Originally Posted by
SteveSly
Monolith: A big step down to my ears, although it does have some good songs. The tour was incredible though. Kansas at their live peak.
Audio Visions: A mixed bag. Some really great songs and some mediocre stuff. Worth owning for sure though. Livgren’s religious stuff vs. Walsh’s straight forward stuff. I always liked “No One Together”, “Hold On’, and “Got To Rock On”.
Vinyl Confessions: The best of the two Elefante albums, although I don’t think it is great. The single “Play The Game Tonight” is a great tune as is “Crossfire” and a few others.
Drastic Measures: Kansas weakest studio album to my ears. Not terrible, but not all that good either.
Power: I love this album. It gets mixed reviews from a lot of Kansas fans, but I really dig it and think from a writing perspective it may be Steve Walsh’s best overall work with the band. I like pretty much every song on it.
In The Spirit Of Things: This could have been a great album, but record company interference (bringing in outside songwriters) really spoiled the overall concept. For me there are 4 great tracks on this on: “Ghosts”, “Rainmaker”, “The Preacher” and “Bells Of St. James”. The rest is pretty dull.
“Live At The Whisky”: This was where you really started to hear deterioration in Walsh’s voice, but musically this version of the band (with Ragsdale and Robert) was on fire. I just re-visited this video recently and it brought back what a manic front man Walsh was at one time. I kind of miss that live…
Freaks Of Nature: Another album that had a lot of potential, but was kind of a letdown for me. I really think if they had allowed Ragsdale more input on the writing that this would have been better. Listening to Ragsdale’s solo album “David And Goliath” from around the same period it just seems like the band kind of played it safe. Anyway, a decent effort, but not a great Kansas album.
Regarding other classic album box sets, the Blue Oyster Cult box is worth every penny and a great collection and remastered beautifully.
Steve Sly
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