“Pilgrim’s Progress / Bedside Manners Are Extra” by Greenslade
From the 1973 album Bedside Manners Are Extra
Confession: I am dealing with the most inexplicably finicky* WiFi connection I have ever encountered tonight at an inn in Bayfield, Wisconsin. Somehow I managed to get connected to YouTube long enough to find this video, but not long enough for the site to actually load any images or, even more problematically, the video itself.
That said, it’s a clip from Old Grey Whistle Test, so I’m going to trust that it’s at least moderately interesting, whatever the quality of the recording itself.
This morning in the shower, for some reason that I should perhaps not explore, lest it reveal too much about my psyche, I found myself with “What Are You Doin’ to Me?” by Greenslade (sample lyric: “I’m a one-woman man but you’re faithful to three”) stuck in my head. It occurred to me that Greenslade was a band I have so far neglected on this blog. They’re an unusual band, even for prog — led by keyboardist Dave Greenslade; a four-piece, dual-keyboard, no-guitar lineup, heavy on the Hammond and the Mellotron. And their drummer was Andy McCullough, perhaps best known as the drummer for the third King Crimson album, Lizard.
Greenslade produced four albums, of varying quality, from mostly-reasonably-good to almost-entirely-awful. In short, they’re full-on prog, in that peculiar way that maybe sounded relevant in the early ’70s but has most decisively not aged well. I own their first two albums, the self-titled Greenslade from 1972, and the 1973 follow-up, Bedside Manners Are Extra. I like about 70% of the first album, and maybe 45% of the second. And from what I’ve heard of their last two albums, I’d be hard-pressed to justify paying even $6 for a used CD or the MP3s on Amazon.
That said, a band with this much Mellotron and other vintage keyboards is worth hearing, at least once. So go ahead, and watch the video. I wish I could!
* Regarding the finicky WiFi connection: I’ve determined that the problem is not the WiFi network itself, which is actually broadcasting quite a strong signal, nor its Internet connectivity, which also seems to be fine. The problem is its DNS server, which seems either severely corrupted or only intermittently available, or some combination of the above. So the only way I’m even able to post this is by having edited my hosts file to recognize and properly translate prog.room34.com since the WiFi network appears incapable of doing so itself. So don’t say I don’t work hard for you.
