tangerine62 wrote:
Who is the most overatted
prog rock band (allegedly), for me it has to be
Kansas, they are surely AOR nonsense, as are most
big American groups. Money not musical ability
seems to be the norm in the USA. Who next REO
Speedwagon? |
I'm really surprised you think Kansas are not prog.
I'm not sure what you've heard by the band and I
guess it's all down to personal taste but my
impression is that you might be one of those people
whose only exposure to the band has been "Dust in
the Wind" and "Carry on Wayward Son" - both of
which are great songs, but definitely of an AOR bent.
What about the instrumental fireworks on something
like 'Song for America' or the complex interplay of the
melody instruments on 'Miracles out of Nowhere'?
Kansas themselves - ardent fans of KC and Soft
Machine etc - always said that they felt themselves to
be not in the same technically adept class as their
British counterparts and that they came from a bar
band background - which surely accounts for some
of their more blues-based songs (usually composed
by Steve Walsh) and they were definitely filtering in a
lot of west coast rock harmonising (CSNY et al) and
US rock (I would imagine Love, etc) and Brit heavy
Blues (particulalry Deep Purple in some of the guitar
tones and Blackmore-esque phrasing) but in their
more adventurous material they definitely hit the prog
nail on the head.
Have a listen to the mid-section of Song for America
(from the piano solo on) it's a superbly clever piece
of song construction. Listen to Phil Eharts exemplary
prog drumming. Not as accomplished perhaps as
bruford et al but it's incredibly varied and always on
message. Likewise the keyboard playing on all early
Kansas albums is awesome.
I think the problem people have with Kansas is that
mixed in with their prog ambition was a keen pop
sensibility. Livgren and Walsh were driven to hear
good melodies, a functionally good tune always
appeared to take precedence over pure form and I
for one applaud them for that.
There is far too much prog music that relies solely
on manual dexterity at the expense of coherent song
structure.
Frankly, endless keyboard or fretboard wigouts leave
me cold unless there is some melodic progress
being made. A solo is just a solo - if it doesn't have a
destination and a purpose then why bother with the
exploration in the first place.
I suppose the argument could be made that it's
better to travel than to arrive but, personally, I hate
being in transit.
A keen sense of melody, harmony and structure is
not an anti-prog stick with which to beat a band, it
should be celebrated, especially if the musicians
can give me a tune i can hum, right down to every
note of a 64-bar Moog solo.
Kansas - prog they most definitely are and far from
being overrated are, in fact, a cruelly
under-appreciated band for the very reasons given
above. Unlike the sterile style over content offerings
of a lot of the more celebrated prog bands, Kansas
could not only play, they could write too.