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Kansas - Dust In The Wind CD (album) cover

DUST IN THE WIND

Kansas

 

Symphonic Prog

2.29 | 14 ratings

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ClemofNazareth
Special Collaborator
Prog Folk Researcher
1 stars 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

ClemofNazareth | 1/5 |

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