KANSAS
Kansas is an American rock band that became popular in the 1970’s initially on album-oriented rock charts and later with hit singles such as “Carry On Wayward Son” and “Dust in the Wind”. The band has produced eight gold albums, three sextuple-platinum albums (Leftoverture, Point of Know Return, The Best of Kansas), one platinum live album (Two for the Show), and a million-selling single, “Dust in the Wind”. “Carry On Wayward Son” was the second-most-played track on classic rock radio in 1995 and No. 1 in 1997. (More from Wikipedia)
There is a long article on Trillion in Allmusic (by Eduardo Rivadavia) that starts off: “For every American progressive rock band that found increasing success on commercial radio during the second half of the ’70s – Journey, Styx, Kansas, etc. -- there were additional dozens possessing the same sonic recipe for infectious bombast but which, for some reason or other, just never made the grade, including Trillion.” It is hard to know why some albums grab listeners and others do not, but clearly, no one has the formula figured out yet.
An interesting thing about progressive rock bands is that most of them did not hit the ball out of the park with their first album, the way that King Crimson and Boston did. As I noted in my last post, the first hit songs for Yes came on their third album, The Yes Album. Journey didn’t make any real noise on the music scene until vocalist Steve Perry joined up for the fourth album, Infinity. The breakthrough album for Styx, The Grand Illusion was their seventh album. Leftoverture was the album that put Kansas on the map, their fourth album. With Trillion though, the band was never given the opportunity to develop an audience or to refine their sound.
(October 2012)
