HAPPY THE MAN

Not the best Gabriel era Genesis track but good enough, the lyrics are 10 years advanced for the era, seems like talking about a simple guy of this days living his life with no troubles or cares:

Where you go - where? Yeah, yeah, yeah, nowhere

Sounds like a usual Gabriel criticism to the good people that care for anybody or anything around him just living his life, he's just having fun while the rest are trying to be cool, but at the same time seems to be a nice person because the last phrase describes him as He is a good man... in other words a member of the generation X.

The lyrics are somehow provoking when they mention Like a nun with a gun - I'm wonderful fun Laughing all through - just watching you Seems a very stupid game...But I don't care, I even read a fundamentalist page criticizing them for this statement, but as the song says "I don't care".

The music is simple and catchy, not a masterpiece even when still a good track that would had been a fabulous replacement for the incredibly boring "For Absent Friends" or even later for the horrendous #More Fool Me", a choice that I will never understand, specially having been a side "A" of the single, they left it away from any LP.

Of course "Seven Stones" (The "B" side) is better from a Prog perspective, but that's another story.

Now the rating, as I said it's not a masterpiece, but I believe it's a great addition for any Prog collection because it's a rare item, and if you got the original 45 rpm, you got a treasure that should be over the US$ 150.00 by this moments.

So four stars it is because of the difficulty to get it, I have edited a CDR (legal because I have both items bought in a store), replacing "For Absent Friends" with this track and sounds much better.

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