Old Enough to Forget

After leaving Kansas, Steve Walsh formed the band Streets. The band was comprised of ace fretman Mike Slamer, bassist Billy Greer, and drummer Tim Gehrt. Their debut album, 1st was released in October 1983, a few months after his former band Kansas dropped Drastic Measures. Coincidentally, Neil Kernon engineered and produced both albums. Whereas the Kansas album felt dark and murky, 1st was bright and crackling - not brittle, but everything felt forward in the mix. Much of the energy came from Mike Slamer's guitar work, which was pretty awesome. Musically, this is much more early '80s rock than I expected. If Steve wanted to shed the progressive baggage he'd packed with Kansas, Streets was a solid run at commercial rock - even if the near six-minute rocker "Lonely Woman's Cry" flirts with some prog elements, it's a rock song at its core. Here's the thing, I had no idea this album even existed back in '83. It would literally be a couple of decades...

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 ... b...