Progressive Rock
Gentle Giant release “Front Row Center (US Dates 1975–1980)” on 27 November, an eight-CD box from Madfish with eight hours of live recordings made in the United States, opening with the show the band played for the country’s bicentennial.
The bicentennial concert at the Calderone Concert Hall in Hempstead, New York State, from July 1976, takes up the first two discs; the return to the same Calderone, on 16 November 1977, discs three and four; Widener College in Chester, Pennsylvania, on 18 November 1977, the fifth. The box is completed by the Agora Ballroom in Atlanta, on 29 May 1980, the sixth; a session at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles from February 1975, the seventh; and the State University of New York at New Paltz, on 6 November 1977, the eighth.
Madfish had already put out a ten-LP box under the same title on 15 July 2022, but with four recordings and the window closed between 1976 and 1980. The two added now are the Capitol Studios session and the New Paltz show.
Peter J. Reynolds mastered it, and it comes with a sixty-page bound book containing an essay by Alan Kinsman, interviews with the band, photographs and memorabilia. The Atlanta show is from the last tour the band played: they split up in the summer of 1980.
Text by Guillem Cardós