I have been on a bit of a Kansas kick of late, fueled by my 15-year old's recent obsession with them. What are the best classic-era live videos/DVD of the band? Weren't they on the Midnight Special TV show at some point? Looking for non-youtube recs (cause I know how to search YT)
Steve
The "Sail On" box set came with the DVD of the Don Kirshner show. THAT is absolutely the best live KS footage available. Shame you have to get the box too with the best of CDs, but maybe you can find it all for cheap. This is the ONLY vid available with 70s footage. Everything else is bootleg stuff. There are full shows from the Cali Jam and one from 1980, but those were never released commercially.
No Place Like Home is a fairly recent DVD (maybe ten years old now) that has the best latter day performance of the ever aging Steve Walsh. Any vids prior to that are a bit painful to listen to. Device Voice Drum is the best of that lot. Live at the Whisky is the absolute worst. The band always plays great, so its a matter of vocals, really, and how much Walsh rasp you can take.
No Place Like Home shows a Walsh almost on the rebound, where he sings as close to the original melodies as possible. Sort of like young Steve meets old. Before that he took too many liberties with the melodies and added too many annoying "naaah naaah naaahs" and other lame shit to them.
Although not perfect, if you haven't already seen this its well worth a watch; pro shot live Houston in 1980:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkxaMhH9qSs
There's also the pro-shot Live in Omaha 1982, with Elefante, Livgren, Steinhardt, Hope, Ehart, Williams and Warren Ham (who would later be a part of Kerry's Christian band A.D.). I rented it from an indie record shop back in the '80s that (gasp!) rented out concert videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuKnYCGvauo
Agreed. This is the best one. I bought the Sail On set for $16 used on Amazon a few years ago just for the DVD. It was well worth the 40 mins of 1974 footage. One frustrating thing about it is that there is a bootleg set, "Lost Performances" or something like that, which has two additional performances from Kirshner in crappy n-gen video. They are clearly from the same night as on the DVD so who knows why they couldn't get clean masters of these and add them to the DVD as well. Still, a great 40 minutes.Originally Posted by Sean
I actually prefer Device Voice Drum because Robbie is on it and he is still in good voice, so the harmonies are superb. But No Place is very good too. Get both. Stay away from Whisky like the plague. If you are morbidly curious there are some tracks from it on YT. It is worse than you could possibly believe.
If you like the Elefante era, I agree this one is very good too.
As good as this is, I can't watch it without laughing at Elefante's "microphone dance."
Yeah, I know, I'm 12 years old.
Music isn't about chops, or even about talent - it's about sound and the way that sound communicates to people. Mike Keneally
FYI, the Kirshner performance, while essential, was performed in an empty venue. The crowd was added later. None of that should take away from the enjoyment, though.
"The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"
But the crowd seems so enthusiastic...
Dave Hope was also in A.D, at least when they played in Madison back then.
"My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician, and to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference"
President Harry S. Truman
Did you know there's an easter egg on the DVD? Just read about this:
"a hidden performance from Device Voice Drum not included on that DVD. Go to the bottom of the menu, click right and then left to see a performance of Distant Vision from the Somewhere to Elsewhere album"
I think it was Icarus and Down The Road that are missing from the proper DVD for some weird reason. Yeah!
The pro shot show from Omaha is pretty cool if you dig the Elefante era. Enjoy the 'fro! It's well lit, filmed nicely and the band is kickin'!
Part of the original tape those two tracks where filmed on was destroyed or at least in such a bad shape that it was decided as not good enough for a official release.
(I think fans would not have cared about those glitches)
Yes it is true - I remember reading this and trying it out. It works and Distant Vision is such a great song!!
Tried it. Didn't work. What am I doing wrong?
Of the officially released live films (VHS / DVD) here are my thoughts for what they are worth. One caveat, I do not have the box set DVD which many cite as the best one.
No Place Like Home: I think this is a great DVD with guest appearances from Steve Morse and Kerry Livgren. They put this show together with the specific goal of filming a DVD and they did a really nice job. Well worth owning.
Device Voice Drum: I like this one a lot too, and this was another performance put together specifically to film a DVD. Yea, Walsh’s voice had deteriorated, but he still sounds pretty decent on most of this (much better than Live At The Whiskey) and Robby Steinhardt was back in the band at this point, so you get a cool performance from this era of the band. If you look close in the audience you can see quite a few members of our little progressivears forum in there.
Omaha 1982: This was the John Elefante version of the band, and if you can get past the outfits and some of his stage mannerisms this is a pretty good film. It is very dated of course, but still cool in its own way.
Live At The Whiskey: I have mixed feelings on this one. Walsh is absolutely over the top manic on this one and this was pretty clear evidence at how much his voice had deteriorated at the time. On the other hand the music on this one smokes. Instrumentally I thought this version of the band (with Ragsdale and Robert) was right up there with the all-time best lineups.
I actually think the entire above are worth owning, but yea the quality of the performance does vary. It is really too bad that there is not more available out there. They really really really should have filmed the Monolith tour as that was pretty much their height as far as stage production got, but alas there does not seem to be much, if anything out there from that one.
Go to the part that says Sound Rigging and then click to right and then to left and it will start to play.
Note that the easter egg is on the "Sail On" DVD - not on Device Voice Drum DVD (even though it is from that concert)
Yeah, that makes sense. Like with multi-track tape, pro grade video tape was always expensive, so a lot of stuff got taped over once a TV program got edited down.
Oops. I was trying it on Device Voice Drum. Thanks anyway.
I wonder if anyone ever suggested he use a name other than Elefante?
I used to have a 1979 concert on video (from the Audio Visions tour). I have no idea of the source, it was pro shot but probably 6th generation video so it was pretty mediocre to crappy quality. Its got to be out there somewhere in a vault. It would be great if the band were to find it and make an official DVD release out of it. There's some very interesting clips from the new documentary Miracles Out of Nowhere including clips of the aforementioned 1974 video, but there is also some clips from a Canadian festival (about 100,000 people, Kansas playing in the daytime). Supposedly all that remains of that Canada performance are clips, not a full recording.
Well, on Live at the Whisky Steve was manic and not for a good reason. He later said he rerecorded his keyboard parts because of the mistakes. He couldn't improve the vocals and gave up. The rest of the band sounds great. On a related note, somewhere on the 'net is an interview with Greg Robert where he discusses his role in the band.
That YouTube video from Houston has a great performance, too bad the sound is so mediocre.
I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'- Bob Newhart
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