INSPIRATION

After the departure of John Gladwin in 1973 (who left because of the demanding touring schedule), Amazing Blondel continued as a duo. But since Gladwin wrote most of the material when he was in the band, that duty fell upon the remaining members Eddie Baird and Terence Wincott. At first, it seemed like they were going to stay true to form as "Blondel" was an excellent album, however, after that, the duo started concentrating on a more popular sound moving to more electronics and away from acoustic folk sound. The quality of their output also continued to decrease quite noticeably. And don't expect to find anything that resembles prog after that point.

The album "Inspiration" was released in 1975 following their first attempt at mainstreaming their sound with the album "Mulgrave Street" released the year before that. With "Inspiration", the band attempts to get back some of their original sound with the use of orchestration on 7 out of 10 tracks. However, this lush pop-orchestra style sometimes contrasts with the more electronic sound, and that is apparent right away on the first track, which is a suite of two songs in one track. The first part is more upbeat and a bit weak, but the 2nd part saves it a bit by moving into a more ballad style before returning to the faster tempo again. Not a bad song as the band tries to find it's place in their new sound, but it's not of the quality of before, and it's also as good as it gets, which isn't much so don't get excited. But, then the soft rock sound continues reminding me more of Air Supply (on the ballads) or Lobo (on the midtempo songs) than of the more classy folk artists with their excellent harmonies and tunes of prior years.

Here are a few more notes on a couple of the songs. "The Lovers" is too sappy drenched in sentimental strings to be much good. They do try to stir things up a bit on "Good Time Gertie", and the short piano solo is quite catchy, but overall it ends up being an embarrassing attempt with lousy vocal harmonics in the chorus. They try to turn out their best Beatles clone on "Standing By My Window", but miss it by a mile. 70's pop cliches abound on "Be So Happy" that you can almost imagine naked hippies skipping through fields of green.

This tries to be a romantic record that you could play while sitting on a couch next to your lover with the lights down low. However, if you look close at the pictures on the back cover, you might see through that ruse. Baird looks like he is totally bored and Wincott looks like a crazed madman. Not the image you want to portray if you want to win over the K-Tel "Soft Hits of the 70's" crowd. Not much good on this album, even the fans would probably want to avoid this one.