Playing The Fool
by Gentle Giant

Playing The Fool by Gentle Giant
(Live album)
Year: 1977
Overall rank: 17,050th   Overall chart history
Average Rating: 
77/100 (from 34 votes)
  Ratings distribution   Average rating history
Accolades:
Award Top albums of 1977 (201st)
Award Top albums of of the 1970s (2,162nd)
Award Best albums of all time (17,050th)

Listen on Spotify SPOTIFY
Sorry, no matches on eBay for "Playing The Fool Gentle Giant".

  My favourite store:  

Listen & Collect

Complete your collection or upgrade your listening experience.

Gentle Giant bestography

Playing The Fool is ranked 9th best out of 18 albums by Gentle Giant on BestEverAlbums.com.

The best album by Gentle Giant is Octopus which is ranked number 2061 in the list of all-time albums with a total rank score of 811.

Gentle Giant album bestography « Higher ranked (15,352nd)
The Missing Piece
This album (17,050th)
Playing The Fool
Lower ranked (18,482nd) »
Interview

(N.B. Bestographies include all albums by an artist (and their variations), but do not include albums ranked outside the top 100,000).

Listen to Playing The Fool on YouTube

Loading content from YouTube...

Playing The Fool rankings

Playing The Fool rankings summary
Overall rank: 17,050th | 1970s rank: 2,162nd | 1977 rank: 201st  Overall chart history
(Calculated from aggregate positions across 60,000 charts (2 million album rankings). (Last updated: 5 hours ago).

Playing The Fool collection

Playing The Fool ratings

Average Rating: 
77/100 (from 34 votes)
  Ratings distribution Help Average Rating = (n ÷ (n + m)) × av + (m ÷ (n + m)) × AV
where:
av = trimmed mean average rating an item has currently received.
n = number of ratings an item has currently received.
m = minimum number of ratings required for an item to appear in a 'top-rated' chart (currently 10).
AV = the site mean average rating.

Showing latest 5 ratings for this album.  | Show all 34 ratings for this album.

Sort Sort by
RatingDate updatedMemberAlbum ratingsAvg. album rating
 
75/100
 !
01/07/2026 07:54 Exist-en-ciel  Ratings distribution  14,74370/100
 
95/100
 !
01/10/2025 10:05 Fullsized  Ratings distribution  16385/100
 
90/100
 !
11/27/2024 04:13 slatsheit  Ratings distribution  2,04281/100
 
95/100
 !
09/16/2024 16:41 duelek  Ratings distribution  2,04975/100
 
80/100
 !
05/27/2024 22:30 LosWochos  Ratings distribution  47,44875/100

Rating metrics: Help Outliers can be removed when calculating a mean average to dampen the effects of ratings outside the normal distribution. This figure is provided as the trimmed mean. A high standard deviation can be legitimate, but can sometimes indicate 'gaming' is occurring. Consider a simplified example* of an item receiving ratings of 100, 50, & 0. The mean average rating would be 50. However, ratings of 55, 50 & 45 could also result in the same average. The second average might be more trusted because there is more consensus around a particular rating (a lower deviation).
(*In practice, some albums can have several thousand ratings)

This album is rated in the top 3% of all albums on BestEverAlbums.com. This album has a Bayesian average rating of 76.8/100, a mean average of 76.2/100, and a trimmed mean (excluding outliers) of 78.2/100. The standard deviation for this album is 18.5.


Please log in or create an account if you want to be able to leave a rating

Playing The Fool favourites

Showing all 8 members who have added this album as a favourite

Playing The Fool comments

Showing all 1 comments |
Most Helpful First | Newest First | Positive Sentiment First | Longest Comments First
(Only showing comments with -2 votes or higher. You can alter this threshold from your profile page. Manage Profile)

Rating:  
95/100
From 12/14/2017 18:28 | #203103
Such a great live album.

Includes the legendary recorder quartet during 'Excerpts from Octopus'.
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)

Please log in or create an account if you want to be able to add a comment

Your feedback for Playing The Fool

Anonymous
What do you think of this album? Leave a comment or rate it below.
The top-voted comments get featured on our charts, Album of the Day, and the site newsletter.
Log in or create an account to rate this album, leave comments and join the discussion.