Kansas - Drastic Measures

This is my favourite Kansas album. Other than a couple of songs I'd heard on the radio I didn't really know much about the band. I do know my buddy Gord liked them and I first heard "Relentless" on one of his mix tapes - and that was an awesome tune. I didn't really have any baggage when it came to the band. When I picked up their 1982 release Vinyl Confessions I didn't realize there was a changing on the guard when a young John Elefante replaced Steve Walsh on vocals.

By the time Drastic Measures dropped in 1983 I'd gone back and picked up the excellent (to me) Audio-Visions and had started picking up the band's back catalogue and was really getting into the band. I'll be the first to admit my preferences leaned to the rock songs, and the more meandering wiffle waffle stuff I put up with to get to the rock songs. Yeah, I'm thinking about "A Glimpse of Home" from Monolith with it's pure cheese old timey sci-fi radio intro ... but I'm wandering off track. I'm really just trying to say that the prog elements were wasted on me. I wanted the big guitars, the big hooks and the soaring vocals.

Even the cover was a departure for the band. For the first time since Song for America adopted their distinctive logo Drastic Measures featured a simple font spelling out the band's name and album title. Frankly I thought the bazooka was a nice touch ... then again, I had no sense of history. As if to put more distance between the '70s and drag themselves into the '80s vocalist and violin player Robby Steinhardt departed. This was the album John Elefante and his brother Dino took on the majority of the songwriting with Kerry Livgren only contributing three on the album's nine tracks. At the time this didn't mean anything to me, and all I knew was the album charged out of the gate with "Fire with Fire" and didn't look back.

Many of the songs seem to hint at John's immersion into the heady world of being a "rock star" and he seems to be trying to make sense out of his newly minted fame through his lyrics. Of course I could also be completely full of shit, but I still really like "Everybody's My Friend" with it's opening "Hello, hello" followed by Phil Ehart's splat splat drums. Kerry's song "Mainstream" give a glimpse into the pressures of trying to feed the Kansas machine and you get the sense that there are further changes afoot in the future.

Which leads into the actual sound of the album. I'm pretty sure this can be attributed to co-producer and engineer Neil Kernon who coincidentally that same year produced Steve Walsh's new band Streets as well. I've always found the album to be rather dark sounding with a muddy bottom and overly accentuated mid range. Phil's drum sound wasn't as crisp and snappy - it wasn't like he was playing on a cardboard box, but it was it's own sound. Frankly in the context of the album I really liked it - I liked all of it. It was cohesive and it did shed all of the band's previous baggage in terms of what a Kansas album was supposed to sound like.

The album closes out with Kerry's "Incident on a Bridge" and it's a fitting closer. "And I know, for each life there is a reason / And I know, for each time there is a season" and as fate would have it, this would mark the end of this chapter in Kansas history.

Kerry and Dave would leave and form the band AD, and Steve Walsh after a couple of albums with Streets would return to Kansas and along with a new guitar player Steve Morse would start another chapter with the band.

Those are, as they say stories for another day.

Drastic Measures to me will always be a favourite album - not just a favourite Kansas album. I can totally see how this album represented the nadir of the band's output as it was an overt and very obvious attempt at commercial success. Did it succeed? Depends on who you ask I guess. I loved this album, and through John and Dino Elefante a whole world of music opened up - and the output from Kerry Livgren first with AD and then solo filled my shelves. Heck, even Steve Walsh and his two albums with Streets and his own very good solo work has a place in my heart.

Garfield - Strange Streets

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