SONG FOR AMERICA

The second album from Kansas made very little impression on the music scene when it was released in the spring of 1975, but years later it has been recognized as being both ahead of its time, and vastly underappreciated by most of the music public at the time. Each track adds a certain bit of character to the album, and after more than thirty years I still find myself playing this one quite regularly. It’s that good.

I think “Down the Road” is a misunderstood Kansas tune that too often gets a bad rap. I mean, here’s a band that only a little over a year before was unsigned, and were still playing beer joints and converted warehouses all across the Midwest. This is the same kind of music they were competing against for concert attention, and it’s not surprising they would throw this one in to soften up the listener before socking them with the bizarre and foreign-sounding onslaught that was about to follow. The same formula was more than likely employed in most of their concerts at the time as well, and was consistent with the opening “Can I Tell You” from their debut album and “It Takes a Woman’s Love (To Make a Man)” from the Masque album that would follow. And so what if the song is basically mid-tempo boogying with some southern fiddle and Allman Brothers-inspired twin guitar blues jamming? They do it with flair and the song establishes credibility for the band with the mainstream audiences they are trying to win over. A brilliant stroke of showmanship if you ask me, and executed with the kind of brash gusto not found all that often in the more staid traditional progressive community. I say ‘Bravo’!

Next up is arguably the finest single work the band ever put out – the spacious and inspiring “Song for America”. I’ve always felt that Kansas’ music manages to project that overwhelming sense of awe and connection with our land and our ancestors that one feels when driving across some of the vast stretches of the American landscape. This feeling is especially poignant across the great plains and up into the Missouri breaks, where one can drive for hours surrounded by nothing but open spaces and vast farmlands of waving wheat, corn, sunflowers, and prairie grasses, all punctuated like a shotgun blast-pattern with cattle and horses roaming unencumbered. This song captures that feeling flawlessly. And that’s exactly what Kerry Livgren was going for when he wrote it, while flying high above the landscape and viewing the vastness and grandeur below him.

Two things really stand out on this track, and both are largely what make this a uniquely American sound – Steve Walsh’s piano and Robby Steinhardt’s violin. Walsh’s keyboards here are not especially complex, but his matter-of-fact delivery is superb and fits the overall mood of the song perfectly. Steinhardt on violin sounds like some swamp fiddler who was drug out of the bayou, cleaned up, and given a few lessons on the classics. You can take the boy out of the farm, but you can’t…. Anyway, his delivery is technically impeccable, but more importantly it has soul in a way that chamber strings just cannot match.

So the lyrics have to be addressed as well, I suppose. Livgren paints a tale of an unspoiled virgin land that is assaulted and savaged by insensitive European settlers:

“Across the sea there came a multitude, sailing ships upon the wave; filled with visions of Utopia, and the freedom that they crave –

Ravage, plunder, see no wonder, rape and kill and tear asunder; chop the forest, plow it under.....”

Fair enough. This is of course a perfectly understandable viewpoint for a young kid from the heartland who is idealistic, searching, and sees some of the many obvious flaws in this thing we have created. But that sentiment was expressed over thirty years ago, and both the man and the nation have changed immeasurably since then. The reality of course is that the land was not a virgin paradise when it was first discovered, and the people he refers to weren’t even the ones who discovered it, but that story is well outside the scope of this album. Recently this same song was included on a fund-raiser album put together by the American music community to benefit those affected by Hurricane Katrina, so we would have to assume Livgren, like many of us, have come to see this epic as more of a tribute than of a condemnation.

“Lamplight Symphony” is quite beautiful with it’s off metering, harmonic vocals of Walsh and Steinhardt, and heavy bass from Dave Hope. Lyrically it is a typically self-indulgent sappy tale from Livgren about an old man dealing with the loss of his wife (and apparently dealing with a poltergeist as well). But considering the quality of the music and the nature of the times, he can be forgiven the indulgence in my mind. The keyboards are especially brilliant, and the bass/drum assault in the middle is a pre-taste of the closing track “Incomudro”.

Much has been made of the 11/8 timing and the heavy blues rhythm of “Lonely Street”, but even more significant for me is the fact that this was a highly-collaborative effort between Walsh, Hope, Rich Williams, and Phil Ehart. I would imagine Walsh provided the lyrics and the rest of them noodled their way through the rest, but the important thing here is that this was a band effort, not a solo contribution by Walsh or Livgren. More cooperation like this one might have held the band together longer – who knows? The song tells of revenge for a woman who was raped, and of the waste and despair on the part of the man who commits murder as a result. Of all the tracks here, this one has the most dated feel, and reminds me of too many southern boogie bands of that era to mention. None of them had the stage presence or the sense of fluid arrangement that this song demonstrates though.

“The Devil Game” is probably the weakest track here, but even at that there are some pockets of brilliance. Livgren shows his rocking side on guitar that would surface more fully in Point of Know Return and even Audio-Visions; Walsh’s voice just flat soars; and Hope is a madman on bass. As far as Walsh and Steinhardt collaborating on vocals, this and “Mysteries & Mayhem” from Masque are probably two of the finest examples of that pairing.

Finally is “Incomudro – Hymn to the Atman”, a twelve minute introspective journey through the soul. This is the ultimate ‘why are we here?’ song from Livgren, and one that many a young man reflected deeply on while surrounded in a fog of sweet, pungent smoke back in the 70s. This is “Dust in the Wind” on steroids:

“The man is not alive who knows the value of his soul, And when our lives are pulled away, there's more to fill the hole.”

and

“Everything you've seen is waiting patiently within For growing old is only going back to where you've been.”

Both Walsh and Livgren alternate between torrid ranting and whimsical noodling on keyboards throughout, and Steinhardt shows us what violin improvisation might sound like. There’s even a bit in the middle that sounds quite Hebrew-inspired involving both violin and keyboards. The slowly building crescendo toward the end predates a more refined but structurally similar sound bands like Godspeed You! Black Emperor would make famous some twenty years later. And everyone gets in the act, including Ehart with a 1-1/2 minute drum solo to ease things toward a close. The explosion at the end has been said to represent a nuclear detonation, which is probably true. But more importantly it’s a solid ending to the song, which is a sign of maturity for a young band where simple but boring fade away endings are more commonly seen by other bands at this stage of their careers.

I have waited quite a while to write this review because I really have had trouble deciding if this is an essential album in the progressive library, or simply just a brilliant piece of art with some minor flaws. In the end I’ve decided that flaws are part of the appeal, as they give character and a sense of uniqueness to art. So five stars it is, and highly recommended to just about anyone who likes progressive music of just about any sub-genre.

peace