Giant in 1970, adding guitarist Gary Coleman-Green, keyboardist Kerry Pippinnear, and drummer Martin Smith (later replaced by Malcolm Mortimore "Mouse", who was himself replaced by John Waters Weathers) to round out the lineup. Soon after, Shulman totally lost his mind when listening to early Pink Floyd and late Beatles music whilst on heavy drugs, so he began to ring his cowbell at studio sessions and had Smith add some marble teacup-drumming afterwards. He even considered changing the band's name to "Angry Cowbell", but it was already copyrighted by Bruce Dickinson.
The band recorded eight albums of uncompromising prog rock, with dissonant chord progressions, odd time signatures, and lyrics cribbed from Graham Greene novels. While Gentle Giant secured a loyal following of fairly devout nerds, they never experienced widespread commercial success they so yearned for. With their near-nonexistent popularity dwindling slightly in the late 1970s, they desperately sold out to pop with the albums The Missing Piece, Giant for a Day!, and Civilian. These albums somehow made the band even less popular than before, and so they disbanded in 1980.
Following his recording career, Shulman became a prominent record company executive. He signed such famous bands as Dream Theater, Pantera, Bon Jovi, Cinderella, Slipknot, and most infamously Nickelback. Many prog purists would cite these bands as reasons why Shulman has surpassed even Phil Collins in terms of lost prog credibility.
Of note, "Gentle Giant" is frequently used as an IRC screen name by people who suffer from gigantism.