The Missing Piece

With the live double-album behind them, the Gentle Giant returned to the studio. The band had reached some sort of artistic critical mass by now, as had most progressive bands, but in commercial terms, record sales had hit a plateau. Thus change was in order, and the order was something shorter and different... The Missing Piece. The album kicks off with "Two Weeks in Spain" - bright, cheerful, and most certainly unlike anything the band had ever recorded before. And if that wasn't enough, "I'm Turning Around" is a love song, and one undoubtedly tailor-made for radio airplay. So herein lays the reality of this "new" era in popular music. It was 1977 and no one - not even Gentle Giant - was going to kid themselves that the ole prog rock would still cut the proverbial mustard. The old tricks were just that: old tricks. The wryly autobiographical "Betcha Thought We Couldn't Do It" is simple rock-n-roll, as is "Mountain Time"; but who's impressed? From a progressive fan's standpoint, the second side fares much better: both "As Old As You're Young" and "For Nobody" contain the interplay and spark of the Giant of old, and "Memories Of Old Days" clocks in at seven minutes, almost double anything else on the record. Idyllic and nostalgic, its twin guitars sound like a long-lost friend; the track would remain the perennial favorite from the album. Shortly after the album's release, the band played the BBC's Sight and Sound TV program, combining a curious set of older classics with new material. Another slight vindication to the new direction, the album did chart in the US, reaching No. 81. Giant's next album took things a little too far: Giant For a Day sported a gimmick cover, but unfortunately lacked absolutely anything redeeming inside. After a label switch to Columbia, the band's final album Civilian was released in 1980. It was a slight return to form, yet after one final tour of the US, the Giant laid its head down for good, a decade and out.