MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN?
With all the 50-year anniversaries that have taken place lately, it’s easy to understand how America almost got lost in the shuffle. We’re talking about the band of course, not the nation, which certainly has no problem ever asserting itself. And yet, America — the band — deserves recognition for a half century of making music that added so significantly to the soundtrack of so many lives.
If Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell appear to keep a lower profile than some of their peers, it’s only because that’s been their approach all along. While their songs stand up as well today as they did early on, their pleasing melodies and sweet sense of serendipity offer no cause for screaming to the rafters or adding undue embellishment. America’s music can best be likened to a kind of comfort food that their fans could understand and appreciate. Their seemingly endless procession of hits — “A Horse With No Name,” Sandman,” “Sister Golden Hair, “Tin Man,” “Ventura Highway,” “You Can Do Magic” and all the many others — attest to the affability and accessibility they’ve shared so throughly throughout the
