KANSAS

There are few, if any, modern bands that can match the pedigree of the mighty Kansas. The fact they have even managed to have a hit single over here (back when that meant something) shows their appeal. They may no longer have their main songwriter Kerry Livgren on board and original bassist Dave Hope is also missing, but his place has been taken by long-time member Billy Greer and the others are all original. Phil Ehart (drums), Robby Steinhardt (vocals/violin), Richard Williams (guitar) and Steve Walsh (vocals/keys) were all there some thirty years ago and while they produce a sound that is timeless they certainly do not sound old.

This double CD live set was recorded at Earthlink Live! in 2002 and they were even joined at times by a 60 voice choir. This is a compilation of many of their finest moments and while fans will always moan that there is a song missing that they would have liked, no one can argue that these songs aren't representative of one of America's greatest bands. The songs span their career from the debut up to 'Somewhere From Elsewhere' from 2000. Both "Icarus II" and "Icarus" are here, as well as numbers such as "Journey From Mariabronn", "Point Of Know Return", "Dust In The Wind" or "Play The Game Tonight". Only seventeen audio tracks, it just doesn't seem enough somehow. It ends with a gentle acoustic introduction and Steve singing "Once I rose above the noise and confusion?" The shout goes up "Are you ready??" and the three part harmonies kick off the mighty "Carry On Wayward Son".

This double disc is being released in conjunction with a DVD and as a taster the CD has been enhanced with a video of the band performing "Distant Vision", as well as screensavers, photos and links to the website (www.kansasband.com). A great collection of superb melodic progressive rock. A must have for any fan of the genre.

Originally appeared in Feedback #72, Feb 03

One heck of a non-lazy, powerful "comeback". This is a loud yet dynamic album.

Kansas has gone light over the 80's With Audio/Visions being such a varied, corporate album ("Monolith" was the last "true" prog effort of that line-up) yet was to be trumped by later 80's albums: the somewhat forgivable and spiritual "Vinyl Confessions", the Foreigner cover (or we sold our souls) album "Drastic Measures" (save for Livgren's songs), the surprise AOR rocker "Power" and the contemporary sounding (for it's time) concept album "In The Spirit Of Things". This 90's album, "Freaks Of Nature" was a welcome comeback for me. I played this more times front to back than all the 80's albums combined. And I loved "Power" for the sheer fact Walsh returned.

From first listen it all already known that this isn't a happy, skippy pop album. Walsh is spent emotionally and mentally and he sings about it all in every song. He needed to purge. Eerie sound effects, forceful rocking jams, fully cranked amps, violin theatrics, less keyboards than usual... and a drum solo in the middle of their only single "Desperate Times"... these are the elements of Kansas we're used to but at a much more angry pace. These guys can play. Yes, they played at powerful speeds and rollicking force in the past. Somehow it translates as much louder, angrier and forceful on this outing.

With David Ragsdale, the band is energized more so than other albums. It's also know that keyboardist Roberts did not play much on the album due to carpel tunnel syndrome or something. Walsh ... tee hee... sounds like Eric Cartman (from South Park) singing sometimes, yet can still hit those notes (with Greer's help). The others need no explanation (though Greer's bass sounds too much like Tool's awful bass), but Williams was left to spread out much more and proves he is THE guitarist of Kansas. Livgren's influence is not apparent save for is only contribution "Cold Gray Morning"... yet it's still played loud.

The other songs are more of the same while the end of the album tends to quiet down a bit, but all is worth it. Even for the "hidden track" which is titled like a movement from "Magnum Opus" on some websites.

It's not underrated, it's undiscovered.

So...

The prog rock: I Can Fly (in 3 parts with Ehart's signature drumming), Desperate Times (in 6/4, drum solo and some cool vocal hocketing in the outtro).

The hard rock/metal with some instrumental prog elements: Black Fathom 4, Freaks Of Nature.

Classic prog efforts: Under The Knife, Cold Gray Morning, "hidden track" ( think it's called "Father Padilla Takes A Dump" or something).

The ballads: Hope Once Again (with some female vocals), Peaceful And Warm

Experimental: Need

Not for the prog softies. I would recommend this to some Metal Heads and those silly DT worshipers.

3 stars because even though this does not suck, it's not essential like the 1st album or "Song For America" is.

Thanks again, Kansas!

Some topics absolutely inconsistent, and others worthy of the classic era of Kansas.

The former include: It's Take a Woman's Love, Two Cents Worth, Mysteries and Mayhem and It's You. Only standard rock songs and nothing else.

The worthy are: The Pinnacle, Icarus and All Over The World. Child Of Innocence is acceptable.

Compared to the albums of that time of the group, Masque runs halfway. Obviously the record company pressure influenced in disparity of this album.

I do not enjoy too much of discs where I have to press skip sometimes, and that's what happens with Masque, in my case. Not with Leftoverture, and little with Song For America or Point Of Know Return.

My rating is 3.5.

Point of Know Return is the band's last truly progressive album, and consequently their last essential one. Clearly a commercial influence is slowly taking over their sound, but there is still plenty of prog excitement to be found here.

The title track is a classic Kansas tune with an up-tempo, AOR atmosphere carried by strong vocals.

'Paradox' is a more interesting track, filled with plenty of keyboard that graced their last album. The majority of the song is vocal driven except for the instrumental break filled with violin and keyboard.

The short 'Spider' has an obvious ELP influence in its keyboard-dominated two minutes. Oddly enough, there is more packed into this short song than any other of the album.

'Portrait (He Knew) starts of in the classic prog Kansas way, but shifts to a slower, powerful hard rocking section. Luckily the track ends on a strong note.

'Closet Chronicles' has a mix of monotonous vocal sections and some truly awesome instrumentals.

Unfortunately, as strong as side one is, side two kind of goes downhill. 'Lightning's Hand,' 'Sparks of Tempest,' and 'Nobody's Home' are all either plain old rockers or monotonous ballads. Radio has mostly spoiled my perception of Dust In the Wind, though it isn't a very good track in the first place. The last song, 'Hopelessly Human' has some nice prog parts, but is still decent at best.

Overall, while this has a ton of prog moments, it has an equal number of plain, uninteresting moments. This is a decent album for a Kansas fan, but is too inconsistent for a regular symphonic prog listener.

6/10

Kansas's second album continues the progressive trend established in the first album, as well as their inclination for more bluesy, rocking tunes. But this is arguably the band's most progressive album, containing three songs over eight minutes in length.

I usually subdivide the album into two halves based on the types of songs. Firstly, you have your plain old rockers in 'Down the Road,' 'Lonely Street' and 'The Devil Game.' The first two are just plain rock songs with a southern tang, and aren't really prog at all. The third also has a rocking inflection, but frequents the use of keyboards and time signature changes throughout.

The real stars of this album are the three longer songs, 'Song For America,' 'Lamplight Symphony,' and 'Incomudro.'

The first is a symphonic masterpiece which has a plethora of strong melodies which flow beautifully into the next, yielding a complex and diverse structure. There is plenty of keyboard action in this one as well, be it synth, organ, or piano.

The second is slightly more vocal based, often in a down-tempo and gentle manner. The song does pick up tempo in the instrumental section starting halfway through, which features some violin and no shortage of keyboard.

The third is pretty similar to the other two, and is pretty consistent throughout. Most of it is up-tempo and rocking, with plenty of fun melodies and keyboard use, especially the one that starts at five minutes.

While this album has some of the band's most progressive songs, it also has some plain old rockers which aren't exactly my taste, meaning the album is a tad inconsistent. But the songs that are prog are some of the proggiest stuff Kansas has ever done, and they by themselves make this a very solid album.

7/10

Although here we get to see a much younger band (20 years younger than in Device Voice Drum, which is a lot) this was not my favourite period of the band, the filming is not very good and neither is the tracklist. Filmed in Nebraska during the Vinyl Confessions tour in 1982 we have the band fronted by John Elefante, undoubtedly a talented singer and multi- instrumentalist but I never liked him much. His voice while not objectively too different from Steve Walsh's was just different enough to provide a different character to the band leaning more to American arena rock in the style of Journey or Boston, and his stage behaviour and body language was not my cup of tea. Guest musician Warren Ham provided support on sax, flute, harmonica, additional keyboards and backing vocals and while normally this should be a good thing, I get the feeling that he does not really fit with the band's traditional sound. On the plus side Kerry Livgren was still there and in good shape. Dave Hope was still on bass although we barely get to see him.

The track list focuses on the more commercial and arena-rock side of the band and this is the main drawback. We get nearly the whole Vinyl Confessions album, two tracks from Audio- Visions and some of the few older songs are rockers or headbangers like 'Sparks Of The Tempest' or 'Down The Road', and of course the obligatory 'Dust In The Wind' and 'Carry On Wayward Son'.

The highlights are 'Paradox', 'Mysteries and Myhem' and 'Portrait', but this is really too little in an 85 minute concert.

The filming is a bit dark and grainy, with very few sharp takes on the instruments playing, and most camera time is given to Elefante, Seinhardt and Livgren, while the great Phil Ehart sadly gets nearly none. I very much prefer 'Device Voice Drum' or 'There's Know Place Like Home'.

If we had some good video of the Two For The Show period that would probably be deserving the 5 stars and by comparison this one might get 4, but in it's absence this 2002 video is the closest you can get to the classic Kansas at their best (the 35th anniversary 'There's Know Place Like Home' is outstanding and better produced but we see an older band without Robby Steinhardt). After the turbulent period of the 80's and 90's (both in terms of line-up and musically), Kansas were back to please their old prog fans. Unfortunately Kerry Livgren did not join and this takes some depth away from the music and makes for a busy Steve Walsh. Dave Hope was already long gone but Billy Greer was an excellent replacement providing good support on backing vocals as well. Walsh voice is a bit harsh on the high notes but better than in previous years and one can only admire his dedication and commitment.

Performed in an intimate atmosphere at the Earthlink Center Stage Theater in Atlanta, I really envy the fortunate people who attended this gig. The track list includes many of the proggiest songs of the band, with only two of their more AOR tracks 'Fight Fire With Fire' and 'Play The Game Tonight', both played in the encore. The concert starts with an impressive row: 'Belexes', 'Icarus II', 'Icarus', 'Song For America', the short intro 'Howling At The Moon' (no, unfortunately we don't get the full 'Magnum Opus') and 'The Wall', all of them performed with impressive musicianship and tightness.

'The Preacher' from the Steve Morse era is performed with the support of a large gospel choir and although not a particularly proggy song it offers a pleasing and uplifting interlude in the show.

Back to the proggiest material with the exceptional 'Journey From Mariabronn'. Seeing one of my favourite drummers Phil Ehart is one of the big incentives of this video, his use of the bass drums and snare was one of the best around.

'Dust In The Wind' although already heard ad nauseam is here nicely performed with the support of a strings quartet, Billy Greer supports Rich Williams with an acoustic guitar, and Robby Steinhardt confirms how good a rock violinist he was.

Another energetic prog row with 'Cheyenne Anthem', 'Child Of Innocence' and 'Miracles Out Of Nowhere' with great vocal interplays between Walsh and Steinhardt. During 'Miracles' we have the funny Animusic computer animation driven by MIDI data of the actual music.

The main set ends with the classics 'Point Of Know Return' and 'Portrait' (with the outro of 'The Pinnacle') with yet another drumming masterclass by Phil Ehart and excellent interplays of guitar and violin.

The band returns for the encores, the more AOR-ish Elefante-era 'Fight Fire With Fire' and 'Play The Game Tonight', and finally the obligatory 'Carry On Wayward Son'.

The filming quality and takes direction are good and all the band members get enough coverage. Overall an excellent concert by an excellent band.

The debut of Kansas was followed by an extensive tour by the group, hailed by the support of Kirshner.However the album was not that succesful and Kansas remained a cult name, despite performing one show over another, eventually building a base of fanatic fans.In 1975 the second album of the group was produced by Jeff Glixman and Wally Gold and was released under the title ''Song for America''.

The short opener ''Down the Road'' serves well the reason of its existence, a nice rocker with a brutal organ sound and driving grooves, but the rest of the album is the real deal.The two longer tracks ''Song for America'' and ''Incomudro - Hymn to the Atman'' are two of the most impressive compositions written by the band and fantastic examples of 70's US Prog.Rich and complex arrangements with lovely vocal lines and a great sense of melody, offered through textures torn between rockin' madness and inspirations of Classical nature, filled with massive organ and moog synth waves, Steinhardt's powerful violins and the elegant piano interludes of Livgren.'''Lamplight Symphony'' is another winner, having a dramatic mood all the way with synths more in evidence, but always maintaining a rich and emphatic sound full of instrumental activity.''Lonely Street'' releases the well-known Boogie Rock side of Kansas with bluesy guitars, good breaks and a very doomy groove.''The Devil Game'' is a short Hard Prog jewel.Violin, organs and furious rhythmic parts combine in a masterful way to produce a fast track full of changing moods and dynamic solos.

Albums like this make me sad when thinking about people who know Kansas only from ''Dust in the wind''.We're talking about full-blown Progressive Rock here filled with passion, intensity and virtuosity, delivered in very tight and memorable compositions.No less than highly recommended.

|C+| Like a delicious smoothie that didn't finish mixing its ingredients.

Kansas is a very good example of the sort of rock bands that my parents loved to play in the car when I was a little boy; heavier 70s rock, done with creativity. Obviously though, Kansas is much less generic than that description; here we have symphonic prog meets AOR meets some southern-rock influences (Miracles Out of Nowhere makes this clear enough), with variations of the three in varying degrees, particularly in this album. In fact, as much as I like most of the music to be found here, it's the inconsistency of the composition that bothers me with this particular album, as well as some blatantly dated-sounding stuff, mostly as a result of the AOR style, which despite my personal fondness for it, really hasn't aged well in the slightest, and perhaps for good reason. What's more, it's often the case that each section within a piece is too characteristic of a specific rock style mentioned above, with little real cohesiveness the the whole song. Now, it's not as if I'm over- thinking/over-analyzing the music, I'm just describing what bothers me about the material as I listen to it and why.

Track Commentary: Carry On My Wayward Son obviously remains one of the classic hard- rock hits of all time, with some nice touches of proggy creativity, with some of the most memorable riffs, melodies, and solos of rock history. One of the most creative tracks from an American band to receive radio play in their own country, however little that might actually be saying (speaking as an American myself). The Wall is one of my favorite tracks in all of symphonic prog, its absolutely rich in textural and harmonic diversity in the composition, which is heavily classically influenced. This was probably the first full-blown prog track with which I ever became fully familiar. As a spiritual person I have a lot of personal connection with the lyrics in the piece, "all I am and all that I was ever meant to be in harmony," just absolutely beautiful. The next track, What's On My Mind, is sort of the opposite end of the musical spectrum, very dated AOR sound like Boston and Foreigner, super lame track in my opinion, though the solo section is pretty cool sounding. Unfortunately, the vocal melody line for the whole song falls flat on its face, and the ending is pretty cheesy I think. Miracles Out Of Nowhere is sort of a strange combination of (I think) southern-rock music with symphonic prog. Not a bad song, some really creative composition and beautiful work on the violin. I love the break into the fugue between the instruments, and the interesting experimentation with harmony, and especially the recitative that the singer does with the organ, though the piece itself is a little cut-and-paste sounding, not a super cohesive track, however fun it might be. Side two of the album, beginning with Opus Insert, starts off quite Genesis sounding synthesizer material, moving into the quasi-southern rock sound. I especially the love heavy synth theme, what a great melody. The piece moves into a march- feel given by the snare and bass, with the keyboard playing solo material, which is pretty cool. Questions Of My Childhood is a very upbeat track, very symphonic prog and well-done, albeit generally a bit cheesy, and the vocals and vocal harmonies bother me a bit. Cheyenne Anthem is a pretty mixed bag, with some garbage and some brilliance. Completely uninspiring vocal melodies, though the use of the childrens choir is really cool. The instrumental parts are quite good, with the section with the use of the vibraphone under the violin solo. and some characteristically Kansas prog craziness, with the instruments taking turns playing off each other, which is cool. Magnus Opus starts off like a modern classical symphony might, with timpani playing under a melody of parallel fourths from the synths (who ever saw that coming?). Plenty of interesting material on this track, some of it pretty good, a lot of it serving as a great example of rock instrumentation composed in the way on might compose a symphony, which isn't true for a lot of "symphonic prog", though I can't say there's too much depth to be found among all of the complexity of the work. I'm sure that for its time it certainly was an innovative and adventurous endeavor.

When all is said and done, as much as I like listening to a lot of this album, I generally find it to be among most overrated of all in prog rock, mostly due to the totally inconsistent nature of their work here, with the exception of the first two tracks. Perhaps I'm being a bit elitist here, but to me the tracks themselves seem to have very little real natural flow, the transitions between musical sections within each one being either unconvincing or awkward, and the sections themselves sounding characteristic of one type of influence. What's On My Mind is probably the prime example of this. Even the material that is in good order, like Magnus Opus, never even comes close to the depth that you have with the cream-of-the-crop prog out there, which is my theory for why this album never made it to the ranking positions of the classic gems of prog.

Just my two cents on the album, and this review may not even be worth that much. Nonetheless, it's a very good album worth the price (hopefully) to purchase and has some spectacular moments, with some boldly creative composition, which is always praiseworthy in my book.

I feel that this album is a little underrated .

Yes not as good as their first albums(all masterpieces) but in my opinion much better than Monolith or Audio Visions.

This album was the first with Walsh that really showed an improvement to finish in the 2000 album...but in my opinion this one was the best of the three latest.

And the genius of Kerry Livgren was absent...

This album is like a mix of the first ones with a more modern sound.

Excellent songs in the line of the accustom folk symphonic prog rock of KANSAS.

So at least KANSAS finish well his history...It would had been quite sad if the story ended with albums as Vinyl Confessions or Drastic Measures(not so bad albums but very away from what you should expect for a great symphonic prog rock band)

4 stars for me.