DRASTIC MEASURES

One of the things that made Kansas' sound recognizable more than anything else, was Robby Steinhardt's violin. The other thing was Steve Walsh's distinct vocals. By the time the album 'Drastic Measures' came out in 1983, these things were both missing. Robbie was disenchanted with the religious direction the band was going in, and left before the recording started. The religious lyrics came about because Kenny Livgren had become a born-again Christian, and since he wrote most of the lyrics, Walsh decided to leave the band a few years prior to this, and after considering different vocalists, including Sammy Hagar, John Elefante was chosen to replace Walsh. Elefante sounded nothing like Walsh, and was also a Christian. So, unfortunately, 'Drastic Measures' was doomed from the beginning.

Other than the departures of Walsh and Steinhardt and the bringing in of Elefante, the band remained the same with Kerry Livgren, Rich Williams, Dave Hope, and Phil Ehart. However, Kansas had already pretty much abandoned their progressive rock sound of their glory days. By the time this album was released, most of the rabid fans of the 70s had given up on the band ever sounding like their former selves. The music had turned to a hard rock / pop sound with no violin, no progressive traits, and Kansas was bound to become one of the indiscernible rock/pop bands of the 80s.

'Drastic Measures' is a pretty much washed-out version of the band, and was beginning to sound more like the pop sound of Chicago, but without the horns. Of course, there is the decent hit 'Fight Fire with Fire' which did okay on the singles chart, but didn't have anything on it that made people think 'Hey, that's a new song by Kansas!' For all they knew, it could have been 'Starship' or 'Foreigner'. In fact, David Pack, lead singer of 'Ambrosia', another washed-up rock act, came along for this fiasco as a background singer. 'Mainstream', the third track on the album is also a little better, but nothing close to their earlier output.

Other than this, the album just stumbles through a bunch of mediocre tracks that don't have any staying power. 'Andi' tries to be a power ballad, but is completely uninteresting. 'Going Through the Motions' lives up to it's title, it sounds like a band doing just that. Things even go further downhill for the uninteresting 'Get Rich', then the band high-centers on pop ballad 'Don't Take Your Love Away' as they try their best to capitalize on Chicago's style of hit songs of the time, 'End of the Age' only confirms that it is definitely the end of the innovative age for Kansas with an extremely boring song, and 'Incident on a Bridge' suggests that this album was sinking long before it was started.

The band would temporarily break up after this, only to return in 1986 with Walsh back on lead vocals, but without Livgren who had figured by this time that he had completely left the band hopeless as even he was sick of the religious direction he attempted to take the band in. However, the heart and soul of the band would never completely return.

Elefante isn't a bad vocalist, but, try as he might, he can't bring that unique sound that Walsh's voice had, and the material he had to work with was quite weak. Livgren's lyrics were not so outwardly religious this time around, but this doesn't save the music either. The material is just so bland and mediocre, same as a lot of the huge bands from the 70s that were struggling to fit in and be relevant. The best thing these bands could have done is got together and formed one big band called 'Mediocre' and left it at that. Then at least there would have been a good excuse for them all sounding so much like each other. This album is not even good, its just tired, boring, poorly recorded (the only album Kansas would record digitally), and full of mostly mediocre drivel. Another sad chapter that was unfortunately common in many bands at the time.