BEDSIDE MANNERS ARE EXTRA

At the time the album caught my attention by the wonderful Roger Dean sleeve. The colourful style could only belong to an album in the progressive rock vein. When "Colosseum" broke up, keyboard man Dave Greenslade started his own band. This is typical early seventies keyboard driven prog with lots of flute, mellotron and organ. It could feel strange without electric guitar but it doesn't. The sound of the keyboards is so diverse, you'll hardly miss the guitar. Moreover there actually is a kind of a guitar part played by a keyboard.

3 tracks are instrumental, 3 tracks feature excellent vocals of Dave Lawson. His vocal does sound timid on the title track but on the other two vocal tracks it does contend some power. The voice is strange but I do enjoy it. More than once the album refers to Yes at the time Fragile was released but fortunately Yes is just one of the references, next to Elp and Colosseum. The keyboards on "Time to dream " are sounding a bit like Wakeman's and there're also some repeated motifs against the grain of the atmosphere, a bit like Yes did on "long distance". But unlike Yes the floating keyboards are omnipresent and that makes the album interesting for people who are looking for fabulous keyboard parts. The melody of the verse is sounding haunted in an excitable way. "Sunkissed you're not" is one of the most memorable moments on the album. On this track the fusion influences are more present than on other tracks. A complex track to get into. Give it time.. . The title track is the most accessible one with strong vocal melodies and a lyric which refers to adolescent years. "Pilgrims progress" is a fascinating up-tempo track with great melodies. Like on all the other tracks those floating keyboards are a delight to listen to and the main reason why this album deserves some of your attention. All instruments are handled very well. Also the way the drum are handled is worth mentioning not only on "Drum folk" which is a great track again, full of excerpts of floating mellotrons. It starts off like something from ELP but soon the atmospheric mellotrons are coming through and later on there's a drum solo which is odd to be found on a studio album.

The record was produced very poor. The rhythm section sounds like it's been recorded in a room full of mud. Even when I replaced my scratched record by a perfect sounding cd, the quality of the sound was hardly improved. I heard of the existence of a compilation album which included some remastered songs but I'm not sure it actually exists. Must be hard to take some material from this album which would mean there's some second class material included as well which isn't the case, every track is interesting enough. On "Bedside manner's are extra" the sound of Greenslade is more colourful than the on other albums of the band although the sound of the keyboards is a bit outdated today. Listening to the album gives you a laid back feeling. This is one of the few prog albums I ever heard that aren't pompous in any way. If you like the instrumental side of Yes or ELP you should give this one a spin; or better give this album several spins, it'll only get better.