As a teenager, I fairly idolized David Pack for the phenomenally creative music he made as vocalist/guitarist/composer with the band Ambrosia. Pack came to pop music emboldened by his work with Leonard Bernstein and determined to make a mark similar to that of his idols — the Beatles, Pink Floyd, and Yes. Accordingly, Ambrosia’s first two albums featured seemingly endless invention and ambition, while maintaining a firm hold on accessible rock/pop dynamics and melodicism.
Then the band did an about-face (even recording an album called One-Eighty) and scored a series of adult-contemporary hits, including “(That’s) How Much I Feel”, “Biggest Part of Me”, and “You’re the Only Woman”. The gambit was a wild success; Ambrosia found a new path, down the middle of the road.
The title of Pack’s new solo CD, The Secret of Movin’ On, suggests forgiveness, but it also could be a message to people, like me, who maintain a sense of Pack based on work done more than three decades ago. I can’t expect a man with a family to feed and an undeniable facility in smooth, pleasant pop to craft music as esoteric as that which so mesmerized me in my youth. So, I set my elitist reservations aside to deal with what’s here, rather than what’s not.
And I’m enjoying this album. What’s up?
What’s up is that the music on The Secret of Movin’ On is an absolute success on its own terms. Anyone who wants to float away on a river of mainstream production techniques and comforting musical textures will get what they need, but listeners who have a genuine, accumulated respect for Pack’s gifts will be grateful to finally have an album of all-new solo material, especially because it’s been more than a decade since the last one.
Actually, “all-new” is a misnomer; there are committed and respectful new arrangements of “Biggest Part of Me” and “You’re the Only Woman” that are neither overly faithful to the originals nor superfluously “new”-sounding (the dual acoustic rhythm work on the remake of the latter has some very sweet syncopations).
Pack hits the marks with the crucial harmonic and melodic material, and there is exceedingly tasty and accomplished guitar playing all over the place. Check out his bluesy riffing on “Tell Her Goodbye” (an 814c and a 30th Anniversary model recorded completely acoustically, with Russ Freeman playing rhythm on a 710), which also features a relaxed and soulful vocal. The beautifully layered multi-guitar work on “Everlasting” elicits warm memories of the intelligent, heartfelt orchestration of guitars on early Ambrosia recordings.
An impressive roster of performers takes part; in addition to Heart’s Ann Wilson on the title track, there is uniformly solid work from the Eagles’ Timothy B. Schmit, America’s Dewey Bunnell, Journey’s Steve Perry, and jazz instrumentalists Eric Marienthal, David Benoit, Russ Freeman, and Luis Conte. You’ll have a good time on headphones with this record — there is appealing detail work in every corner — rarely anything that announces itself too ostentatiously, but much that will reward the attentive listener.
The Secret of Movin’ On is a showcase for the craftsmanship — in a conventional context — of a guitarist, vocalist, songwriter, and producer of prodigious talent. It’s at least as worthy of serious listening as most of the Stevie Wonder music of the last 26 years. Whatever that might mean to you, to me it’s saying a whole lot.
— Mike Keneally
As a teenager, I fairly idolized David Pack for the phenomenally creative music he made as vocalist/guitarist/composer with the band Ambrosia. Pack came to pop music emboldened by his work with Leonard Bernstein and determined to make a mark similar to that of his idols — the Beatles, Pink Floyd, and Yes. Accordingly, Ambrosia’s first two albums featured seemingly endless invention and ambition, while maintaining a firm hold on accessible rock/pop dynamics and melodicism.