Kansas “Somewhere to Elsewhere”
One hit wonders (unum hit admirari) are a lovable and diverse genus. They include should have beens (debet esse), whose talent was sufficient to capture the zeitgeist, but not enough to ensure canonization — think The Knack or Dexys Midnight Runners. They also include less talented, but still memorable, flashes in the pan (micare in sartagine) whose greatest song transcended everything else they ever did — think Tommy Tutone and Matthew Wilder. And then, of course, there are the novelties and accidents (novitate casus), who exist somewhere between happy accident and joke — think Toni Basil and Right Said Fred. One hit wonders are the subjects of TV shows, playlists, trivia and memes, but ultimately they are not so uncommon. Pop music is practically littered with them. In truth, the two hit wonder (duo hit admirari) is the much rarer bird.
It’s hard to find the through line between The Rembrandts, Cutting Crew and The Spin Doctors, but alas they share a taxonomy. They are less familiar than their one hit cousins, but also much more tragic. They climbed the mountain, and then, as if to prove that the first one was no fluke, they climbed it again. However, rather than sustaining them, their two hits live on as double validation of the tragedy — as evidence of the fact that, in spite of their talent and perseverance, something separates them from the ones who really, truly made it. One hit wonders are lovable flukes. Two hit wonders are genuine tribulations.
There are, of course, exceptions — those two hitters who endured the trials and survived beyond their expiration dates. Golden Earring climbed the charts in 1973 with “Radar Love” and returned to prominence a decade later with the essential, if much less remembered, “Twilight Zone.” In their case, it’s not simply the space between the hits that distinguishes them — it’s also the fact that at home, in The Netherlands, they are Rock royalty, filling arenas and adorning postage stamps. And though they were born thousands of miles away and nearly a decade earlier, in their Prog Rock inclinations and two hit legacy, Kansas is also a rarity in this already rare genus. It’s fair to say that what Golden Earring are to The Netherlands, Kansas is to — well — Kansas.
In the mid-Seventies, a narrative took hold that mainstream Rock bands were increasingly faceless and nameless — that their albums were all covered with spaceships and that their identities were obscured by permed and feathered mullets. Nevertheless, I was still able to discern Boston from Journey from Foreigner. I knew what Steve Perry’s face looked like. I could distinguish Tom Scholz’s guitar from Neal Schon’s. I knew the difference between Foreigner’s Mick Jones and Lou Gramm. And yet, I could not name a single member of the band Kansas. Until this past week, I had no idea what any member looked like. I could only name their two greatest hits — “Carry on Wayward Son” and “Dust in the Wind” — and their one lesser, but still memorable, hit — “Point of No Return.” Of all those Classic Rock bands from the Seventies, the ones whose Greatest Hits cassettes were staples of every collection of everyone I knew, Kansas was the one who I least understood. If I’m being totally honest, I could not place Topeka on a map. Fifty fifty if I’d even get Kansas right.
On the one hand, I’m not proud of my ignorance. On the other hand, Kansas was, by any reasonable measure, hard to follow. There was their name — banal but also not interesting or subversive like Television or The Cars. There’s the fact that they were born from the merger of two bands — one named Kansas and one called White Clover. And that their original lineup, with the exception of their bassist and drummer, had completely turned over by the time of their “classic” lineup in 1973. But mostly it was the guys themselves — one of whom dabbled with extra-terrestrial religion before he was born again, one of whom played the violin like a fiddle, except in a Prog band, and one who wore a patch because he’d lost an eye in a childhood fireworks accident. They were not your usual Rock stars.
Unsurprisingly, their atypical origin, name and membership gave rise to equally atypical music. Kansas’ international, multi-Platinum success was, in part, a product of timing. They could sound like their peers — Journey, Styx, Rush and REO Speedwagon — but only if you piled those bands on top of one another. More than their context, though, Kansas’ inordinate fame was a result of those two gargantuan hits. “Carry On Wayward Son,” with its thrilling, stadium-sized chorus and its dizzying keyboards and guitars. And “Dust in the Wind,” the complete opposite, with its twin acoustic guitars, violin, viola and existential earnestness.
Kansas released seven albums between 1974 and 1980, all of them certified Gold and two of them multi-Platinum. Of the fifty-something tracks on those records, I’d say that most are not very good and a whole bunch border on unlistenable. When Kansas did occasionally hit, they absolutely knocked it out of the park. But when they missed, they sounded like Queen, if Brian, Roger and John were swapped for Peter Gabriel-era Genesis, and if Gabriel-era Genesis was really interested in the Jesus. Whereas Queen could occasionally get themselves out of corner by simply letting Freddie scat and snap (“Body Language”), Kansas solution for lackluster material was always more, more, more. More strings. More synths. More harmonies. More faith. If you were a Prog Rock fan from the Heartland, Kansas was not only the best thing in your life, they were maybe the only thing in your life. But if you were from anywhere else in the world, Kansas was simply that strange band, with the boring name, who had two positively massive hit songs.
While Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull might imply otherwise, Prog Rock bands are built to make art, not hits. King Crimson and early Genesis are the real prototypes — English, obtuse and uncommercial. Kansas was spiritually closer to those bands than the former, more commercially successful ones. But they are different from both in that they are (a) American and (b) Arena Rock canon. They are perhaps the hardest to classify, most anonymous band in the Classic Rock pantheon. And the fact that their music is still played on the radio today is a testament to the greatness of their greatest songs, but equally, to the genius of Will Ferrell. “Carry on My Wayward Son” was used to close “Anchorman” and “Dust in the Wind” was used to eulogize Blue in “Old School.” Without Ferrell, it seems likely that Kansas would have ended up on the fringe of Sirius Radio, lost somewhere “Classic Rewind” and “Deep Tracks.” They lack the geeky credentials of Crimson or Yes — no doctorates or gwar guitars. They lack the bombast of Queen or Styx. And they don’t shake arena rafters like Journey and Boston.
As the market figured itself out and as Kerry Livgren’s songs got holier, Kansas faded from the charts, doomed to become a revolving door of ace musicians who could play anything but who could not produce hits. Steve Walsh stuck around. So did drummer Phil Ehart and guitarist Rich Williams. But everyone else, including Livgren — the group’s primary songwriter — came and went. The band that made nine albums in their first ten years, mustered just five more over the next thirty. They had one more very minor hit in 1986 (“All I Wanted”) and that was really it. No more Gold records. Half full arenas. Then state fairs and a lot of dust in the wind.
But at a certain point — after Michael and Prince and Madonna and GnR and Pearl Jam and Nirvana — something shifted. The Classic Rock band that was actually a Prog Rock band and who were famous but also completely unknown stopped hanging on. They would never be cool again, but they were never cool to begin with. They would never have another smash hit, but they had two more than nearly every other band in the history of history. They jumped from major label to major label to a very niche indie which specialized in Prog and Metal, which meant smaller budgets but a bigger slice of the pie. At the end of the last century, Kansas existed somewhere between liberation and decimation.
And that’s exactly when Kerry Livgren called up Steve Walsh to sing on a few of his new songs, which sounded a lot like old Kansas songs, which got wheels turning, which in turn got Phil Ehart, Robby Steinhardt, Rich Williams and Dave Hope — Kansas’ iconic, mid-Seventies line-up — back together again. And though it was not Kansas’ final release, “Somewhere to Elsewhere” was the band’s last hurrah. The album was entirely written by Livgren, who promptly left the band (again — for the third time) soon after it came out so that he could start a new band called (not making this up) Proto-Kaw. It was also the last time singer, Steve Walsh, and stringmaster, Robby Steinhardt, played on a Kansas record. While commercial expectations were low, the personal stakes were sky high.
“Somewhere to Elsewhere” is a wildly curious album, interested in everything from Greek mythology, to more recent but still ancient Greek history, to nineteenth century Romantic poetry, to aging and death, and geodesic domes. It’s full of heady ideas, unnavigable time signatures, swirling keyboards and the straining vocals of middle-aged men who have nothing to lose. Its breadth and ambition are surely impressive. But the overall effect is exhausting — seventy minutes of careening Prog and shrill Blues sung by men with all the gusto, but half of the vocal control of their former selves.
In 2008, Chicago released “Chicago XXXII: Stone of Sisyphus,” an ambitious, genre-fluid, let’s get back to our roots record that was originally recorded in 1994 but which was shelved for its lack of marketability. “Somewhere to Elsewhere” has a similar, anything is possible spirit. The words, the melodies, the rhythms — everything is hard to follow. However, unlike Chicago, who at least sounded like they were having fun with the “let’s go for it because what do we have to lose” vibe, middle-aged Kansas sounds either overly serious or like they don’t know what funny is. There are several moments on the album when they unintentionally evoke Spinal Tap, but if Nigel Tufnel, David St. Hubbins & Derek Smalls were virtuosos and devoid of humor.
Listen, I am not proficient on a single musical instrument. And so it’s entirely possible that “Somewhere to Elsewhere” is formally innovative in ways I will never understand. Maybe “Grand Fun Alley” and “No Big Man,” are employing some 12/8 time signature that was previously considered impossible. Maybe they’re using a baseball bat to play the viola. I do not pretend to know. Further, I grant that they are doing a lot on this record. And I’ll also grant that, since I don’t really understand what they’re doing, there are probably some musicians and music theorists who could defend this album. But as a regular guy who’s written about a lot of challenging albums, and especially a lot of challenging albums by middle-aged men, including some real hard to swallow affairs from King Crimson, Todd Rundgren, Tin Machine, Golden Earring and (yep) Chicago, I can safely say that this was the heaviest lift of my Past Prime tenure.
With the exception of Walsh’s vocals, which are sharp and strained, it’s not as though the sounds being made here are terrible, unto themselves. And, to be clear, the music is not profane or offensive. There are some “just fine” moments — “Look at the Time,” for instance, keeps a 4/4 beat and borrows just enough from “Eleanor Rigby” and “Kashmir” as to be familiar. And "Disappearing Skin Tight Blues" sounds like classic Journey (nice), but if Steve Perry had a minor throat injury. Also, if you ignore its title, "The Coming Dawn (Thanatopsis)" could pass for a David Foster track that Jim Steinman got his hands on. There are daring technical feats throughout the album. But they are frequently accompanied by elaborate, impenetrable turds like:
City resting on a hill
Can your walls repel the tide of change
Under Pantocrator's rule
Did your golden domes reveal
The frailty of the consequence
The conqueror was real
More than it sounds like Kansas, or more than it even sounds like a band, “Somewhere to Elsewhere” sounds like seven men (the six original members plus Billy Greer, who joined Kansas in 1985, and who plays most of the bass) playing lead on seven different records. Steve Walsh recorded the vocal tracks from his home studio — and you can tell. It’s not merely that he sounds removed from everyone else, it sounds like Livgren forgot to copy him on the memo. However, despite all of it — despite my criticisms and my snark and the fact that Livgren, Walsh and Steinhardt all left the band after this record — I don’t consider Kansas’ fourteenth album to be a mistake. I think of it was as a massive effort born from the very best intentions. If anything, the mistakes were those two (and one half) hits. Those were the accidents. Without them, there’s no superstardom. There’s just a motley crew from Topeka playing Progressive Rock music — which makes much more sense than “Carry On Wayward Son” or “Dust in the Wind.”