I’m listening to Kansas. My shrink gave me explicit directions not to do this. But what does he know? He’s the same fool who tells me I’m sane, hah! As for me, I say, “Pop prog from America’s wheat belt, what could possibly go wrong?” Why, I’m listening to 1976’s Leftoverture as I write this, and–Gak! Erk! Blagh! What Lovecraftian horror is this? Quick, Thorazine! Shock treatment! Gag and glumph, I should have listened to my shrink! I’m vomiting poisonous toads! And giant black death buzzards are hurling themselves against my glass patio door! Oh, I know they’re an appalling hallucination brought on by Kansas poisoning, but still! Their shrieks sound real enough! Must turn off! Must (review ends here; writer vanished, and has yet to be found).
Three days later: Okay, so I’m back. And perhaps I overreacted. Kansas may carry the horrid prog virus, but its music isn’t as infectious as that of its compatriots across the pond. And Kansas did, much to its credit, write Thee Definitive Eschatological Dirge in the great “Dust in the Wind,” something you can’t say about Grand Funk Railroad or Jackson Browne or the Velvet Underground even.
And frequently Kansas actually rocks, instead of slavishly aping that geriatric classical sound, the way Emerson, Lake & Palmer were wont to do. Why, the big guitar riff in “Carry on My Wayward Son” off Leftoverture is deserving of kudos, and it’s not until the hackneyed Icarus allusions that the song threatens to go downhill. But instead the band launches into a hard rock jam featuring a vicious guitar wrapped around a muscular organ. And if that’s not enough, vocalist Steve Walsh tosses off the truly profound lines, “And if I claim to be a wise man/Well, it surely means that I don’t know.”
In his review of Leftoverture, the critic Robert Christgau wrote, “Q: How do you tell American art-rockers from their European forebears? A: They sound dumber, they don’t play as fast, and their fatalism lacks conviction.” To which I can only say, if by “dumb” Christgau means Kansas doesn’t have its collective head quite as far up Modest Mussorgsky’s ass as the pompous jerks in ELP do, then thank god for stuttering stupidity. English progressive rock is a horror show, a classical conservatory lesson in unlistenability, while Kansas never forgets it’s a pop rock band first and a classical gas second.
In short, Kansas is less pretentious musically, and that counts for a lot; songs such as “What’s on My Mind” emphasize hard rock over classical noodling, and even the classical organ on “Questions of My Childhood” is subsumed by sheer propulsion. Only on the highly questionable “Opus Insert” does the band totally give in to its progressive inclinations, and even it has its minor charms. Meanwhile, “The Wall” is saved (ironically) by some nice Pink Floyd guitar by Kerry Livgren, although lead singer Steve Walsh, who boasts a very pleasant voice but has the annoying habit of sounding like he’s imparting the wisdom of the ages, threatens to sink the song with his overly portentous croon. As for the rest of the tune, it reminds me more of Genesis than anybody else, and I’ve always held that Genesis is the only listenable progressive rock band that ever lived.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that Kansas plays prog-lite, as does Styx, and rarely lets its instrumental prowess overwhelm its songs. Most of the tunes on Leftoverture are catchy, and that’s a miracle. Why, I could almost imagine listening to this LP for pleasure, with the key word being almost. Walsh isn’t the poet he thinks he is, ditto Kerry Livgren, but it bears keeping in mind that this shit sounded deep to the teens who loved (and love) Kansas more than any prog band made in Europe, with the exception of Pink Floyd.
So, yeah, the guys in Kansas occasionally let pomposity get the best of them. “Cheyenne Anthem” doesn’t sound like anything a Cheyenne warrior would want to hear; come the pompous piano, and his most likely response would be to fill the guy playing it with arrows. And speaking of pomposity, the LP closes with the six-part “Magnum Opus,” which includes such amusing section titles as “Father Padilla Meets the Perfect Gnat” and “Release the Beavers,” both of which promise some Zappa-school absurdity but unfortunately fail to deliver.
To reiterate: I listened to Kansas’ Leftoverture and I totally lost my shit. And the same could happen to you. This one is best left to teen stoners who have the intestinal fortitude to handle its grandiose intellectual pretentions—teens like grandiose intellectual statements and the shallower the better, or at least they did back in the seventies, when this teen stoner actually paid good American money to see Kansas. I don’t remember much about the show, probably because I smoked PCP by accident. That said, they sounded good, if my hazy memory serves, on PCP. But I’ll bet you they’d have sounded even better on Thorazine, or some other type of heavy tranquilizer. Drooling along to the hits, you can’t beat it. Especially when the hits are neo-classical in inspiration. I can’t say I despise Kansas; indeed, I bear them a kind of nostalgic goodwill. Of course, that could be the PCP talking, and when push comes to shove, you’d be wise to take my shrink’s advice. That is unless you want giant shrieking black death buzzards hurling themselves against your glass patio door.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
C-
