Sleeve Notes: Glider

When I was a kid, my uncle Ron had a party van and a sedan that were both tricked out with cool airbrushed scenes of naked mermaids and packs of wolves and such. They were interesting enough to be show cars, but I’m not sure if he ever actually showed them – they mostly just sat in his garage, shielded from the bumps and scrapes of the outside world. Me and my brother and cousins (not Ron’s kids) would spend hours looking at those cars, trying to resist the temptation to paw them, and wondering what it would be like to get behind the wheel and burn some rubber. Ron would get bent out of shape if any of us kids touched either vehicle, and he’d come out to the garage with a shammy and wipe away our fingerprints while reading us the riot act. But thanks to the logic of children, this only made us want to touch his cars even more. After all, if it was forbidden from us, it had to be serious fun.

In hindsight, I can see that those cars weren’t really anything special beyond their paint jobs. Strip away the exotic creatures and artistic embellishments on either, and you were probably left with a nondescript vehicle from the 70s. Same goes for Glider. I picked up this 1977 album at a flea market last weekend for its cover alone, without any real hope that the music would be the least bit interesting. Needless to say, this album totally met my expectations. The unintentional comedy factor is very high – like too many groups from the 70s, Glider’s band photo looks like an outtake from a gay porn shoot. Their lead singer lays stretched out on the ground in front of the rest in a robe that’s open to the waist, holding a champagne flute. As expected, the music is filled with moon-and-June rhymes (“To wake up in the morning and not feel sad/I’d tell you some more but it’d only make you mad/And that’s too bad”) and odd metaphors (“Somewhere the sun’s coming up like pink lemonade”). But that cover sure is pretty – shame there isn’t more under the hood…

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