BEST OF KANSAS LIVE (VHS) [AKA: LIVE CONFESSIONS DVD]

This is a good concert video of Kansas with lead singer John Elefante, who, like the previous reviewer wrote, looks a bit like singer Leo Sayer. But John Elefante has a good voice, somewhat similar to Steve Walsh`s. Elefante plays keyboards and even occasionally guitar. The band sounds very good as a whole. The addition of a guest musician, Warren Ham, who plays several instruments and sings backing vocals, was a good choice. The concert starts with a very good instrumental keyboards arrangement of "Song of America", not listed.

The position of the musicians on stage is somewhat unusual for the early eighties: drummer Phil Ehart is not on the centre of the stage. He is in the left side of the stage (from the view of the audience), followed from left to right by Dave Hope, Rich Williams, Robby Steinhardt, John Elefante, Warren Ham and Kerry Livgren. The camera focuses most of the time in Steinhardt, Elefante, Ham and Livgren, with very occasional focuses on Ehart, Hope and Williams. Steinhardt shows very well his skills as the "communicator" with the audience, and also sings very good lead and backing vocals. Livgren is a very good keyboard player, maybe the best keyboard player that the band had. He also plays guitars and trade solos with Williams. Elefante is a "dymanic man" who is moving from the keyboards which are located upstairs on stage, up and down the stairs, from side to side of the stage. I really don`t like the stage design, which I consider a bit "dangerous" with stairs for the" dynamic" Elefante and Steinhardt. But this concert is very good, with the band sounding very well. Ham added very good sax and flute arrangements to some of the old songs. I thought that the band wasn`t very good without Walsh, but this video showed to me that I was wrong.

Maybe this video is very hard to find, but if you find it, enjoy a good concert.