"What goes up, must come down..."
It was good of Blood, Sweat and Tears to look ahead to their eventual demise as a top chart act. We are only at the midway point of their year long imperial phase but it's not unreasonable to assume that they were well aware that their unique brand of jazz-pop wasn't going to be fashionable for an extended period. Then again, pop groups being convinced that they have longevity on their side isn't uncommon so maybe David Clayton Thomas was going on about others whose careers were also about to go tits up.
The follow-up to their breakthrough smash "You've Made Me So Very Happy", "Spinning Wheel" ought to be BS&T at the peak of their powers. Commercially speaking, it is. Three weeks atop the RPM hit parade while stuck at number two for the same amount of time (it was blocked first by Henry Mancini's "Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet" and then by Zager and Evans' "In the Year 2525", a single we'll be getting to real soon) while their self-titled second album was shifting huge numbers is an enviable position to be in. The Canadian singles charts were jammed with big name acts during this summer including the likes of The Beatles ("The Ballad of John and Yoko" which was practically a flop in North America by their usual standards), Elvis Presley ("In the Ghetto") and Tom Jones ("Love Me Tonight"); BS&T saw them all off.
Creatively, however, it was a somewhat different matter. Though penned by Thomas — and thus giving the mainly American group some Con Can bonus points — "Spinning Wheel" is too similar to its predecessor. Two hits in and they were already doing more of the same. Except this is a classic case of more-of-the-same-but-not-quite-as-good-this-time-round. Thomas went almost exclusively with his gruff grandfatherly vocal here while sacrificing the remainder of his remarkable range. (It may seem strange that sounding like you're two hundred years old wasn't considered to be a turn off but both Johnny Cash and Joe Cocker were equally geriatric in their singing and they both did very well) Luckily, musical high standards are maintained with a propulsive performance, especially from the horn section and drummer Bobby Colomby.
Never exactly critical darlings, I feel the need to defend BS&T. It's as if they were the Dave Matthews Band of their era: a competent group with nice songs and strong musicianship whose cool factor had become a void. Plus, they didn't inspire generations of cool kid bands which no doubt didn't help their cause. On the other hand, I can see why plenty of people thought they were simply all right or just didn't give a shit about them. There's not much here to thrill listeners. "Spinning Wheel" is a slightly above average single but one that I have little desire to ever listen to again. I'm not even all that interested in hearing anymore of their discography which is fine since there's just one more to go before they began coming down.
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