WELCOME TO THE SHOW

With their audience slowly dwindling, BJH found fewer reasons to play, and stay together. They could still muster enough for a half of a decent album but no more. That half would include "The Life You Lead", the gothic "Lady MacBeth", the uplifting if pandering African Nights, the sci fi follow up "Origin Earth" (closest to their older style), and the threatening "If Love is King". It would not include the pathetic "John Lennon's guitar" or the insipid "Cheap the Bullet". While every BJH album includes some good material, we had to wade through so much mediocre fluff in this later period that it effectively negates the occasional gem and leaves me wishing they had fizzled out a lot earlier.

With "Welcome to the Show" BJH opens the 1990s much as they ended the 1980s, and that can't be a good thing for long time fans, to whom it was starting to sound like the show that never ends.