Kerry Livgren - Seeds of Change

When this came out in 1980 I was just around the corner from becoming a big Kansas fan. The first album I actually bought was Audio Visions and I bought that around a year after it came out after hearing "Relentless" on a mix tape my buddy Gord had brought over - it also had "Flirtin' with Disaster" on it too, so it was a memorable tape - I don't know why I can remember this type of thing, but can't for the life of me tell you why I just went into the kitchen.

1980 had been a pretty big year for Kerry Livgren. Writing and recording two albums was a pretty big deal, especially since both albums are really good. I know I got Audio Visions first but Seeds of Change was recorded earlier in the year - I'm not sure when I bought this one, but it was before Vinyl Confessions in 1982. I do know that my copy of Seeds has the Kirshner logo on the label so it wasn't a later pressing - I'm not sure what this has to do with anything, but it's kind of fun holding the album in my hands and trying to recall how it came to be in my collection.

While there are obvious similarities to this and Kansas, they are very different animals. Kerry who had become a recent convert to Christianity was using the lyrical equivalent of a sledgehammer to drive home his message. He wasn't subtle about it, and you'd think it would be a little too overt, but Kerry's lyrics were always heavy on the mystic and searching side, so him leaning into his personal beliefs wasn't exactly new.

What was unusual was his choice of guest musicians. As you'd expect, Kerry had some credibility in the rock world, and he used his cachet to draw upon some pretty great talent to service his visions - and to my delight it also pissed off some people who couldn't quite understand what Kerry was doing - win, win in my books.

The best examples of his WTF vocal casting was getting Ronnie James Dio on a couple of tracks, both of which are amazing: "Mask of the Great Deceiver"and "To Live For the King" songs so good they would come up in interviews with Dio for years - and Ronnie was always very gracious and spoke highly of the experience recording them with Kerry.

He tapped Paul Goddard from ARS to play bass on several tracks, and Barriemore Barlow who was primarily with Jethro Tull at the time to play drums - he was really solid throughout the album. Kerry also got Steve, Phil and Robbie from Kansas to help out as well, which to me was really cool. There were many others who were brought in to help out as well. It was an impressive list of talent.

The album itself sort of balances between being rock with some light prog moments, but overall was Kerry's way to trying to expand out of the boundaries that seemed to be defining Kansas - although to be fair by the time Audio Visions would drop that same year it was a departure from their previous releases and was more straight ahead AOR and dropped most of their progressive leanings the last of which were on Monolith.

It's an interesting album, and one that whenever I listen to it I ask myself why I don't play it more often. I'm not quite sure how I'd slot it against his work with Kansas, and even his work that would follow with AD. The album is a pastiche of songs with varying styles that are all fitted into the rock mould and is a cohesive effort. If I was to be dismissive I'd compare it to The Alan Parson's Project in that the vocalists were chosen to serve a particular song and this enabled Kerry to try things that were outside of the confines of his regular day job.

Yes, those Dio songs are showstoppers, but I've always loved "Whiskey Seed" - where Kerry actually gets to sing one of his own songs. It's not a long album, just seven songs, but there's a lot here to enjoy. This marked the next phase of Kerry's career, and he would be pretty prolific through the 80s and mid '90s releasing some amazing albums. While his solo efforts were never met with the same commercial success he enjoyed during Kansas' heyday he was as good as he ever was, and despite the passage of time and issues with his health he's still as creative as ever.

Many years ago I had ordered some discs from his mail order company Numavox, and when my CDs arrived, the customs tag was personally signed by Kerry. He recently dropped a new solo effort in the summer of 2022, and in 2021 he finally completed his long talked about Cantata The Resurrection of Lazarus - I have both of those on order and am looking forward to sitting and taking them in - I'm kind of hoping he signs the customs tag on this order too.

That was pretty cool.