Kansas vs Styx

Except in making me care enough to buy a single song.

Personally, I don't give two rips about that knock-off, low budget, pseudo-prog band dubbed "Kansas."

At least Styx is actually enjoyable and has significant replay value. I don't listen to Kansas except when I forget my phone at home and it pops up on the radio. And even then, I usually flick to other stations to see if there is something good playing before I suffer through another replay of sub-par musicianship from Leftoverture. Kansas was where virtuoso music went to cry itself to sleep to the sound of "Carry on Wayward Son" and its IQ diminishing, mind numbing repetitive off-key vocals.

At least when Styx put out trite they had the decency to kill the band (cough Kilroy). Meanwhile, Kansas hasn't had a decent song since their first album. Love em or hate em, Styx's albums were consistent and at least entertaining. Kansas is the musical definition of brain drain. 

Plus, Styx's early stuff was legit prog and was actually pretty cool. Their first track, "Movement for the Common Man", actually did Copeland's Fanfare in rock form before any other rock band. And then there is the criminally underrated Crystal Ball which is a full blown prog-pop album with some of their strongest and best material ("Ballerina" is friggin great, "Put me On" is full blown prog, "Crystal Ball" is excellent folk-rock/prog, and the whole album has one amazing and consistent sound and tone which is lacking even on the best produced prog albums all too often).

Not to mention we can talk endlessly about the Hendrix inspired Young's guitar work and the fact that he is basically the reason many awesome guitar sounds and techniques (like the growl) gained popularity in pop music. Or Tommy Shaw (whose singing voice is actually good... unlike Kansas' vocalists who are all boring and uninspired). Or Dennis DeYoung, who has probably one of the most recognized and amazing voices in all of rock, and whose keyboard work is actually quite amazing if you actually sit down and listen to it (not to mention he was an early innovator on the Moog Synth). Or we could go to their more obscure stuff, like Serpent is Rising, where they had some extremely awesome hard stuff. The titular track of that album features hard as rock guitar, is progressive, and also vocals that would make Greg Lake's electronically distorted voice on "21st Century Schizoid Man" look kinda like a joke. Unlike Lake, the rasp and growl was J. C.'s real voice on display for Styx.