BAD DREAMS

Somewhere between the aptly named "Inspiration" and this 1976 album, a line was crossed. It was a fine line yes, but once it was breached, Amazing Blondel would lose its first name for a couple of decades.

The sound is not all that different from the previous post Gladwin efforts, yet miles apart. Although "Until I see you again" is very reminiscent of the ballads on Inspiration, most of the others are beyond wimpy, especially in "It's Got to be a Girl", which doesn't show enough irony to be a send up of the metrosexual. Moreover, we now have to deal with boogie woogie inflections everywhere instead of the more symphonic upbeat tunes. This tendency even permeates the best and most proggy title cut ("One Bad Dream"). I may suggest the nearest references to be rather far from anything folk prog, perhaps to what the Bee Gees or James Taylor were doing at the time, or a cross between other soft bellied artists. It doesn't sound good on paper and it was worse on record.

This attempt to repackage Amazing Blondel as uber sensitive guys with a pulse on the times was ill advised to say the least. Not surprisingly, it became their last studio album until a short lived revival in the late 90s. This is a very weak 2 star effort, having just enough quality to be spared the bottom rung. For completists and fans of interesting cover art only.

This is the last album of «Amazing Blondel» before a long hiatus of about twenty years. The least that I can say is that the title of this short album (less than thirty four minutes ? thank god!) is fully in line with its content.

This album smells soft rock, syrupy songs, and basically there is nothing folk or prog in here (as in their previous release). But their prog angle (?) was never obvious to me. There are even some attempts to sound as a Motown band ("Big Boy"). Press next immediately for your sake when you reach this track (if ever you have the patience to do so).

"One Bad Dream" is quite dreadful as well (same feel as "Big Boy" actually). Same action: press next (you can also consider "The Man That I Am" as equal and poor stuff). The romantic ballad "Until I See You Again" is probably one of the bearable songs from this album. Even if it is quite mellowish, at least it breaks with the overall mood and offers some gentle acoustic moments.

There is even a trial to rock! But IMO it fails abruptly ("I'll Go the Way I Came"). Several songs aren't too bad but they can hardly cope with the prog umbrella ("Wait for the Day"). Bands as "CSN" or simply "Simon & Garfunkel" have released much better albums in this style.

The jazzy "Liberty Belle" features some good sax but overall, it ain't a big deal as most of this album. The whole sounds rather poor and IMHHO it doesn't belong to this site. But earlier efforts from the band didn't match the progressive angle I am waiting from a band referenced on PA. Even under the prog folk umbrella.

One star.

At this point in Blondel's history, any semblance to Folk has been abandoned. There was an attempt to make this band soft rock, radio-friendly fare. As this album proves, it was a complete failure.

You get two types of music here; boring soft rock (worse than "Bread" , or more similar to "Lobo") and plastic soul/funk. This is really bad. You could tell that there were some heartfelt attempts like in the instrumental section of "Big Boy", but even those were drowned out by schleppiness.

The attempt obviously didn't work because the album didn't sell very well and the band went on hiatus for many years, after which they attempted a revival, but didn't have a lot of luck with that either.

If you are thinking you might even get a little semblance of their earlier years, where they actually brushed up against excellent Prog Folk music, well don't bother. This is really terrible, unless you like really bad 70's pop.