THE WHEEL OF LOVE

George Jinda was from Hungary beginning his musical life learning to play the piano before switching over to drums. And the man had chops, playing in the jazz style. Unfortunately most of his session work was in the traditional jazz mode along with smooth jazz and latin jazz. Then as a duo he was in a band called SPECIAL EFX playing a lounge jazz brand of music. All of these sub genres have me running for the door. So I knew "Wheel Of Love", his first solo album had the potential to be lame and cringe-worthy. Even the album cover stopped me in my tracks.

But! There was also the hope that this would be more in the style of the one cool band he was involved with in his life called SPEED LIMIT, who released two albums. The first in 1974, then the final one in 1975. And that debut featured three of the musicians that George got to play on this 1975 released recording called "The Wheel Of Love". Some heavy weights too with Jeff Seffer(ZAO/MAGMA) and Didier Batard(HELDON) involved. Those two along with Jinda and keyboardist Jean-Louis Bucchi shared the writing credits on "Wheel Of Love". So a six piece here of keyboards, drums, sax/flute, guitar, bass and extra percussion.

Very much a hit and miss album much like SPEED LIMIT's second recording in my opinion. SPEED LIMIT's debut will prove to be the last album standing, the only one of the three I gave 4 stars to. It's more in the jazz/fusion style, and the most consistent of the three that Jinda is on. A lot of short tracks here as we get 11 songs worth over 35 minutes. Again comparing those three albums we have a different bass player for each of them, and all three are world class players. Of course we have Didier Batard here, Joel Dugrenot(ZAO) on SPEED LIMIT's debut, and Janick Top on that second SPEED LIMIT offering. Seffer plays more flute on here than on those SPEED LIMIT records where he is mostly playing sax. Bucchi plays a lot of synths here opposed to the electric piano on SPEED LIMIT's debut. Some different flavours with these three albums for sure.

This is probably worth the 3.5 stars alone for the talent involved, and they are involved as I mentioned earlier in the compositions, as well as playing on this record. Still, there's no way this is a 4 star release in my world.