COUNTRY AIRS - PIANO SOLOS

Coda Records was a short-lived label that tried to cash in on the popularity of New Age music in the mid-eighties. Wakeman had the highest profile, but there were other "name" artists, notably Claire Hamill (who did an interesting but simplistic vocal and sampled-vocal album) and Thomas Newman (who did a couple of pretty good instrumental albums). This album did little for me; it sounded more like George Winston than anything done previously by Wakeman. And it's not that I was hoping for a typical Rick Wakeman album. I thought that the album cover and title promised something slow, quiet and minimal, and I imagined Wakeman attempting a "reinvention". Becoming one of the zillions of George Winston imitators is not what I had in mind.