Greenslade
Spyglass Guest

Oh, I have a conspiracy theorist friend who is just out of this world. Every time I visit him, he insists on showing me on-the-internet video-after-video of Reptilians, UFO sightings, Mayan conspiracies, and musings à la Sandro Giacobbo.

Now, in line with that approximate and pseudo-Voyageristic style of my friend (and the alien abduction newspapers with busty women you might find in the nearest Maine drugstore), I will explain a very complex concept that has several connections with the world of the Unknown, Premonition, and Science in general. Stay awake, mind you, because it is complex. Here it is:

when a group is having fun, you can feel it.

Listening to "Little Red Fry Up", the second -wonderful- track of the third studio album by Greenslade (released in 1974), might support my thesis.

Let's analyze the whys and wherefores, always using the very reliable tools of empirical experimentation and with the aid of the densimeter that I always carry with me and, as you all know, is extremely useful for educating oneself about all there is to know about liquids.  

If the aforementioned prog-rockers from perfidious Albion were not having fun like madmen during the recording of this Long Playing, how could one justify the synthesizers (an abundance of synths: Harmonium, Moog, and that beloved Clavinet -I said Clavinet, not Clarinet- so dear to the well-known chubby keyboardist of Yes) chasing each other and rivalling like Itchy and Scratchy after a night of debauchery fueled by tranquilizers and cheap wine?

Or Dave Lawson's voice that splits sardonically, rolls into schizophrenic falsettos, lowers by three tones like Zappa's after the 1971 London concert flight, and echoes worse than in Plato's cave?

Everything seems to come as naturally as a hearty belch after a glass of Sprite: Tony Reeves' bass pulses funkily, Andrew McCulloch's drumming is a suave-metronome that accompanies and does not tyrannize, Clem Clemson's guitar (who is not the inventor of the annoying vocal repeater produced in '79) -for the first time seen on screens set by ex-Colosseum Dave Greenslade- only makes a "little appearance," but when it shows up, it is very "self-confident," as they would say on MTV. 

Ah, when a band is on fire, it's on fire, despite the claim that at the time this "Spyglass Guest" was accused of being too commercial and that the English band was predicted a descending trajectory more curved than Pastorius's thumb.

Giacobbo and I (and my compulsive friend) don’t think so, except for the "prediction" itself. The proof lies in the harmony vocals reminiscent of Wilsonian "good vibrations" in "Rainbow," the pompous organ entwined with Emerson/Lake/Palmer-like triplets in "Joy De Vivre," and the operatic progression of "Spirit Of The Dance," thickened by a mellotron that to call it too-Crimsonian would be doing it an injustice.

And so says the Densimeter, proudly standing between the third and fourth mark.