Cymarron--Rings (1971)

     My hunch about certain things in music is probably like most of you. Sometimes right, sometimes wrong, but usually interesting because the arts in general are so subjective.
      It had been a long time since hearing the song, "Rings" from the soft rock group Cymarron. It's one of those songs that's is as lite and airy as the meringue on Grandma's banana creme pie, and has as much nutritional value. However, that isn't why you listen to songs like this, they are pure pleasure while you listen, then ten minutes later you can't remember the name of the song, much less the name of the group.
     For historical sake, the group was made up of Rick Yancey, Sherrill Parks, Richard Mainegra and this was their only hit, reaching number 17 in the late summer of 1971. There was a brief showing of the follow up, "Valerie" several months later, then disappeared.
     Upon hearing this again for the first time in at least 30 years, my first thought was, "This has a late 80's/early 90's vibe about it. I know that era in country music well, as it's about the only period in that genre's history that I actually gave a damm about. Well, it turns out that twenty years after this singles, Yancey and Maingera teamed up with former Bread member James Griffin to form The Remingtons which had a couple of top ten hits on the country charts in the early 90's. This dovetails nicely into my theory that modern country music is as much influenced by 70's rock/pop then the country music of an earlier generation.....but then again you can read my opening sentence and argue that I don't know what I'm talking about...