That album you hate, it might be someone else’s perfect cup-of-tea. If you’re an old-so-and-so, you’re likely to hate that there’s hardly an original member playing live in your favourite reformed band now, but it could be someone else’s only experience of them, their first gig even, and who knows maybe in time they’ll download the whole back catalogue with one click of a button and appreciate why you preferred the second drummer who played on that third album several decades before they were even born.

Music’s brilliant. What we hear in our teenage years we hold onto like a badge of honour for the rest of our lives. Okay, if that was Gary Glitter, we may not like to discuss it in public. Our tastes also change, but the primeval influences of Stravinsky’s ‘Rites Of Spring’ can still call out to anyone of us at any time. Why did British whiteboys fall in love with the blues? Because growing up in post-war poverty they understood the heart of where it came from, that and it had a great beat.

Simon Dupree & The Big Sound became Gentle Giant, turning from psychedelia pop band to a progressive rock act of musical extremes. They got big in some places, like Canada, less so on home-turf, and by 1977 marketing had become a popular tool in selling records if you wanted to stick around.

We were being told what to buy and when. Punk was in and out, the best bands surviving beyond an eighteen month life cycle. While over in the USA, the discovery of the value of the pink pound helped disco begin to dance high in the charts. Singles were making it big again, and the second side of your vinyl album being given over to some pseudo-mythical opus less likely to keep the attention of those then-young grandfathers of Generations X, Y and Z. Thus, it was progressive rock bands were either folding or repurposing themselves. Albeit, it’s only with hindsight, those of us wildly attempting to sow our oats in that first flush of youth can see that in the sober light of day.

I only became aware of Gentle Giant around the time of The Missing Piece album. I saw them on TV, performing Two Weeks In Spain’ and I knew they were a prog band before they played a single note, because the singer wore a striped rugby shirt just like Peter Bardens from Camel and Phil Collins from Genesis did. I rather liked the number, was less sure about a few others I heard, so didn’t pick up any of their old albums that I suddenly started noticing in junk shops and second hand record stores that I’d rummage through. I do remember picking up a Guitar magazine while working in Walsall some years later, reading an interview with guitarist Gary Green, finding it interesting not least some discussion about guitar synthesisers, but before I investigate further, they called it a day.

These days every sneeze a band ever made is being remastered to find its way down your ear holes, in some digital, or increasingly again physical form. In the case of Gentle Giant that’s a good thing, with most of the band still around, they’ve harvested their back catalogue well in recent years. Folk like me who tossed them aside unfairly now find the patience to listen, appreciate what they achieved, and also to enjoy quite a bit of their music. They were not the easiest of bands to get into, a single song might go off randomly into six or more different musical modes, and much as Derek Shulman might have ended up being a big name in the music industry, as a singer his voice I sometimes still find difficult to like.

The press for this re-release of The Missing Piece, the band’s ninth studio album from 1977, tends to come with the caveat, that it wasn’t received well first time round and you’re probably not going to like it now, but please give it a chance because it’s been remixed by Steven Wilson. To which I always say, that’s all well and good if you’ve got a good record player and the time to compare the old and the new. I suspect those loyal fans of the time were the ones who frowned most, reflected the changing times, being leaner and opting for a kind of art rock approach in places.

Available CD, as 5.1 Blu-Ray an 180g vinyl edition and digitally, it opens with the aforementioned ‘Two Weeks in Spain’ a jaunty little number, with catchy simple lyrics about the joys of affordable foreign travel were then beginning to grow accustomed to, that also throws in some playful short instrumental phrases along the way. This feel good number even had a bit Radio 1 airplay back in the day.

Featuring the then steady line-up of Derek Shulman (Lead vocals), Kerry Minnear (Keyboards, vocals), Ray Shulman (Bass Guitar, 12 string guitar), Gary Green (Electric and acoustic guitars), and John ‘Pugwash’ Weathers (Drums and percussion), the musicianship can’t be faulted it just doesn’t jump all over the place as before. Still, the grander keyboard gestures and twirling bass lines of ‘I’m Turning Around’ are pleasant in a kind of mild Genesis single B-side manner. Then we get ‘Betcha Thought We Couldn’t Do It’ where they might be said to capture the spirit of punk-come-new wave with some lively rocking guitar work on a number that could just as likely have turned up on some Roger Chapman solo album, as possibly ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ with its lopsided syncopated blues funk, and a little music hall on the downwards slide. Thus far in, lyrically, they’re not being deep or mysterious, but the directness of it all, proves rather singalong-able. ‘Mountain Time’ gives us more of the same, the musicians getting to fly with more creativity within this extended funky rhythm ‘n blues, that has much more flair than Paice Ashton Lord’s Malice In Wonderland, that was released the same year.

Turning the vinyl editions over, older fans probably raise a forced smile hearing as Kerry Minnear takes initial lead vocals on the courtly baroque that is ‘As Old As You’re Young’. Whereas the guitar is to the fore on many of the songs, this is keyboard led, with assorted vocal harmonies and musical interplay coming into play too. ‘Memories Of Old Days’ continues the old school route for at around seven and a half minutes long it’s prog as we knew it – There’s some lovely acoustic guitar playing, and as synthesisers enter melodically one’s reminded a little of ‘Entangled’ by Genesis, but only in that the way those instruments work together. Here Shulman’s deeper, more manly, heartfelt voice, draws us in narrating semi-poetic folk-styled gentle memories of times gone by. You’ll not believe just under eight minutes have passed since it first began, but play it again to make sure as this  yearningly elegiac number is likely to grow on you even more.

Weathers’ percussive rhythms alongside Green’s snake charming guitar lines add a little Santana flavour to ‘Winning’, while Minnear’s organ teases and cajoles throughout ‘For Nobody’, the rhythm section getting their most complex in their interplay, a couple of rounds of impressive a Capello vocal harmonies, and some prog drama fitted in between. And there the original album concluded, this release including ‘Winning (Outtake)’ as bonus track, an instrumental take, where Weather remains imperative to its delivery, yet takes his approach in various slightly different ways, allowing Ray Shulman’s bass to add some subtle melodic funk, come South American dance lines, and Green and Minnear to serve lead toppings.

The real missing pieces on this record might be the lack of multi-instrumentalization, and that lack of dazzling diversity is possibly what makes these songs tunes new listeners will find more accessible. It’s not brilliant, but it’s far better than some might have you think.

• The Missing Piece is released via Chrysalis Records and is available here.
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Track List:

Side 1:

1. Two Weeks in Spain
2. I’m Turning Around
3. Betcha Thought We Couldn’t Do It
4. Who Do You Think You Are?
5. Mountain Time

Side 2:

1. As Old As You’re Young
2. Memories Of Old Days
3. Winning
4. For Nobody
5. Winning (Outtake) (Bonus Track)