Ambrosia - Food for Musical Thought.

There are many bands, outside of the progressive movement (where change is part of the territory), that have shifted musically (whether forced or by design) from critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful origins to guaranteed airplay and commercially successful musical makeovers.

The most common occurrences (certainly the most notable) are probably within the American rock genre, artists, and music of the seventies & eighties.
Journey are an obvious example, as are REO Speedwagon to a lesser degree, and Chicago made similar musical transformations (however in the case of the latter the earlier albums were as successful as their later soft rock material).

And then there's Ambrosia.

Ambrosia were originally a four piece American band (there were a couple of personnel changes/ additions later in their career) that were a progressive rock act in the mid to late seventies, but changed their identity to that of a very commercial power pop sound in the early eighties.

I knew very little of Ambrosia other than their eighties period (their 1980 album, '180' produced three Grammy nominations), and certainly knew next to nothing of their musical origins until reading how they started out with a very different musical approach...

The self titled 1975 debut (which produced a Top 20 single 'Holdin' On to Yesterday') and the following years 'Somewhere I've Never Travelled' are very progressive and, although relatively unknown albums, may well have been an influence on far later 'neo-progressive' bands.

Interesting aside - Alan Parsons engineered Ambrosia's debut album, produced their second, and the four members of Ambrosia would appear on the first 'Alan Parsons Project' album, 'Tales of Mystery and Imagination' released in 1976.

Ambrosia's third album, 'Life Beyond L.A.', had some looser arrangements and a 3am jazz cafe' feel to a couple of the tracks, but inevitably didn't make a commercially successful mark, although it did spawn a Top 3 single in 1978 ('How Much I Feel'), which was a more standard ballad in style and arrangement - hence, no doubt, the musical change-up as the eighties arrived.

However for me 180 and the 1982 album 'Road Island' suffer a little from Pete Cetera/ Chicago Lite syndrome, and many songs sound like Mike McDonald era Doobie Brothers hand me downs.

Singer/ guitarist David Pack would go on to work as a writer, producer, and solo artist, and there have been reunions, tours, and an anthology release, but for me the most creative, innovative, and musically interesting periods for the Ambrosians were those early albums/ years.

Sadly, though, 'creative', innovative', and 'musically interesting' are not always seen hand in hand with 'popular', 'successful', or 'Platinum'.
And in this day and age of marketable, fashionable, re-imagined and disposable musical trends, they're even less likely to be seen together.

Ross Muir
March 2010


The following audio tracks are provided to accompany the above article and to promote the work of the artist/s. No infringement of copyright is intended.

Nice, Nice, Very Nice - from 'Ambrosia' (1975)
Holdin' On to Yesterday - from 'Ambrosia' (1975)
I Wanna Know - from 'Somewhere I've Never Travelled' (1976)
Not as You Were - from 'Life Beyond L.A.' (1978)