Windmill - Wilbur's Thing

Label: MCA
Year of Release: 1970

Readers, when I promise you something, have you ever known me to let you down?  I declared some time ago that I'd upload the third (and final) Windmill single for your collective attention, and here you go.  It's done and dusted.  Technically speaking, you could if you wished now click on the "Windmill" tag at the bottom of this entry and create a mini-album of all their available work.

Of all their releases, "Wilbur's Thing" is talked about in the most hushed tones as being their "definitive piece of popsike", but to be honest it's not as satisfying as "I Can Fly".  Rather, it's a curious, strident cross between "Puppet on a String" and a "Sergeant Pepper" reject track, all circus horns and Europop chorus.  Like most of Windmill's output, it sounds astonishingly dated for 1970, like something which would have slotted well on to the "Circus Days" series of compilation albums.  And true enough, plenty of the content of those discs did stem from the seventies, but there's not a guitar solo or gutsy vocal in earshot here, just pure and simple toytown glee.

After this, the band's career regrettably came sliding to a halt after the lead singer Dick Scott tragically died in a car accident.   The other members went on to form Tonton Macoute who took things in a much more prog orientated direction.