Give It Back (Giant Tracks)

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Give It Back is a song on the tribute album Giant Tracks.

  • Artist: Eclipse
  • Position: CD 2, track 7
  • Time: 5:53
  • Original album: In'terview

Musicians

  • Aloisio Monteiro - guitar and backing vocals
  • Sergio Conforti - drums and percussion
  • Patricia Deschamps - lead and backing vocals
  • Paulo Torres - bass, keyboards and backing vocals

Details

  • Recorded at: Copacabana Studios, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 25-27 May 1996
  • Mixed by: Marcio Lyra and Eclipse
  • Special thanks to: Andre Mello and Marcio Lyra

The inside story

Eclipse is a 6-year-old Brazilian progressive rock band. We started (and still perform) as a Pink Floyd cover band. Usually we play live using lots of psychedelic lighting trickery. We've done about 60-70 gigs up to now, each one with a different repertoire, covering the Floydian psychedelic period and the albums Meddle, Dark Side of the Moon, and Wish You Were Here.

At the end of 1995, some members were leaving the band, and the remainder decided to restructure it in order to produce our own compositional material following the steps of our main influences like Genesis, Jethro Tull, Gentle Giant, Yes, Focus, etc. We took as new members keyboardist/singer Andre Mello and guitarist/singer Patricia Deschamps, and started composing the songs for our first CD, which we intend to release in 1997.

Also at the end of 1995, I (Aloisio) heard about Giant Tracks, and we got interested in paying homage to one of our favorite progressive bands. We decided to cover a song into which we could put some Brazilian flavour, adding a different spice to the tribute project. Give it Back was one of many options, but we ended up choosing it because it had that particular reggae-ish beat we were looking for, mixed with the more traditional contrapuntal and atonal GG style. This part of the project was put forward by Sergio Conforti, Paulo Torres and me. We did some rehearsals setting up the whole instrumental arrangement. We were going to leave Patricia and Andre out of the recording because we had a deadline to finish it and they were still working out Floyd's repertoire. Rodrigo was also not asked to play in Give it Back because we found no space for saxes or flute. Paulo Torres (a long-time GG fan) would take care of the keyboards, and I was going to sing it. Patricia was told to learn some backing vocals. But when she arrived in the studio she had not only learned the whole piece, singing it in a nice soft way, but she also knew all the harmonized voices and composed a type of canon at the end, mixing the words "Gentle Giant" in English and Portuguese. We quickly decided to record her vocals instead of mine, which would have sounded more aggressive and out of the spirit of the arrangement.

Equipment

  • Guitar: Fender Jazzmaster (1965)
  • Bass: Rickenbacker 4001 (1974)
  • Drums: Slingerland
  • Keyboards: Roland JW-50