KING BISCUIT FLOWER HOUR PRESENTS KANSAS (1989)

KANSAS was another Prog Rock band which could not escape in the eighties from the record companies's pressures to change their musical style to update it for the "new sounds of the new decade". And they had to change it a bit, with them recording two albums for MCA ("Power", from 1986, and the disappointing "In the Spirit of Things", from 1988, which also included several songs not composed by the members of the band). This live album, recorded for the "King Biscuit Flower Hour" radio programme, was recorded in February 1989 during the tour they did for their "In the Spirit of Things" album.

Despite some people don't like this album very much, I can say that it has a very good recording and mixing. They included four songs from their "In the Spirit of Things" album ("One Big Sky", "T.O. Witcher", "The Preacher" and " House on Fire" , with "T.O. Witcher being a good brief acoustic guitar solo piece by Steve Morse) and one from their "Power" album (the very mellow power ballad "All I Wanted"). "One Big Sky" sounds like a very eighties Hard Rock song, but it is not bad. "The Preacher" sounds like a Hard Rock Gospel influenced song which in the studio version included a Gospel choir (and maybe it is the best from their 1988 album), and "House on Fire" is an extended Hard Rock song with lead guitars. The rest of the songs are old songs from the seventies played with new arrangements and new keyboard sounds by Greg Robert, plus energetic guitars by Steve Morse and Rich Williams, with Morse replacing some of the violin parts playing good guitar parts and with sounds (maybe done with pedal effects or even with a guitar synth ) which sometimes sound like a violin (particularly in "Miracles Out of Nowhere" and "Dust in the Wind"). Some people mention that Morse really played a violin, but I really don't know. Or maybe Robert played some of those violin sounds with his keyboards. Steve Walsh's vocals soond very well in this album in comparison to the "Live at the Whisky" album from 1992. Phil Ehart plays energetic drums, and Billy Greer sings very good backing vocals. So, the band really sounds very well, maybe a bit similar to the eighties line-ups of GENESIS and YES playing in concert, with new personnel, instruments and sounds. Maybe the very eighties's sound didn't help them very much then, but they still were playing very well in concert, in my opinion.

A good live album which was re-issued several times under different titles and by different record labels.