music

a change of pace tonight. i am going to quickly focus on two american groups who are among the best proponents of pomp rock. when it comes to pure prog rock there is no need to travel beyond the shores of the united kingdom – elp, yes, king crimson and genesis, to name but a few (true we also gave the world the enid, not everyone is a winner).
somehow the americans took this and gave it a level of glitz and glitter, glammed it up and gave us pomp, or symphonic, rock.
kansas are closer to the prog model not only are there times when there are two vocalists singing, two guitarists playing, two keyboardists playing they have a big bearded bloke playing violin (this was another band i used to convince the ex’s kid that violin wasn’t so bad. i tried my best to bring another nigel kennedy into the world. i failed. you can thank me later). their first few albums are immense slabs of pomposity filled with pretentious lyrics and exquisite musicianship. wonderful stuff.
when you watch the video – check out steve walsh’s shorts, back in the days when shorts were short and you wore them on your waist. steve plays keyboards and he does silly kick dances. check out the hair on robby steinhardt, sadly this is not a great track for him as all he gets to do is prowl the stage, sing some lines and bang a tambourine – mostly he is wishing there was a violin solo he could play. the blonde guitar playing is kerry livgren
the other band is styx. they are more rock than prog but with twin guitars and overblown keyboards and a concept album or two they have a prog edge to them. not that it really matters as they produced a string of top notch albums that stand out among the rest of their work which was mostly ok.
both bands were introduced to me by monty. monty wanted to be a drummer, and singer, i only got to hear him drum the once and that is a story for another time.
on the styx video watch james young, the larger of the two guitarists, do the facial gurnings that so many soloing guitarists do meanwhile tommy shaw, the other guitarist, looks too young to be on stage. this song was written by dennis de young, who looks like he should be appearing in daytime murder mystery movies with angela lansbury, instead he sings this song about ets (i reckon it is david icke’s fave of all time, it is a bit too poofy for danny dyer) in between banging the keyboard like a demented bobby crush and then running around the stage in order to jump onto and off of the piano. i tell you keyboard players are odd.
and if you want to hear an interesting cover version of this song go hunt down cartman, from south park, singing it.

kansas



styx