Vol. 4 - Ambrosia: A Gift from the Gods??

Continuing in the defensive vein, Dolf and Holiday address another lost classic and perhaps reveal some romantic tension of their own.

Holiday writes:

Young Adolf, I ask you to take a moment to consider Los Angeles quartet Ambrosia  [guitarist/vocalist David Pack, bassist/vocalist Joe Puerta, keyboardist Christopher North, and drummer Burleigh Drummond—along with a young Michael McDonald contributing on bass on some recording].  As you know, the group began its career melding symphonic art rock with a well-produced pop sound.  Early recordings are available, of course, but are certainly not representative of the band's true mission.  The niche for such music, a soft rock/prog rock sunflower that grew roots in the pioneering garden of Curt Boetcher and Gary Usher projects, was later filled (perhaps ful-filled) in the early 1990s by Canadian soft-prog stalwarts Rush [see later chapter for a defense of this position - ed.] so the loss of a relatively un-mined sub-genre should be considered minor when held against Ambrosia's tragically short but utterly breathtaking foray into rock of the softest and most romantic order.

It was with the number three hit "How Much I Feel," released in 1978, that America and the world got a true taste of Ambrosia, a feel for the soaring romance and blue-eyed soul which would define the band on its 1980 follow-up.  Another number three hit, "Biggest Part of Me," and the number 13 follow-up "You're the Only Woman" owed something to the aforementioned McDonald during his reign over the Doobie Brothers, but it was the crotch-wrung falsetto choruses that separated Ambrosia from like-minded artists, that incubated the fey eggs of Air Supply and even post-mullet, rocker-turned-lover Michael Bolton.  The ancient gods had replaced the powerful mythic brew from which the band derived its name with an equally potent gift to mankind: the gift of music unafraid to celebrate love in pathetic excess and lyrics that would never shy from a well-placed "woman" or "girl" or "baby."    The new Ambrosia was the music of excessive, consuming Love, and life without this Love's destructive power was not worth living:

That how much I feel (I feel for you, baby)/

That's how much I feel (I need your love)/

I live for your touch/

That’s how much/

That’s how much...

Ambrosia's next album failed, ending their run of chart success, and the group, prepared to eye the prize in the soft-focus brought on by the tears of a broken heart but not through the tears of poverty, of a hunger more real, broke up.  We as a society would still feel the loss if not for the compilation called Anthology, a singular statement by a band with two histories, four perms, and one aching heart.

Dolf provides this coda:

My Dearest Friend, your eloquent elegy to the greatness of Ambrosia moves me to words of my own.   Imagine the world without these smooth and elegant tunes?  How many suburban white-folk would be without love or child in their lives?  An entire generation may have been lain to waste if not for songs like "Biggest Part of Me" or "You're the Only Woman"!   I can imagine it now—come back with me to 1980:

 A young, just-married couple we'll call Bruce and Annette have just left a party during the summer months.  Warm night, gentle breeze, stars above.  Annette had a touch too much Lancers Rose; Bruce probably didn't need that last Michelob.  Once safely home, the magic happens—sweet,  sweet love made all the more magical by to the local top 40 station pumping out "You're the Only Woman".  Mood setter?  I think so.  If you were with me, I'd hold you close like only a friend could.  But I digress. 

Think of the scene above played out a million times over in places like Oshkosh WI, Eugene OR or Des Moines, IA.  Peoria, baby.  Instant baby boom, baby.  Ambrosia—A gift from the gods?  I think so, my friend, I think so...