KANSAS

The debut of Kansas was followed by an extensive tour by the group, hailed by the support of the Kirshner label.However the album was not that succesful and Kansas remained a cult name, despite performing one show over another, eventually building a base of fanatic fans.In 1975 the second album of the group was produced by Jeff Glixman and Wally Gold and was released under the title ''Song for America''.

The short opening track ''Down the Road'' serves well the reason of its existence, a nice rocker with a brutal organ sound and driving grooves, but the rest of the album is the real deal.The two longer tracks ''Song for America'' and ''Incomudro - Hymn to the Atman'' are two of the most impressive compositions written by the band and fantastic examples of 70's US Prog.Rich and complex arrangements with lovely vocal lines and a great sense of melody, offered through textures torn between rockin' madness and inspirations of Classical nature, filled with massive organ and moog synth waves, Steinhardt's powerful violins and the elegant piano interludes of Livgren.'''Lamplight Symphony'' is another winner, having a dramatic mood all the way with synths more in evidence, but always maintaining a rich and emphatic sound full of instrumental activity.''Lonely Street'' releases the well-known Boogie Rock side of Kansas with bluesy guitars, good breaks and a very doomy groove.''The Devil Game'' is a short Hard Prog jewel.Violin, organs and furious rhythmic parts combine in a masterful way to produce a fast track full of changing moods and dynamic solos.

Albums like this make me sad when thinking about people who know Kansas only from ''Dust in the wind''.We're talking about full-blown Progressive Rock here filled with passion, intensity and virtuosity, delivered in very tight and memorable compositions.No less than highly recommended. Symphonic sophomore great second effort, 4.5

Considering that Kansas jumped the pop train and went closer to stuff like AOR later on much like a lot of prog bands did back then, I'm not surprised by the negative reception. And believe me, a part of me wanted to dislike this because of that. But weirdly enough, I actually found this to be mostly decent. The lyrics weren't always up to pare on this one, I admit. But as far as their lesser prog sellout albums go, this one was actually pretty damn catchy. And on top of that, it used its extra room for some more unconventional riffs and melodies in the filler songs. I went into this completely expecting a piece of popy tripe like any Asia album or even Marillion's Holiday in Eden, and I came out with more of what I love about kansas than I expected. Still, I wouldn't even put it in the same league as Masque or Monolith, but it's kinda close. 72 / 100.

I can think of no better way to begin putting down my thoughts on this album than mentioning this fact: Magnus Opus was initially named Leftoverture since its parts were leftovers from soundchecks and the recording sessions for the Masque album and the guys decided to splice them together and come up with a song and eventually they liked the title so much that it was upgraded into an album title. So just think of this: these parts were leftovers! We are talking about tons of inspiration! The album is famous for the opener Carry on Wayward Son alone (which, by the way, was the last one written and it barely made the album!) and here I'd like to make another remark that one can write progressive music that can also strike a chord with people who are not musicians. Of course this goes not only for this song, but The Wall also could fare as well, if it was promoted as such. And aside The Wall it could also be What's on My Mind, Miracles Out of Nowhere....literally the entire album which is melodic, adventurous, it rocks, it oozes with feeling with not a single note to spare and top-notch vocals. It is absolute perfection and a monument in our beloved music. Some dyed-in-the-wool pog fans claim that Kansas gave in to a more radio-friendly sound. There is some truth in it, since Kerry Livren himself (who, incidentally, has written almost the entire album since Steve Walsh was experiencing writer's block) has admitted it by saying that if they hadn't done so, only die-hard collectors would know of them and after that there wouldn't be Kansas any more. But the bottom line is they possessed the musicanship, intelligence and aesthetic to balance all these elements in the most beautiful way.

Kansas, the band that combined prodigious symphonic structures with raspy hard rock elements in the seventies with great originality and success, had changed course thousands of kilometres ago and was persistently heading down the paths of eighties AOR, Its melodic variants and the occasional undisguised nod to commercial pop temptations, which found on the road the anodyne "Drastic Measures" and, to a lesser extent, the dreary "Power", a pair of albums that were harshly criticised by the general public and surely with good reasons.

"In the Spirit of Things" (1986), the Americans' eleventh album, tries to add a little more content and instrumental substance to their proposal, managing at times to structure interesting passages such as the melancholic and plaintive "Ghost" with Steve Morse's hurtful guitar solo, the power ballad "Inside on Me", and the hard rocking and festive "The Preacher". But on the other hand, the melodic and soft tracks sound overproduced and saturated with arrangements, like "Once in a Lifetime", "Stand Beside Me"', or "I Counted on Love".

And though long gone are Kerry Livgren's intricate, brainy compositions and Steinhardt's unmistakable violin (definitely no longer the Kansas of the seventies), there is a plausible search in the dusty progressive archives that timidly manifest themselves in the orchestral and emotive "Rainmaker" and its ecclesiastical choruses, in the brief and beautiful acoustic interlude "T. O. Witcher", and in the portentous "Bells of Saint James", shaping the best moments of the album.

"In the Spirit of Things" is probably the best work of the eighties by Kansas, which, given the material released in those years, does not represent a major merit.

2.5/3 stars

From the band with hits such as "carry on my wayward son" and "Dust in the wind" this is the genesis of their discography that gave them their iconic symphonic sound. The album starts off with side 1 including short and sweet songs such as "can I tell you" and 'bringing it back" Where the album's epic tracks start is with "the journey from Mariabronn" the track that concludes the first side. The 2nd second side is nothing short of glorious with Robbie steinhardts violin filling the symphonic aura of the band giving them the title of a symphonic prog band. The Pilligrimage is a good song but in my opinion its filler for the last 2 songs. "Apercu" and "Death of Mother Nature suite" are two excellently crafted songs that finish off the album perfectly and truly start the career of the band we know as Kansas. to conclude my review I would like to recommend anyone the recording at the Agora ballroom in Cleveland Ohio of the song bringing it back its a bonus to enjoy. I would love to also note the brilliant artwork Kansas chose for their debut album cover, it is of the civil war some may say hero but some say murderer John brown. Being a history buff this hits home because of the irony in this is that John brown set a violent escapade across Kansas in 1856. The bands choice of artwork is notable to say the least. other than that this album is a great start to their discography and it gives them the formula they use for albums in the future.

After the departures of Kerry Livgren, Robby Steinhard and Dave Hope following the failed "Drastic Measures" of 1983, it seemed that the Kansas story had come to an end. But it wasn't. Steve Walsh, after the discreet success of his band 'Streets', got back in touch with Rich Williams and they decided to reformulate Kansas, together with the surviving drummer Phil Ehart and the newly incorporated Billy Greer on bass and the excellent guitarist Steve Morse sharing labours with Williams. And this revived American phoenix releases "Power" (1986), their tenth album.

Knowing Walsh's predilection for direct and accessible developments over elaborate structures, "Power" does not differ much in its approach from "Drastic Measures", and hence the AOR leanings of radio targets dominate the overall mood of the album, as with "Silouhette in Desguise", the resilient "Power", the proactive "We're Not Alone Anymore", or the intense "Three Pretenders", tracks where the most remarkable thing ends up being the freshness of Morse's guitar accompaniment.

The soft rock of the mournful ballad "Al I Wanted" and the orchestrated grandiloquence of the closing "Can't Cry Anymore" seem very insubstantial, and only the correct instrumental "Musicatto" with Phil Ehart's progressive seventies drum rolls and the beautiful arpeggiated acoustic guitars of the sweet "Taking In The View", escape from common places. That's it, and it tastes like very little again.

2/2.5 stars

The voluntary absence of Steve Walsh from Kansas prior to the release of "Vinyl Confessions" was a blow that the band absorbed with difficulty. But the subsequent departure of Robby Steinhardt with his representative violins and significant vocal contribution, added to Kerry Livgren's dry creativity, were events too notorious to go unnoticed, and ended up weighing down one of the band's least fortunate musical proposals, "Drastic Measures" (1983), their ninth album.

And in this context, the active John Elefante, very much given to developing conventional AOR structures with accessible, markedly melodic atmospheres and even with some elements of bubbly eighties synth pop, took a large part of the compositional responsibility. The result brought under his arm agile and weightless developments such as "Fight Fire with Fire", "Everybody's my Friend", "Don't Take Your Love Away", the dreary ballad "Andi" (although with a powerful and brave stance on gender identity), or the pompous lightness of "Incident on a Bridge" (one of Livgren's few contributions), tracks in which it is difficult to recognise reminiscences of the early sonorities of Kansas.

And despite the almost imperceptible presence of progressive elements in "Drastic Measures", some passages like the experimental industrial interlude in "Mainstream", the dynamic melody and interesting refrains in the grandiloquent "Going Through the Motions", and just a fragment of the middle section of "End of the Edge" can be rescued. Not much else.

After the faded album, both Livgren and bassist Dave Hope left the band to create the Christian-oriented music project 'AD', and Elefante also stepped aside to pursue music production and eventually become a musician for Christian groups. The future of Kansas was left in suspense and few were betting on their continuity.

2/2.5 stars

Tensions over the musical direction of Kansas and its subject matter temporarily strained relations between Kerry Livgren and Steve Walsh, leading to the singer's estrangement after "Audio-Visions", and led in turn to the incorporation of the young John Elefante as his replacement for "Vinyl Confessions" (1982), the band's eighth album.

And with Elefante, things continued along the path that had already been foreseen on "Monolith" and "Audio-Visions", with songs with a marked AOR orientation, such as the opening "Play the Game Tonight", the scornful "Right Away" very sweetened with saxophones and trumpets, or the energised and anxious "Windows" and "Play On", all songs twinned with structures similar to those of their compatriots Toto, Survivor or Foreigner, among others.

Some nuances come with the bluesy aromas of the sobering "Fair Exchange" and its novel harmonica notes, with the instrumental purity of the beautiful and melancholic "Chasing Shadows" very much indebted to the archly famous "Dust in the Wind" and caressed by Robby Steinhardt's lulling violin, and with the boogie rock "Borderline" marked by its accessible choruses led by the active Elefante and Rich Williams' hard rock riffs.

And despite their increasingly notorious detachment from progressive developments, the closing "Crossfire", with its undisguisable religious message, is a masterful demonstration that some symphonic recessive genes were still present in the musical DNA of Kansas, with a stupendous and raspy instrumental development that would have fit perfectly in any of the most representative works of the band's first stage. Without a doubt, the best track on "Vinyl Confessions".

2.5/3 stars

Five studio albums followed before Kansas released "Two For The Show" (1978), a double album that condenses their best compositions (or many of them...) performed live, at a time when the band was at its highest peak of popularity, packing venues across North America between 1977 and 1978, propelled by the essential mega-hits "Carry On Wayward Son" and "Dust in the Wind".

A superlative set list that is built from elaborate representative symphonic structures such as the vindicatory "Song for America" (excellent despite presenting a version that omits part of the instrumental section), the mythological "Icarus - Borne on the Wings of Steel", the epic "Journey for Mariabronn", the extended version of the experimental and dark "Magnus Opus", the Genesian "Miracles of Knowhere", or the tributary "Closet Chronicles", songs where the protagonism is mainly assumed by Kerry Livgren's keyboards and synthesizers in a fluid interaction with Robby Steinhard's violins and Steve Walsh's unwavering voice, interspersed with other more direct and energetic songs like the adventurous "Point of Know Return", the questioning "Paradox", the mid-tempo "Portairt (He Knew)", or the nightmarish "Mysteries and Mayhem".

Executed with a vitality that is often not fully captured in the studio, the songs flow with power and create significant space for the instrumental showcasing of the band's virtuoso members, such as Livgren's heartfelt piano on the delicate "Lonely Wind" and Phil Ehart's drum solo on the instrumental "The Spider", but above all in the extended and exacerbated guitar improvisations of the Livgren/Williams duo in the hard rocker "Child of Innocence", in the bluesy "Lonely Street", and in the boogie rock "Bring it Back", which also serves as the album's concluding piece.

"Two For The Show", whose cover was inspired by "The Charwoman", a cover published in April 1946 in the American magazine "The Saturday Evening Post", is the spirited and symbolic closing of Kansas' most glorious period, after which they would begin, with "Monolith", a closer approach to the sonorities of American AOR and at the same time move away from the progressive framework.

4.5 stars

"Audio-Visions" (1980), the seventh album by Kansas, confirms the band's musical tendency shown in "Monolith", significantly reducing their interest in elaborate and intricate structures in favour of more commercially digestible and less demanding sonorities, under the influence of the expansive wave of the early eighties, with pieces that fit into similar dynamics to those of Boston, Toto or Foreigner, among other AOR bands.

And so it is that in addition to raspy and contagious hard rock riffs, many chanting refrains also take force in the North American proposals, as with the powerful "Relentless", the scornful "Anything for You", the harmonic "Hold On", or the energetic "Loner" and "Don't Open Your Eyes".

On the other hand, a bit of colour and versatility comes from the bluesy and painful "No Room for a Stranger" with a very good guitar solo by Rich Williams; and the sorrowful "Curtain of Iron" and "No One Together"', the best pieces of the album, try to rescue their progressive roots with interesting instrumental elaborations starring mainly Kerry Livgren's keyboards and the vocal interplay of Steve Walsh and Robby Steinhardt, although it seems that the compositional magic no longer has the same strength of their beginnings. Finally, the gentle "Back Door", another AOR track, adds some epicness to the closing of the album with a good final chorus accompanied by Steinhardt's fiddles and some melancholic bagpipes in the background.

Differences over the musical direction of Kansas, which included Livgren's religious convictions not necessarily shared by Walsh, led to the singer taking a hiatus for the next five years to devote himself to personal projects until his return to the band in 1986 with "Power".

2.5/3 stars