The opening song is Fight Fire With Fire, a blazing rocker using war imagery as a possible analogue for sharing your faith. As Livgren was attempting to be less overt with the evangelistic lyrics this time around it would make sense if there was a double meaning here, although the band certainly has made songs in tribute to America's soldiers before.
Next is Everybody's My Friend, a tongue-in-cheek song about how everyone wants to be your friend when you become famous, wanting to know if you've met other famous people and calling you at all hours of the night.
Third is Mainstream, the first of only three songs penned by Kerry Livgren on the album. The song is a no punches pulled critique of the state of modern American rock music, how it's packaged and sold with very little actual creativity being supported. There's a rumor going around that it has a double meaning of Livgren being frustrated with the more commercial direction Kansas was heading in but in the liner notes of the CD, Elefante says Livgren didn't have it in him to put down his own band, that the song was much more about how the industry was forcing the band to become more commercial. The song does contain a lengthy instrumental section without much of a solo, using various percussion instruments including a moving accompaniment from a marimba. But nothing overtly progressive sounding here.
After that comes Andi, a song that is pretty puzzling on the face of it. If you pay attention to politics at all, you might think this is a song about a transsexual girl who wants to transition to being a boy. But that would be anachronistic, as transsexualism was still uncontroversially considered a mental disorder called gender dysphoria (and it still is today, despite efforts to normalize it). The song is simply about a girl who is a late bloomer, so to speak, and isn't developing as girls her age should. So the other kids mock her for it and the singer is reassuring her that she will be a woman someday. This song is more atmospheric and less guitar-driven than the other material on this album. Of all the material on this and the previous album, this song sounds the most like it was written in the 80s.
Coming up next is Going Through the Motions, a synth-driven song about someone just going through life without doing much living, just "going through the motions", as it were. One could also wonder if this song was eerily prophetic of the band at this time, as Livgren, himself, seemed to believe that Kansas had exhausted itself artistically at this point.
Get Rich is another song about wealth, this time talking about various historical figures of which the prospect of getting rich was a driving force for them, all the while leaving those who didn't benefit from their endeavors to have to scrape around for themselves.
Don't Take Your Love Away is a song that seems to follow the theme of Get Rich. As a rock star singing for a huge rock band, fame and wealth come with the package. Yet the singer is telling God that none of what he has amassed as a rock singer could ever compare to God's love, so he can have it all just so long as he doesn't take his love away from the singer. Musically, the verses have a soft keyboard playing under them which ramps up with drums and heavy guitars during the choruses, as if to underscore the passion with which the singer doesn't want to lose God's love.
End of the Age is the second of Livgren's three songwriting contributions to the album. The song uses apocalyptic imagery to describe the time when "the reign of man" will come to an end. According to Mark Allan Powell in Encyclopedia of Contemporary Christian Music, Livgren would later maintain he was in a songwriting slump at this time and felt that neither this song nor the next deserved to be on the album. That sort of makes sense in a way, as this song does feel like standard Kansas fare, with the organ and bombastic, almost regal, sounding music, which doesn't really fit the lyrics of the end of the age pulled from Revelation. You'd expect something heavier, with more distortion, for a song like this.
The last song on the album is Incident on a Bridge, which ends the album on a peppy note. The song is about divine appointment, that all things happen for a reason, as "life only comes from the one who made it". Looking back on his life, the singer can see all the events that led up to this one encounter, and all the time spent was not wasted.
Perfect Lover was the last song recorded by Kansas with John Elefante as lead singer. It was recorded for a greatest hits collection. The band had already split at this time with only Elefante, Ehart, and Williams left to record the song. So John's brother Dino was brought in to fill out the sound by playing bass and Bryan Duncan (a Christian pop singer) was brought in to supply backing vocals. The song is basically a straight-ahead rocker with no extended musical interludes or solos. The song is essentially about the singer's vision of the ideal lover, someone that everyone keeps telling him doesn't exist but he continues to insist that she's actually real.
Drastic Measures became Kansas' lowest-charting album since their eponymous debut. With nine songs, it's the first Kansas album to have an odd number of tracks, as well as the first to have nine tracks on it. Tensions with the band were at an all-time high and the band ended up disbanding once the tour ended. Livgren and Hope left to form a new band called A.D. According to the liner notes on the CD reissue, after Steinhardt, Livgren, and Hope all left the band, Elefante just didn't feel like it was Kansas anymore. So he ended up forming a band called Mastedon (which I believe was spelled this way on purpose to differentiate from another band called Mastodon that was around at the time), as well as becoming a music producer, producing successful Christian rock acts such as Petra. Before disbanding completely, however, Livgren, Ehart, and Williams stuck around to record a new song for a greatest hits album called The Best of Kansas, which I've included below for the sake of being exhaustive with Kansas' studio material. When The Best of Kansas was re-printed on CD in 1999, Perfect Lover was dropped and three other songs included. So you can't find the song on CD but it has since been made available on a digital-only collection of songs called Wheels and Other Rarities. But Kansas in its current iteration was done. Kansas would resurrect in a few years, however, but returning to its non-religious roots, and many fans believe the spirit of Kansas was carried on in Livgren and Hope's new band, A.D.
Album: Drastic Measures (1983)
Band: Kansas
John Elefante -- vocals & keyboards
Rich Williams -- guitars
Kerry Livgren -- keyboards, guitars
Dave Hope -- bass
Phil Ehart -- drums
Track list:
01. *Fight Fire With Fire (3:40) -- Elefante, Dino Elefante
02. *Everybody's My Friend (4:06) -- Elefante, Dino Elefante
03. Mainstream (6:36) -- Livgren
04. Andi (4:18) -- Elefante
05. Going Through the Motions (5:46) -- Elefante, Dino Elefante
06. Get Rich (3:44) -- Elefante, Dino Elefante
07. Don't Take Your Love Away (3:43) -- Elefante, Dino Elefante
08. End of the Age (4:33) -- Livgren
09. Incident on a Bridge (5:40) -- Livgren
* denotes a single
Album: The Best of Kansas (1984)
Band: Kansas
06. *Perfect Lover (4:19) -- Elefante, Dino Elefante (with bass by Dino Elefante and backing vocals by Bryan Duncan)
* denotes a single
No comments:
Post a Comment