Rare Gentle Giant footage from 1980 unearthed

By
( )
published

Series of 8mm clips of Gentle Giant on the Civilian tour in 1980 from Cleveland have been synced to live music from the tour

Gentle Giant
(Image credit: Richard E. Aaron / Getty Images)

Prog rockers Gentle Giant have released a series of 8mm film clips from a show believed to be in Cleveland, Ohio from May 1980 on the band's tour for their final album Civilian, just a month or two before the band split for good.

The clips, originally recorded with no sound, came to light on The Genesis Museum YouTube page (the same people responsible for restoring the 1973 Bataclan footage of Genesis) and have since been synced to audio with a live recording from the same tour, using the tracks For Nobody and Number One by Gentle Giant fan CJ Irwin. You can watch the clips below.

"I got the video synced as best as I could with bits of the two songs featured," explains Irwin. "For the audio I went with the Toad's Place concert recording, as the source for its unparalleled quality compared to other recordings from the tour."

Gentle Giant have also released a run of new merchandise to coincide with the recent reissue of Free Hand. New t-shirts and long-sleeved t-shirts have been added to the band's range of merchandise which can be found here.

Jerry Ewing
Jerry Ewing

Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.