AUDIO-VISIONS

Accepting the baton passed off by Dan earlier, Audio-Visions will always be a favorite of mine. He's right that at this point the band was shifting from a prog band first, to a prog band with hit making tendencies. At the time it was released, I was around 12 or 13, so I liked it because it satisfied those needs at the time.

I was just a Steve Walsh nut back then, and thought if he'd sing the phone book, I'd buy it. I believe Audio- Visions (if anything) really shows off what a great rock vocalist Walsh was. Some of the songs had a more grittier tone to his voice, as "Relentless" still remains one of my favorite Kansas tunes.

Songs like "Got To Rock On" and "Loner" strike me as being leftovers from his first solo album Schemer Dreamer. Good tunes, but they pretty much sound like Steve Walsh trying to break away from the songs about either religion, history, or greek mythology. He's like an adolescent trying so hard to show his independence.

I do love the more prog moments in "Curtain Of Iron" and "No One Together". To me, these are classic Kansas tunes. Stuff that we all know and love. AV is a good album, just not the great Kansas album.