DUST IN THE WIND

What I like so much about this song is that there are no reasons, no analysis, no instruction, it's purely about a feeling. It is depressing yet beautiful. To me it's saying to be yourself and do your best to be happy for most lives come and go and don't make much of a difference to change anything and nothing ever changes the passing of time. It's a song about life and death and your short time on this earth to exist.

My second Kansas album did not dissapoint at all. The recording is sometimes questionable and the editing of the tracks like the abrupt ending of One Big Sky to T.O Witcher but this doesn't let down the ultimate musical quality of this brilliant live performance. Highlights for me personal were the Preacher which i think is an excelent track anyway and House On Fire when they break into Baby please don't go. Every song is well done and the vocals are excelent as always. Buy this cd if you see it, it shall not dissapoint!

CAUTION

I know that from time to time, bands do not always have the control of all the compilation albums released by record companies. They often do not decide to release it nor do they select the tracklist.

The original recordings for this album were done in 1989 fir the radio show "King Biscuit Flour Hour Presents". This average live album was already published a long time ago but with a different title. It is not the first time that Kansas is doing this. First time was with "Live At the Whiskey" and "Live: Dust In The Wind" (released in 1998 and only be different in the sense that it had three numbers less).

They do pretty much the same here. It is exactly the same concert as The King Biscuit One but repackaged. The tracklist has been rearranged maybe to fool a little more the potential buyer. I guess one can only be furious about such a practice. To fool the fans to such extent is really bad. Actually, the original album was not all that great (two stars), so if you do not have it and you see this one, you might decide to buy it but it is not really a must have (neither for Kansas fans nor for the casual listener).

The worst of the story (and ClemofNazareth describes it very well in his review for "Greatest Hits Live, 2003) is that Kansas will re-issue the same tracklist again under this name. If it were not sufficient as he says, another "DVD - Audio Format" called "From The Front Row...Live!" also released in 2003 will feature the same concert (with additional bonus pictures) !

This might well need to be published in the Guiness Book Of Record. Selling four times the same stuff under different names (of which three editions in one year) ! Shame on you Kansas.

You can read the full review for this one under the "King Biscuit ..." entry. One star (I will also rate the other two with one star but with no comment).

On the eve of the remasterg and reissue of Kansas’ seminal live album ‘Two for the Show’ it seems appropriate to warn away those who might be taken in by one of the cheap imitations being passed off as a legitimate Kansas live album. You’ll thank me later.

Technically this is a Kansas live album, since the tracks are taken from a concert at which Kansas was the featured act, and everyone involved was alive. But really, how many times can you package up the same concert and sell it? This is yet another repackaging of the 1989 Valentine’s Day show at the Tower Theater in Philadelphia. There were two shows that week and the second one was recorded and released. And released again. And again. And again. And so on.

There are at least five ways to get a copy of this concert. King Biscuit issued the first (and probably only legitimate) copy with their 1998 “King Biscuit Flower Hour presents Kansas” CD. BMG followed with a 2000 ‘Extended Versions’ disc of the same concert in generic, dime-store packaging and missing “Point of Know Return” and “House on Fire”.

Four years later EMI International decided to try and take advantage of the modest success of the ‘Device-Voice-Drum’ release and started dropping this deuce around Europe. The tracks are not in the order of the original show; in fact, this version has the band starting off with “Miracles out of Nowhere” and closing with “Magnum Opus”, something which to the best of my knowledge Kansas has ever done in the thirty-five years they’ve been touring. I believe the concert actually opened with “Magnum Opus” and closed with “Carry on Wayward Son”, one of their signature encores. Whichever is the case doesn’t really matter, since none of the tracks are in order, having been juggled around for no discernable reason.

In addition to splicing up the live tape and moving things around, EMI also cut out virtually all of the between-song dialog from Steve Walsh and Steve Morse, who at the time was still in the band although showing up at some concerts and opening with his own Steve Morse Band.

Things would get even stupider as far as this concert is concerned. Silverline Records released the show as one of their first audio-DVDs the same year, and that one had the song order all chopped up and some of the stage talk missing as well. And really – why is a DVD being used for audio; doesn’t Silverline know what “DVD” stands for?

Anyway, then King Biscuit decided to one-up Silverline in the technology innovation department, so in 2003 they re-released their 1998 CD as a “Greatest Hits Live” package with a cover that billed it as being in “Total Ear Stereo Sound” (I’m not making this up folks). The cover of that one featured a weird and completely unrelated sketch with a couple of bird-headed Egyptian gods doing a Captain Morgan pose on what appears to be a lamppost. I have no clue what that was all about.

And just to top things off, this record itself was released with at least two different covers in Europe, but not at all in the U.S. as near as I can tell. So it appears at least EMI had the decency to insult only half of the prog world’s intelligence. I suppose we should be thankful for that.

The good news is you can buy this for about a euro, which would be about a buck and a half in the US. If you’re in Europe and just have to have it, check the 2-for-1 bin near the door at your local record store. In the US you’ll likely pay more than that in shipping fees, so just don’t bother.

And a disclaimer for the band: Kansas were in a weird situation around this time and there were several labels with various rights to issue crap under the Kansas name without their consent. Nobody from the Kansas played any part in putting this thing out, and in fact the band had issued a disclaimer in the liner notes of their ‘Live at the Whiskey’ CD and in a fan newsletter back in the early nineties disavowing these cheap and misleading releases.

Anyway, this record isn’t worth the 800 words or so I’ve spent writing about it, but its important once and a while to do one’s civic duty and warn innocent folks who might otherwise risk life, limb and a dollar or two of their hard-earned money for something that should have shamed the executives who decided to perpetrate such a musical crime on an unsuspecting public. One star just because zero would insult the people at the CD factory who have to make a living no matter what actually appears on the discs they are burning. A big solidarity shout-out to the workers, but an even bigger ‘you should be ashamed of yourself’ to EMI International.

peace